HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: Daisy Shoemaker can’t sleep. With a thriving cooking business, full schedule of volunteer work, and a beautiful home in the Philadelphia suburbs, she should be content. But her teenage daughter can be a handful, her husband can be distant, her work can feel trivial, and she has lots of acquaintances, but no real friends. Still, Daisy knows she’s got it good. So why is she up all night?

While Daisy tries to identify the root of her dissatisfaction, she’s also receiving misdirected emails meant for a woman named Diana Starling, whose email address is just one punctuation mark away from her own. While Daisy’s driving carpools, Diana is chairing meetings. While Daisy’s making dinner, Diana’s making plans to reorganize corporations. Diana’s glamorous, sophisticated, single-lady life is miles away from Daisy’s simpler existence. When an apology leads to an invitation, the two women meet and become friends. But, as they get closer, we learn that their connection was not completely accidental. Who IS this other woman, and what does she want with Daisy?

From the manicured Main Line of Philadelphia to the wild landscape of the Outer Cape, written with Jennifer Weiner’s signature wit and sharp observations, That Summer is a story about surviving our pasts, confronting our futures, and the sustaining bonds of friendship.

HerKentucky review: (Content warning: This book includes themes of rape, assault, and trauma and could trigger some readers.)

I honestly can’t remember a time in my adult reading life that I didn't love Jennifer Weiner’s novels. I read her debut novel, Good in Bed, nearly twenty years ago and was immediately hooked on her compelling writing style. Ms. Weiner writes smart, witty female protagonists better than anyone. (Fun Fact: Ms. Weiner briefly wrote a pop culture column for the Lexington Herald-Leader!) Of course, I picked up her latest novel, That Summer, on its publication date, knowing little more than that it took place in part on Cape Cod, with a callback to last year’s fun, fast-paced Big Summer. It’s a Jennifer Weiner beach novel, I thought, it’ll be fun and lightweight. Instead, I found myself devouring a story that’s part Lifetime movie, part Promising Young Woman, and part Christine Blasey Ford’s Congressional testimony.

That Summer is a smart, well-written story — one I couldn’t put down — but it’s far from a lightweight beach book. Ms. Weiner intertwines the stories of two women named Diana — one a corporate consultant, the other an anxiety-ridden housewife on Philadelphia’s Main Line — who forge a friendship seemingly based on their very similar email addresses and the misdirected messages that each woman receives. The ensuing story is a complex #METOO era tale of sexual assault, culpability, privilege, and the aftermath of trauma. Ms. Weiner explores ethical implications and psychological impact with skill and clarity, while making (most of) her characters imminently likable and relatable. The work manages to be funny and sweet at times, while presenting a complex story of revenge. It isn’t quite the breezy beach thriller I’d expected; in fact, it’s far better.

As a longtime fan of Ms. Weiner’s work, I find that one of her greatest storytelling strengths lies in the quirky details with which she imbues her characters. That Summer delivers odd, likable characters in droves — a prairie-core teenager who skips class at her swanky private school to make and sell crafts on Etsy, a banker-turned-Cape-Cod-restaurant-owner, and a teacher with an almost compulsive need to save all the children. These so-odd-they-have-to-be-real characters add a goodnatured twist to a story that ventures at times into dark territory.

That Summer is a must-read for my fellow Jennifer Weiner fans and for anyone who enjoys plot twists, quirky characters, or smartly-written depictions of tricky relationships.

Purchase That Summer on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

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