Review: 28 summers

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When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election.

There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other?

Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere -- through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise -- until Mallory learns she's dying.

Genre: contemporary romance

Publication date: June 2020

Mature content: nothing too graphic, but the story itself is shocking sometimes

Review: I'm totally on the fence about this book. On the one hand. curiosity got to me and I just couldn’t put it down. But on the other hand - not my cup of tea. I’m not sure what I expected when I first opened 28 Summers, but it certainly wasn’t this. 

While I can’t deny the book is well written - although it reads more like one of those soap operas from the 80s where you learned everything about everyone in a family over the span of several generations - I can’t even call it a romance novel. Because I don’t think the relationship between Mallory and Jake is a romance - I’m not sure if it’s serial cheating or masochism, or both, but not exactly romance. 

At the beginning of the book I was actually pinning for them. But Jake is too weak to leave his other life for Mallory, and Mallory is too egotistical to allow what she feels for Jake to change the life she has set out for herself. So they are condemned to meet one long weekend every year - not because they don't have any other choice, but because they don't have the courage to make that choice. Which, over the span of 28 years means they were actually together  for a time span of 84 days. Not even three whole months. I’m sorry, but that's hardly a long lasting relationship. Would they even last if they lived together everyday? 

I know no relationship is perfect, but this is way too much - or too little - and I can't bring myself to actively recommend it.

 Happy readings!