The Summer That Made Us

Can’t get enough. What a breath taking story. Looking forward to more of Therese Plummer

Book didn’t really finish. Just cut off and said if was done

Essentially, the summer that Bunny drowned, everything changed for a family who vacationed in Lake Waseka. Now with Meg dying, she asks for one more summer at the house and the family gathers and remembers.

Rambling story of women from the same family gathered together for the summer, to heal old wounds, and to restablish and clarify the family history. It had some surprises in it. But it did ramble on and on.

The Summer That Made Us by Robyn Carr is a multi-layered novel about a once close-knit family that was torn apart by tragedy.

Once upon a time, sisters Louise and Josephine, along with their daughters, spent idyllic summers together at the family's lake house.  They each had three daughters and the cousins were just as close as their mothers. However, in the aftermath of  a tragic accident, Lou and Jo become somewhat estranged and their daughters' lives take very troubling turns. Fast forward to the present and Lou's daughter Meg decides it is time for the family to reconcile and she invites everyone back to the lake house for the summer.  There is never any doubt Meg's sister Charley will agree to her sister's plan but will cousins Hope, Krista and Beverly accept her invitation? And is it too late for Lou and Jo to repair their long strained relationship?

Alternating between the various characters' perspectives, Robyn Carr's newest release is not a light or happy read and quite frankly, it is a bit of a chore to even like many of the characters. Meg is the most sympathetic, and while she sets the reunion into motion, she remains firmly in the background as the story unfolds. Her sister Charley is probably the least likable as she alienates her long-term partner, Michael, after she loses her job. On the other end of the spectrum is their cousin Krista whose life took a dramatically wrong turn but she is incredibly appealing as she faces each challenge with a positive and cheery attitude. Krista's sister Hope makes a couple of very memorable guest appearances that will leave readers shaking their head in disbelief. Their other sister Beverly remains on the periphery of the unfolding drama. Jo is an utterly fantastic character and she never hesitates to do whatever is necessary to help her daughters.  Her sister Lou is nowhere near as personable and well, it is not easy to feel much sympathy for her even though she has endured some very painful losses.

Despite a somewhat slow start, The Summer That Made Us is an engaging novel with an interesting (but sometimes overly busy) storyline.  While not a particularly joyful read, it is easy to become swept up into the various characters' story arcs.  Robyn Carr brings the novel to a bittersweet yet uplifting conclusion.  

