Summer Secrets

I've been hanging on this summer waiting for Jane Green's newest novel Summer Secrets to lift me out of my readers block I've been having the last month or so. Green's novels are generally very very readable and heartwarming and engaging so I thought this book, if it fit the authors normal high standards, would provide me the salvation I sought.

The lead character Cat is immediately engaging but clearly harbouring issues in her past with alcohol and in the first few chapters she talks us through her teenage years with a difficult father with whom she struggles to form a relationship and a mother who suffers from black bouts of depression. She openly outlines how she found comfort in alcohol as it dampened the hurt of her life. This relationship with alcohol ultimately becomes the most important in her life and after her father dies and she continues to struggle she finally is confronted by her mother who explains about an old family secret that may explain her addiction.

There are lots of time jumps throughout this book, from present day in London with Cat we travel back to Nantucket in the 70's with her mother and then follow Cat to Nantucket on two further occasions in her life as she seeks answers to who her family are and where she belongs. Throughout all these travels we are never far from Cat's addiction and the grip it has on her life, in fact ultimately that is the story of this book, it is a story about the daily struggle to stay sober, to never give into that pull of temptation and about the horrible hurt addiction can cause with those we are close to and how sometimes those wounds cannot heal.

The scenic backdrop to the book is totally typical of Green, it is based in beautiful but very middle class America, there's a detonate aspirational pull as a reader to hearing about the little boho boutiques and stores along the Nantucket shore and the ever so chic sores. Green seems to be most at home writing about the kind of lifestyle she as a writer is privileged to be able to enjoy and she translates it well to the reader. Normally however her other skill is the relationships I. her books which are strong and deeply formed and highly emotional. My one disappointment with this book was that I felt this wasn't as triumphant as normal. I thought the relationship between Cat and her mother was well written as was that with her daughter Annie but I was waiting for more emotional connections between Cat and her relatives in Nantucket which didn't ever really seem to get going. They lacked the same depth that I've come to expect and as a resulting wasn't as thrilled with the book as I might otherwise have been.

It's a good story and it's a fairly easy read and I did get through it reasonably quickly but it is not Jane Green's best novel, whether this is a reflection of a traumatic year in the authors own life encompassing a cancer scare, a house move and publishing a cookery book who knows?