Reviews

The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin

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ajaneb's review

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emotional hopeful reflective relaxing sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

annap5519's review

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5.0

Beautiful and heartfelt

Took a chance on this as I usually skip those with less than four stay reviews - I'm glad I did.

tjphutton's review

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5.0

I felt nostalgic for a life I've never lived.
This is a beautiful work of art.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It reminded me of the camp my family and I went to when I was a girl. Each family had their own cabin and dined in a great hall for their meals. There was a wonderful staff of teens that waited tables, took us water skiing, ran "hoot nannies" and took the kids into town for ice cream and miniature golf, all while the adults hung out, relaxed, and got to let parenthood drift away for a few moments. Great memories from that time and this book brought them all back. Endearing characters, beautifully written, and Cronin got Maine and its northern woods lifestyle right.

baearthur's review

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4.0

Lovely. Just lovely.

silodear's review

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3.0

This book hovered between 3 and 4 stars for me. Perhaps the very slow pace at which I read the book took away from the writing, I can't be sure. But I do know that I found the plot twists to be a bit forced, the relationships and connections to be well-developed and real, and the story to be interesting enough to keep me engaged through many real life distractions and competing exceedingly impressive novels. In sum: a good enough read.

elleldee's review

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2.0

I really would have guessed, from the description on the back, that I would end up not liking several of the characters. A man who had loved another man's wife for thirty years, nor a promising introduction. I really did like the book for about the quarters of it, then it died and rotted. By the end of it I hated a couple of the characters so much I could hardly keep reading.

rseykora's review

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A lot of characters and backstories made it complicated to keep straight. I listened to this so that may have been the reason I kept getting confused. But as the book moved on, the characters and backstories came together.

bethreadsandnaps's review

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4.0

Enjoyable read with multiple narrators that flashes back to the past and then back to the present and finally an epilogue of sorts. While I would say this is a "chick lit" book, it seemed to be better written than most. I enjoyed learning about flyfishing and a little bit more about World War II and Vietnam, but there wasn't enough of these topics to drown out the themes of the book.

The main twist you could see coming from a mile away.

I typically get the female characters confused, but in this book I got the male characters confused, particularly since there's multiple generations involved.