Do you have any authors that you feel like, if you met them in real life, you’d just automatically be friends? Something about their voice, their tone, their sense of humor, the way their background characters lovingly put up with their stupid-ass, obviously-in-love-but-too-blind-to-see-it best friends : Just something about how they write hits you exactly right and you’re convinced, “Yes, this person and I are obviously simpatico, long-lost BFFs”? The author that most fits into that category for me is Sarah MacLean.
Now, this may be in part because Fated Mates – the Romance podcast that she & her friend, editor, & fellow romance novel enthusiast & expert Jen Prokop put out every Wednesday – is the only podcast I can actually stand to listen to anymore (No Covid denying! Actually politically aware & active! Hi-larious!! Incredibly interesting, informative, & enjoyable!), but somewhere along the way I became a Sarah MacLean superfan, I guess. I’ll read her books, and – even if I’m listening to the excellently narrated audiobook versions – her voice just echoes so clearly. It’s like I can hear her whispering, underneath the dialogue, ‘Look at these two dummies, can you believe how ridiculous they’re being?’
Here’s a thing about Sarah MacLean: She loves romance as much as anybody I’ve ever listened to, read interviews with, etc. And she is SMART about her chosen passion & profession – The inspiration from the genre she loves, that she can talk about with such intellect & insight on her podcast shines through in every word that she writes, and it gives her books an extra spark, like a secret, special giddiness, for me.
Even so, I’ll admit that I was initially a little disappointed when Sarah announced that her next book was a contemporary. Not because I didn’t think she would do an amazing job – and oh boy did she – but because I, too, am lamenting the lessening availability of historical romances on the mass market. I haven’t been to a physical bookstore in six years (I haven’t been anywhere but my house in five and half years – Covid still exists, guys; against all odds so do some immunocompromised & disabled people!), but, from what I can see online, gone are the gluttonous glory days of a historical on every endcap; of having your pick of which four specific historical eras (Regency England; The American West; Vikings &/or Medieval; Time Travel, usually to one of the three previously mentioned periods) you felt like finding a happily ever occurring in. The rise of Romantacy seems to keep encroaching on our beloved ballrooms, basically.
That said, I also know that romance is an ever-changing genre, where waves of one particularly popular subgenre will crest, and the next wave comes, and that there’s plenty of old favorites to revisit in the meantime. So while I doubt that new historicals will disappear completely, hearing Sarah wasn’t currently writing one was a bit of a bummer.
But the resulting book? – These Summer Storms – has more than made up for that initial little ‘oh no, no new besties in ballgowns??’ feeling.
Because, as Sarah herself might say, MacLean knows what she’s doing and she Does. The. Job.
Let’s start with the ridiculous concept of tech billionaire genius dies in random, jack-assed manner, and his family gathers on their private Rhode Island mini-island for his funeral. No, I’m sorry: Alice Storm’s mother insists it’s a ‘Celebration.’ (Her mother insists on a lot.) And for Alice, the black sheep trying to return to the flock and finding nothing but sharp fences, that would be enough to handle – burying her father, trying to reconnect with her three siblings, her mother, trying to figure out where – or if – she belongs to her family at all, at this point. But Franklin Storm, said dead father, has also left each of his children & his widow, letters assigning them a task, some seemingly impossible, insensate, illogical. Alice gets no letter. But her task seems just as heavy: Stay on the island, for the entire week, with the family that let her go five years ago, in order for all of them to inherit anything at all.
Now, do I, in real life, care about billionaires & the petty bullshit they might create within their own families, especially in relation to their obscene inheritances? No. In fact, if they were real, if it were a biography, I wouldn’t have made it past the first page, because I cannot find it in me to give one iota of a shit about the games that rich people play amongst themselves while the rest of us suffer. I have, in fact, had difficulty with other contemporary novels, being able to get past my initial ‘when we eat the rich, I’ll probably start with these idiots’ type feelings. But, most likely because I trust that Sarah knows what she’s doing, and that these people would eventually be worth it, I shuffled the Storms into the same part of my brain that holds Bruce Wayne & his Batfam when I’m reading fanfiction: I get that they’re technically billionaires, but aren’t they really just a bunch of completely fucked up people, and maybe we’ll pretend that being a billionaire isn’t immoral in this fantasy version of the world? It for sure helped that Alice had spent five years living /without/ the benefit (mostly) of her family’s net worth, had become a teacher, and an artist, and lived in the real world, as unwelcome on her family’s private island as the rest of us plebians. And that she genuinely seemed to be approaching the whole thing in as mentally a healthy way as possible – She was staying for her siblings, for her mother, to fight for the connection she was missing, not for the money, which she didn’t think she’d get a piece of, anyways.
