Book Review: The Last Summer (of You and Me)

Author Ann Brashares is the creator of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, that fabulously fluffy teen series about a pair of jeans circulated among four best friends that does wonderful things for all of them. The Last Summer (of You and Me) is her first novel for adults, and it is definitely a beach read, bordering on a fluffy teen read and definitely a coming-of-age story.

The story mostly takes place on Fire Island (off the Northeast coast somewhere), and I'm always a little envious of great island stories—families who take the ferry over to some island every summer to their fabulous beach house. I mean, I live in Tennessee, so of course this all sounds terribly exotic and dramatic. And beachy. Who are these people?

Still, because I grew up in New York and had lots of friends with summer cottages on the lake, I get it, at a certain level. Anyway, the story is about next-door-neighbors on the island: two sisters and the boy-next-door. It's not what you think: the sisters don't fight over the boy. It's a more complicated relationship among the three, and I think it all made sense in the end. I think. It wasn't all terribly clear, and I was really more drawn into the story of Alice and Paul and not so much the story of Alice's sister, Riley, who lacked any depth but had a rather major role.

While not a perfect book and certainly not a literary masterpiece, this is definitely perfect when you are in the mood for something kinda sappy, pretty sweet, and a little sad.

Book Review: The Last Letter From Your Lover

I couldn't help but love this novel of lost-and-found love by Jojo Moyes. It's that kind of novel filled with missed opportunities, misunderstandings, and second chances that just leaves you feeling as if something really good happened.

Let me just state right from the start that this is fluffy chick lit. And I'm only a little ashamed to be reading it, but it serves as a nice cushion between re-readings of The Book Thief and A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Boy Soldier. Yep. I relish fluffy stuff now and then.

And so the story goes that Jennifer wakes up in the hospital and can't remember anything about her life. I know! I love amnesia! (What Alice Forgot is a great amnesia story, for real.) She's been in a car accident, but that's all she knows. She's reluctant to tell anyone, including her husband, just how little she remembers, but things just don't seem right to her. She feels as if she is missing something, and eventually she begins to find letters from her lover hidden around her house.

Bit by bit she pieces together the life she had with him, which is much different than the upper-class, society wife life that she has with her husband. She wants to find this mysterious "B" again, and when she does, well, I won't give that away. The last third of the book includes a separate love story that confused me at first, but ultimately it all tied together like a nice little present.

I can't help myself. I was wrapped up in the story. Moyes is a good writer and a great storyteller. It's easy and satisfying and makes a great in-between read.

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