Book Review: 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand

Hey friends!

Today I'm going to review a book I finished recently called 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand. I've actually never read a book from this author before, but I know she's really popular, especially for summer beach reads! I'd like to thank NetGalley and Little, Brown for providing me with the eARC (early review copy) of this book. If you'd like to read it, it comes out on June 16th.

Goodreads

 Summary

28 Summers starts when a young man's mother is dying and she asks him to call a phone number on a paper in her desk. When he calls it, he reaches the phone number of a man named Jake McCloud, whose wife Ursula is running for president. Then, the story goes back to how Mallory (the mother) came to live on Nantucket and meet Jake, and how they create a rather unusual plan to continue to see each other in the future.

Review

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I decided to read it because I was intrigued by the description- I wondered how the main characters were going to pull something like this off. I am so glad I decided to read it. I liked the setup of the chapters a lot; they were arranged by summer but gave us a glimpse into the major players’ lives year by year. It really made me realize how things can change so much over the course of a lifetime even though year by year they can seem the same. 

I was surprised to find myself enamored with the love story between Jake and Mallory. Mallory especially I enjoyed as a character, I thought she was very strong yet had some flaws, which made her very relatable. I enjoyed her independent streak. 

The only thing I didn’t particularly care for is that some of the near misses that the two had in being discovered were sometimes resolved unbelievably. While I think this contributed to the magic of the story, sometimes it just didn’t feel realistic and took me out of the story.

I highly recommend this book if you are looking for an unconventional romantic story that shows a lot of the characters' lives outside of their romance. I also highly recommend this book if you like books that have a great sense of place in addition to character as I felt like I was on Nantucket while I was reading. 

I rated this book 4 stars!

Kyra