The Summer Wind

A few months ago, I read Mary Alice Monroe's The Summer Girls, the first of a three-part trilogy, and decided I wasn't a fan. Or rather, I was a fan until the end when it all fell apart. However, in my quest to stay awake for every moment of a 14-hour flight (helps with the jetlag), I needed a few "beach reads" and I remembered Mary Alice.

To recap: Dora, Carson, and Harper are half-sisters who have not seen one another for the better part of a decade until their grandmother summons them to her lowcountry house, Sea Breeze, to celebrate her 80th birthday. On her birthday, she insists they remain the entire summer, or forfeit their soon-to-be (considerable) inheritance.

Dora, the oldest, is in the midst of a divorce and uncertain, at best, how to handle her autistic son. Carson has recently broken up with her boyfriend, lost her job, and is a borderline alcoholic, while Harper is spinning her wheels as her ice-queen-mother's personal assistant at a New York City publishing house. Different mothers, different lives, and now way too much togetherness.

The Summer Wind picks up where Summer Girls leaves off. The absurd dolphin story line that so got my dander up continues, but with less prominence and is, therefore, less annoying. Also less annoying: the central character of this book is Dora, who is far more relatable than Carson. Some scenes are definitely a bit dramatic for my taste, but I knew what I was getting into before I read the first page.