This was my first Elin Hilderbrand novel and I’m not sure I’m sold on reading more of her (I’m not a hard no but I’m not a hard yes either). Part of that was expectations- with a name like The Summer Affair, I was expecting a fun juicy summer romance. Full warning to anyone who hasn’t read this (or who hasn’t read Hilderbrand- I suspect if you have you might have other expectations already) that this book is not that. The titular affair is almost background to the story Hilderbrand wants to tell, which is about women seeking fulfillment, relationships between female friends, and the tight-knit community of Nantucket.
The main character that Hilderbrand follows is Claire Danner Crispin, a glass artist who married into life on the island when she married a blue-collar islander, Jason Crispin. The Crispins are (at least) solidly middle-class, allowing Claire to stop her glass blowing and focus on being a full-time mother to the couple’s four children, while still employing a live-in Thai nanny. Claire gave up glass blowing at her husband’s request and also out of her own sense of guilt- she had been working in her hot shop while pregnant, collapsed and undergone an emergency C-section to deliver their fourth child months early. Claire cannot stop blaming herself for what she fears are late development markers for her youngest child, and she incessantly asks for reassurance that her baby is normal.
Into this backstory steps Lockhart (Lock) Dixon, a former tech CEO multi-millionaire, now retired to Nantucket where he works a hobby job as the head of the island’s kids charity, Nantucket’s Children. Lock asks Claire to co-chair the charity’s annual fundraiser gala with Isabel French, a rich Manhattan socialite keen to rehabilitate her reputation post-divorce. Isabel will attract the moneyed donors while Claire will create a hand-blown art piece for the auction and secure the performer, her highschool sweetheart Max West, now a world famous rock star.
The title and back blurb on the novel makes it sound as though the affair is the meat/heart of this novel, but that’s not really accurate. I wanted some hot summer romance between two good-looking people and this was sadly not that. Hilderbrand kept describing Lock in unattractive terms- soft, overweight, balding- and her heroine Claire is most often described as schlubby/unkempt, pale, with bad hair. I could look past that, but she skips into the affair so quickly, without any of the tension/build-up. She has the two of them lock lips the first time they’re really alone, like a ‘spell came over them’. This feels incongruous with how she later paints the affair, as something building out of an emotional connection that neither is getting at home (pick a lane Hilderbrand- you want me to believe that these are two people with crackling instant chemistry based on looks but haven’t built to that; later you want to tell me its a slow cooker emotional attachment- that’s more believable but you didn’t lay the groundwork that way).
Either way, the affair starts off with no build up, and then it becomes the background rather than the focus to the novel. Hilderbrand is more concerned with Claire’s Catholic guilt, Claire’s relationship with her best friend and sister-in-law, Siobhan, drama related to the gala, struggles of the alcoholic highschool sweetheart/rockstar, etc.
By the end of the novel the affair has essentially fizzled out and we are left with the impression that ‘Claire Danner is back!’- the spell of the affair has broken and returned her to a better place than where she was when it started, enthused about her work, her marriage, her ordinary life.
Setting aside my expectations for a hot summer romance, the novel was fine. Hilderbrand writes well and keeps the action moving, albeit not in the ways I anticipated. I didn’t understand the initial attraction between Lock and Claire but I did understand why they would be a slow-cooker affair. I liked the relationship development between Claire and her sister-in-law (I wanted more Siobhan). I liked Gavin, the shady second-in-command that worked under Lock at Nantucket’s Children (I wanted more Gavin). I disliked how Claire was presented as downtrodden next to all the rich folks who could buy $25,000 tables- she can afford to live in Nantucket and not work while having a nanny, so hard to sympathize with (I get that its relative, but it feels whiny). Overall this was sort of ‘meh’.