Book Spotlights: The She Reads’ Books of Summer Selections

Today, the gals at She Reads announced the ‘Books of
Summer‘
selections. I’ll be reading all three of these books and posting my reviews over the next few months, so keep an eye out for them. And do be sure to let me know if you’ve either read them or plan to.

So without further ado…here are the Books of Summer:

Title:The Book of Summer

Author:Michelle Gable

Published:May 2017, Thomas Dunne Books

Format:Hardcover, 432 pages

 

Physician Bess Codman
has returned to her family’s Nantucket compound, Cliff House, for the
first time in four years. Her great-grandparents built Cliff House
almost a century before, but due to erosion, the once-grand home will
soon fall into the sea. Though she s purposefully avoided the island,
Bess must now pack up the house and deal with her mother, a notorious
town rabble-rouser, who refuses to leave.

The Book of Summer
unravels the power and secrets of Cliff House as told through the
voices of Ruby Packard, a bright-eyed and idealistic newlywed on the eve
of WWII, the home’s definitive guestbook, and Bess herself. Bess’s
grandmother always said it was a house of women, and by the very last
day of the very last summer at Cliff House, Bess will understand the
truth of her grandmother s words in ways she never contemplated.

Title:Before We Were Yours

Author:Lisa Wingate

Published:June 2017, Ballantine Books

Format:Hardcover, 352 pages

 

Two families,
generations apart, are forever changed by a heartbreaking injustice in
this poignant novel, inspired by a true story, for readers of Orphan
Train and The Nightingale.

Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill
Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their
family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush
their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in
charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is
familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage,
the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their
parents—but they quickly realize that the truth is much darker. At the
mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters
and brother together—in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken,
South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery
Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal
prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But
when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a
chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions—and compels her
to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path
that will ultimately lead either to devastation . . . or redemption.

Based
on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia
Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and
sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Wingate’s
riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even
though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never
forgets where we belong.

Title:The Almost Sisters

Author:Joshilyn Jackson

Published:July 2017, William Morrow

Format:Hardcover, 352 pages

 

With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the author of gods in Alabama
pens a powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts
the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between
perception and reality—the stories we tell ourselves about our origins
and who we really are.

Superheroes have always been
Leia Birch Briggs’ weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics
convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her
barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.

It turns out the
caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory.
She’s having a baby boy–an unexpected but not unhappy development in
the thirty-eight year-old’s life. But before Leia can break the news of
her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is
biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel’s
marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old
grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she’s been hiding her
dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.

Leia
returns to Alabama to put her grandmother’s affairs in order, clean out
the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations,
and tell her family that she’s pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she’s
got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing
Birchie’s been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with
roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War. Its exposure
threatens the family’s freedom and future, and it will change everything
about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing
father, and the world she thinks she knows.

Be sure to check out the She Reads website
for excepts for each book, reviews, guest posts, author interviews and more. And if
you’re on Twitter, be sure to follow @SheReadsBookCLB  and the hashtag
#shereads to find other reviews and related posts.