Wicked Summer
Dollycas’s ThoughtsI really needed a great beach read for the end of the summer and this book filled the bill nicely. While it is Women’s Fiction there is a little bit of mystery and secrets too and that made me like the story even more.
The Rising Tides Inn sounds like a fabulous place to spend a week. The owners become extended family to Mary Bloom and her daughters, Iris, Hyacinth, and Poppy. They cater to every whim imaginable and always with a smile on their faces.
The Bloom sisters are each so different, it is hard to imagine they all had the same parents. Their father has passed on so it is just Mary and her girls. She always wanted to spend her 60th birthday at the beach and Poppy seems to have found the perfect place. Iris and her family join her mother and her sisters but it not the week Mary had longed for, the girls just really don’t get along with each other. Mary hopes after spending their time at the beach together the sisters will grow closer. That won’t be easy as everyone seems to have their own issues/secrets to deal with.
After I started reading I realized that this is the author’s second book set at the Rising Tides Inn, but the owners seem to be the only overlap so it did read easily on its own. I did enjoy meeting Zadie and Pete so I may have to read the first story, a novella, Clipper Beach, to see if they treat their previous guests as greatly as the blooms.
The story had a great flow as we delved deeper and deeper into each of the characters. There was also a great deal of description of the wonderful fresh seafood found on the Eastern Shore. In the Midwest we miss out on those fresh catch of the day fish, but I did have a yearning to head to the nearest Red Lobster several times while I was reading or a vacation anywhere along the shore would work too. One is in my price range, the other not so much.
As I stated above their were a few surprises in this story but the last one was a real twist, totally unexpected, taking this story beyond my expectations.
I am excited to learn that this will be a continuing series because I loved this escape to Cape Harriet and want to return soon and often. This was a “wicked” great way to end the summer!
