Beatriz Williams' A Hundred Summers
I started reading this book at lunch and was honestly angry when I had to put it down and get back to work, because I wanted to know what would happen! It flashes back and forth between 1931--when Lily accompanies her friend Budgie to a Dartmouth game and meets dashing half-Jewish quarterback Nick, and 1938, when Budgie and her new husband (Nick) show up to spend the summer on the beach in Rhode Island where Lily is (and where Budgie determines to set Lily up with her own ex-boyfriend, now a pitcher for the Yankees). I was more than a little impatient to find out what happened in the interim, but Williams unfolds things at a pretty good pace, and the story has some nice twists (though Lily is annoyingly stupid about many of them). From a more critical standpoint, there are some bothersome things--Budgie is way too much of a mean girl/frenemy, Lilly is too passive/"nice," and the dramatic climax takes place during . . . a hurricane. With that said, I still really enjoyed this and think it will be a perfect summer reading book. A-/B+.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in May.
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