Book Review: The Summer That Made Us by Robyn Carr

Thank you to Lake Union Publishing, who provided this book to me in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Goodreads Summary:

Mothers and daughters, sisters and cousins--they lived for summers at the lake house until a tragic accident changed everything. The Summer That Made Us is an unforgettable story about a family learning to accept the past, to forgive and to love each other again. That was then... For the Hempsteads, two sisters who married two brothers and had three daughters each, summers were idyllic. The women would escape the city the moment school was out to gather at the family house on Lake Waseka. The lake was a magical place, a haven where they were happy and carefree. All of their problems drifted away as the days passed in sun-dappled contentment. Until the summer that changed everything. This is now... After an accidental drowning turned the lake house into a site of tragedy and grief, it was closed up. For good. Torn apart, none of the Hempstead women speak of what happened that summer, and relationships between them are uneasy at best to hurtful at worst. But in the face of new challenges, one woman is determined to draw her family together again, and the only way that can happen is to return to the lake and face the truth. Robyn Carr has crafted a beautifully woven story about the complexities of family dynamics and the value of strong female relationships.

My thoughts:

This is my 2nd Carr novel, and I adored it even more than the first that I read.

The Summer That Made Us is about family, the secrets that hold them together, the secrets that pull them apart. The summer of ‘89 was a bad one for the Hempsteads. Their picture perfect idyllic summers at the lake house take a 360 degree turn in the other direction, when the youngest family member tragically drowns.  The once close family splits apart, sending the cousins, and their mothers, adrift on their different courses, not all of them good ones.

The book is set twenty-seven years after this incident. Meg is sick, and wishes to spend what could be her last summer at the lake with her family - all of them. Slowly, bit by bit, family members arrive, secrets are divulged, pieces are put back together, and things start to look up.

I did have a few unanswered questions at the end of this book; however, they were small and inconsequential for the most part, and didn’t hamper my enjoyment of this wonderful story. Heartwarming and bittersweet, this book has a little of everything, and a lot of reasons to read it.