Cara's Book Boudoir: That Summer in Maine by Brianna Wolfson Review

That Summer in Maine
by Brianna Wolfson

Release Date: June 23rd, 2020

MIRA

Source: ARC provided by the publisher

A novel about mothers and daughters, about taking chances, about exploding secrets and testing the boundaries of family

Years ago, during a certain summer in Maine, two young women, unaware of each other, met a charismatic man at a craft fair and each had a brief affair with him. For Jane, it was a chance to bury her recent pain in raw passion and redirect her life. For Sue, it was a fling that gave her troubled marriage a way forward.

Now, sixteen years later, the family lives these women have made are suddenly upended when their teenage girls meet as strangers on social media. They concoct a plan to spend the summer in Maine with the man who is their biological father. Their determination puts them on a collision course with their mothers, who must finally meet and acknowledge their shared past and join forces as they risk losing their only daughters to a man they barely know.

*ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest and unbiased review*

I have read a lot of Women's fictions books, from women starting out on their own, new business and second chance love, but I think this is the first book I have ever read about a woman and her daughter and a struggling relationship, from the Mother trying to cope, and the daughter trying to find her place in a new family and discovering her birth father and a sister she never knew about, and it was an eye-opener to be sure!

That Summer in Maine doesn't start out in Maine at all, or even with a simple plotline, but with a woman called Jane, who is exhausted! After many years of being a single mother, Jane now has a husband and twins to add to her daughter Hazel. Hazel is struggling, she loves her new siblings but is struggling to find her place in her changed family and the loneliness she felt. But that all changed with one simple message, from a girl called Eve, who claims that she is Hazel's half-sister.

This tale is a little bittersweet for me, as someone who struggled and still somewhat struggles with her place in her own family, I'm like Hazel in the fact that she wants to know her father and half-sister, to connect with someone else over similarities, but I also understand Jane, in the fact that she raised Hazel and doesn't want to share any part of her, but also realizes her actions in taking her daughter for granted and that leads to resentment. Overall the book was a stunning read and one that I would recommend to single parents everywhere.

I give That Summer in Maine 5 stars.