Scan barcode
A review by book_concierge
A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams
3.0
3.5***
Lily Dane comes from an established wealthy New York family and leads a quiet idyllic life, with a Park Avenue apartment and a summer cottage in Seaview, Rhode Island. The Danes are at the center of elite Seaview social life, and on Memorial Day 1938 are anticipating a lovely summer season. That is until Budgie and Nick Greenwald decide to take up residence in Seaview. Lily’s former best friend and former fiancé have recently married, and set off a storm of gossip as a result. Lily does her best to keep her head held high, and bristles at the community’s snubbing of the Jewish couple. She continues to lunch with Budgie and even attends a few beach picnics hosted by them. Still, no one can believe she has truly embraced the Greenwalds … after all everyone knows Nick ruined and then abandoned her in January 1932. And to have now married her best friend? Scandalous!
This is a captivating beach read with more secrets and efforts at obfuscation than many soap operas. Lily’s story alternates between the fall and winter of 1931-1932, and the present day summer of 1938, teasing the reader with dribs and drabs of information, innuendo, gossip and outright lies. I guessed the central secret before the half-way point, but was still hooked on the story and eager to see how Williams would reveal all.
The major flaws in the book are the lack of character development for the supporting cast. Nick and Lily are pretty well drawn, but even Budgie comes off as two-dimensional at best. Aunt Julie is an Auntie-Mame-type right out of central casting. The big drama that ends the story is based on the all-too-true Hurricane of 1938 which devastated the Northeast, but it reads like a bad B-movie. Still, Williams kept me turning pages to the very end.
Lily Dane comes from an established wealthy New York family and leads a quiet idyllic life, with a Park Avenue apartment and a summer cottage in Seaview, Rhode Island. The Danes are at the center of elite Seaview social life, and on Memorial Day 1938 are anticipating a lovely summer season. That is until Budgie and Nick Greenwald decide to take up residence in Seaview. Lily’s former best friend and former fiancé have recently married, and set off a storm of gossip as a result. Lily does her best to keep her head held high, and bristles at the community’s snubbing of the Jewish couple. She continues to lunch with Budgie and even attends a few beach picnics hosted by them. Still, no one can believe she has truly embraced the Greenwalds … after all everyone knows Nick ruined and then abandoned her in January 1932. And to have now married her best friend? Scandalous!
This is a captivating beach read with more secrets and efforts at obfuscation than many soap operas. Lily’s story alternates between the fall and winter of 1931-1932, and the present day summer of 1938, teasing the reader with dribs and drabs of information, innuendo, gossip and outright lies. I guessed the central secret before the half-way point, but was still hooked on the story and eager to see how Williams would reveal all.
The major flaws in the book are the lack of character development for the supporting cast. Nick and Lily are pretty well drawn, but even Budgie comes off as two-dimensional at best. Aunt Julie is an Auntie-Mame-type right out of central casting. The big drama that ends the story is based on the all-too-true Hurricane of 1938 which devastated the Northeast, but it reads like a bad B-movie. Still, Williams kept me turning pages to the very end.