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A review by spinstah
July and August: A Novel by Nancy Clark
1.0
We read this for one of my bookclubs. On the surface it sounded interesting enough -- a family reunites in the summer on the North Shore of Massachusetts. But right away it started annoying me. The author chose to use a fake town name: "Towne." Yes, that is an entirely proper name to make up for a fictitious, schmancy, oldoldold Massachusetts town, but it's also the easy way out, I thought. So you have a fake town, but she refers to other places in Massachusetts, including neighboring towns, by their real names. I really felt like she should have just set the novel in Newburyport or Amesbury or Gloucester or wherever.
From there, the story was fine but never went very deep with any of the characters. One sister shows up and eventually announces that she is engaged, and suddenly everyone is gossiping about how they don't believe her fiance exists. Why? What has happened in the past that her siblings leap to this conclusion? Then, there is all this buildup to the wedding . . . which we don't see in the novel. She leaves to pick up her fiance at the airport and then the next thing you know it is a year later and she is visiting again with her husband and baby.
Overall, I obviously didn't like this that much.
From there, the story was fine but never went very deep with any of the characters. One sister shows up and eventually announces that she is engaged, and suddenly everyone is gossiping about how they don't believe her fiance exists. Why? What has happened in the past that her siblings leap to this conclusion? Then, there is all this buildup to the wedding . . . which we don't see in the novel. She leaves to pick up her fiance at the airport and then the next thing you know it is a year later and she is visiting again with her husband and baby.
Overall, I obviously didn't like this that much.