Good story of family relationships, love, forgiveness, and letting go. Two sisters, Louise and Jo, married two brothers, Carl and Roy. Each couple had three daughters. The families were very close and spent each summer at their lake house. Then the youngest daughter, Bunny, drowned, and in the aftermath, the lake house was closed, and the previously close family fractured. Louise and Jo stopped speaking to each other, and the girls grew apart. Twenty-seven years later, one daughter decided it was time to bring the family together again, and opening the lake house was the only way to do it. I enjoyed each woman's story, the events, and feelings that made them who they are today.Louise - the oldest of the two sisters, married Carl, the oldest brother. Louise is strong-willed and rules her roost with an iron hand. After the death of her youngest child, she was lost in grief, neglecting her other two daughters. She later became very bitter and hard to get along with. Her relationship with her daughter Charley is especially contentious. She is the one who decided to close the lake house. She was very much against reopening the house.Jo - married Carl, the younger brother. She is soft-spoken, content to be in her sister's shadow, and seems to be something of a doormat. Her life wasn't an easy one. Roy was charismatic, but lazy and always looking for the easy way. He had trouble keeping a job and was frequently bailed out by his brother Carl.Charley - oldest of the daughters. She has deep-seated resentment toward her mother, who failed her at the time she needed her the most. Recently laid off from her job as a talk show host, she feels like she has lost herself. To add to the stress, her long-time committed love is suddenly talking marriage, which freaks her out. Also, her younger sister, Meg, is battling Stage 4 breast cancer and wants to spend time at the lake house. With unexpected free time, Charley takes on the responsibility of making it happen. She does not expect to come face-to-face with her past while there.Meg - hopeful that the latest treatment will be successful, Meg wants the peace and tranquility of the lake house to recover and regain her strength. She also has the ulterior motive of trying to bring her family back together. She wrote to all of her cousins, inviting them to the lake house for the summer, hoping that her invitation will be accepted. Of all the daughters, she has weathered the storms the best. Her relationship with her doctor husband is strong and loving, and she is the only one who has maintained contact with her cousins.Krista - her grief led to her getting involved with a bad group of kids and progressed to further bad decisions. She landed in prison for twenty-five years and was recently released. She showed up at the lake, unsure of her welcome, and determined to make better decisions for her future. She is both naïve and worldly, hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. She finds acceptance and love in unexpected ways.Hope - dealt with the loss and family upheaval by going to live with her grandparents. Hope handled things she didn't like by ignoring them and pretending that what she wants is real. This practice has developed to the point where she has almost completely lost her grip on reality. Everything comes out when there is a near tragedy, and the extent of her mental breakdown becomes clear.Beverly - the cousin who was with Bunny at the time of the drowning, Beverly blocked everything out for a year. She ended up in foster care, with foster parents who were able to help her, but she never returned to her own family. She has maintained some contact.Bunny - the youngest of the family and the one who drowned.I enjoyed the progression of the book, with parts from each character's point of view, both past and present. Though the relationships had been fractured, there were still solid foundations that enabled them to be rebuilt. Each one had challenges to face, especially when it came to reconciling their pasts. I loved seeing the changes that each one went through as they finally looked at and talked about the events of that summer and how it shaped the women they became. I liked some characters better than others, but all of them had moments when they moved me.I hurt for Charley, whose life was turned upside down by the loss of her job, and the knowledge that she was probably going to lose her only remaining sister. Her relationship with Michael was a good one. I liked Michael's patience with Charley's fears. Charley's feud with her mother was understandable as the events of that summer unfolded. I liked that Charley made peace with the decisions she made. I was not surprised by the blast from her past and enjoyed the mature way that she handled it.I liked following the story of Jo and Louise and everything that led up to their estrangement. That was an unexpected development and added a bit of mystery to the book. I loved that it was Jo who made the first move toward healing their rift. She turned out to be much stronger than I expected from the early descriptions of her. Louise was pretty obnoxious throughout most of the book and only began to redeem herself toward the end.Hope frustrated me with her refusal to face the truth. I especially disliked the way she treated her daughters, forcing them to go along with her deception, and the way she cut her mother entirely out of her life. I thought that her ex-husband was a really nice guy and didn't deserve the trouble that she caused him. I hated the way that she treated Krista, which reinforced my opinion of her as an entitled snob.I liked Beverly's courage in coming to the lake house. She still had large blank spots in her memory about the events of that summer and the following year. I liked seeing her reconnect with her sisters and cousins, and eventually insist on hearing the truth of what happened. I also liked how it was her childhood relationship with Charley that helped her fill in many of those blank spots.My favorite character was Krista. She could have come out of prison hardened and cynical, but instead, she was determined to make the right decisions for her future. I ached for her fear that her family would reject her, and cheered at her immediate acceptance by Charley and Meg. I loved seeing her take those first steps toward her new life by applying for a job at the resort. She was fortunate to encounter the manager, Jake, who saw something special in her. His confidence in her went a long way to building her self-esteem. I liked the development of the friendship between them and how that friendship grew into something stronger. I thought she handled the surprise revelation about his past very well, and her support of him was pretty sweet.The ending of the book was both happy and sad. I liked seeing how Meg's efforts were successful in bringing her family back together. This time, grief brought them all closer instead of driving them apart, and I closed the book hopeful that they would remain so.

This was a different write for Robyn Carr I think, not everything always has a happy ending, but this book was so good I'm sad that I'm done. I loved reading about lake life in the summer, summers past for a family that would leave it all behind when not great things happen. But to figure out you have to revisit the past sometimes to move forward. Good, good, book.

I absolutely loved this book. A story of two sisters that married two brothers and each had three kids all of which were girls. The families would spend every summer at the lake house their grandmother and grandfather owned until the weekend that one of the youngest girls died in a boating accident.That weekend created a decade feud between the sisters that really tore at their kids and caused some of them act out and question themselves for many years.I loved all the characters especially the main ones - Charley, Meg, and Krista, the daughters. The sisters had such very different lives even though they married two brothers. I was really glad that the character, Hope, had only a small part in this book. I think if I had to listen to her craziness for much longer, I would have had to throw the book, literally. She was cray, cray.An excellent read about family and forgiveness that really touched a nerve with me.Thanks to Harlequin and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.