But, of course, that could never be /enough/ for a MacLean novel – even one that does not bill itself specifically as a romance, but is still, Most. Definitely. A. Romance. Novel. (We can fight about it in the comments, if you want. Even the author herself says it’s not a romance. I disagree: While I get that a lot of, maybe even the majority of, the emotional work of the story is /not/ romantic, I’ll argue that that is true for many romance novels, so … )
Because there’s also Jack, and… I need you to understand that Jack Dean* is a hero straight out of historicals. Particularly pernial -MacLean & my own favorite – Lisa Kleypas historicals. He is Derek Craven-esque if he is anything at all; He is giving heavy Winterborne energy.
He
- Works for her father
- Has So Many Secrets
- Says things, in a deep growly voice like “You Don’t Touch Her” and “Don’t You Ever Let Yourself Feel Ordinary Again.” (Now is a good time to mention that Fated Mates has entire episodes about Roy Kent, romance hero, probably.)
- And he just… FUCKING SEES HER. (See post title. See: “For a heartbeat it was just the two of them. He’d worried about her. He’d seen she was gone and had come to find her. To protect her.” As the heroine herself asserts: “It was a real hero move.”)
Like he’s stupid in love with her, waaay before either of them even thinks they like each other very much, and I like THAT very much. There’s so many scenes I can use to illustrate this, including the one big spoiler-y one at the end that I’m NOT using, but look at this. Come here and look at these dummies with me: 
You can’t write shit like that and then tell me I’m not reading a romance novel, Ms. MacLean. We will agree to disagree. Specifically because she mentioned the rules of the genre during their discussion about These Summer Storms on the podcast, and I DO GET that, but … I also feel like this “absolute fucking tree trunk of a man just wandering through fucking shit up & going down on (your) girl” takes the romance from subplot to PLOT. Again, we can argue in the comments, if you wanna.
For sure, as both the author & the ad copy suggests, this book is about families. Particularly about siblings. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written, you know I have a lot of those (five sisters, one brother), and that most of those relationships are ..complicated. And that’s why the Storms read real to me, regardless of their money – because none of the four Storm children are cookie cutter anything, while also somehow still being ‘surprise baby girl favorite,’ ‘fuckup boy-king extraordinaire,’ ‘rebel outcast yet somehow peacekeeper middle child’ & ‘oldest sister storm trooper of justice & obedience.’ They ARE that, but they’re so much more. Emily, the youngest, is also the most emotionally mature, the one in a stable, happy, sometimes slightly elevated marriage. (Positive queer representation too, btw: Both of the happiest marriages in the book are queer couples.) Sam, the only boy, the only parent himself, whose wife is a soon to be ex, spends a large portion of the book silenced by his father, literally, and somehow manages to be both annoying as hell and eventually capable of self-reflection. Greta, who’s supposed to be her mother’s stable, put together, dependable one, and who is chafing under the pressure so badly that Alice thinks she might crumble might wind up surprising everybody. And Alice, who they all let ‘walk away’, and never followed after.
All of that, and family secrets, and a mother who also becomes slightly, accidentally elevated at one point, and an island they can’t leave, and the funeral/celebration and shadow of a man they may never be able to crawl out from under. Sarah said she was aiming for an ultimate beach read, and I say mission accomplished, especially if you’re listening to the stunningly talented Julia Whelan’s audio verison. Whelan somehow manages to make a complete cast of characters appear in my head every single time – I was particularly impressed with the growly-ness of Jack in this book, as well as the utter Emily Gilmore-ness of Elizabeth Storm’s character every time she has a line of dialogue. These Summer Storms is the best book I’ve read so far this year, and I’m hitting probably 160?, if my Kindle and library accounts have any accuracy at all. It’s going on the keeper shelf, and I’m also filing it under romance, no matter what my author/’friend’ might say.
Five stars!
CBR Bingo 17, Favorites Square
*Also apologies if this is not how we are spelling his name – or anybody else’s for that matter: I listened to the audio book, and Jack’s last name isn’t included in any of the press I can see for the book, so I just guessed.