In a beach cottage, Vanessa finds a rusty coffee can filled with old letters, and learns about a haunting and secret affair dating back to the 1950s.Determined to find the woman whose life parallels her own in many ways, Vanessa searches for the woman and her lover, uncovering past and present secrets that finally reveal a shocking truth.Over the course of the summer, Vanessa’s own life is … own life is transformed by the possibilities of love and new beginnings, even as she confronts the lingering pain of her own past.
The Summer Letters is a celebration of the enduring promise of hope and the unbreakable bonds of love.
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Loved this story. Couldn’t put it down
Enjoyed the characters and the beach setting and hoping all would work out in the end for a happy ending. It didn’t disappoint.
loved the book
found the book hard to get into
Loved this book and highly recommend as a great summer read.
I loved this book. I read it all in one sitting coming back home from vacation. This is a book that drew me to tears and I hated to see the story end. I just couldn’t put it down.
I loved this book.
Highly romantic story-within-a-story chronicling two sets of lovers, Matt and Vanessa in the present-day, and Hal and Rhonda in the 1950s, who are connected across time by a series of eerie coincidences.
As with these kinds of narratives, the lovers from the hazy, gauzy past end up being the more vivid. They also face the highest stakes and toughest obstacles. Matt and Vanessa’s story serves as more of a frame as you wonder, did the other two ever make it?
And the authors do keep the suspense coming. Hal and Rhonda’s story packs plenty of hand-wringing melodrama. Rhonda borders on being too victimized for my taste, and her plight as an adopted child who winds up in an abusive marriage is cliched almost to the point of being exploitive, but Hal was such a good guy I raced through the last quarter of the book wanting to know if he’d come through for her.
The writing is compelling and the characters of Hal and Rhonda are expertly rendered. At times their dialogue reads like an old, black-and-white movie. It’s very effective at evoking the era.
The contemporary couple, Matt and Vanessa, pale in comparison. Hal and Rhonda get all the thrills and chills, and fortunately, most of the action focuses on them.
The Summer Letters is well-paced and tightly plotted, with plenty of suspense, mystery, action, and of course, romance, to keep you turning pages.
If you like time-period, woman-in-jeopardy, and/or beach setting romance, you’ll LOVE this book.
The year is 2017 and the place is Brandy Beach in Massachusetts, a mix of sun and rain as vacationers and residents alike take walks along the water, enjoying the natural features and the summery atmosphere there. Our heroine, Vanessa Collins is in town to write her novel and relax from a recent divorce that left a mark on her. One day, as she was returning from a Yoga class and a brief swim in the ocean, she collides with Matt Bennett who was riding his bike along the same path Vanessa was taking to get home. This then became the beginning of a romantic relationship that would carry on for the rest of the book.
One day when Vanessa was trying to clean up the interior of her rented beach cottage there at Brandy Beach, she discovered a coffee can with a bunch of love letters from the 1950s. She reads most of them and thus begins an interest and a search for the writers of the letters themselves. This is a very bittersweet and romantic book that was concise and smooth and easy to read. I found myself liking all of the characters except a few of them who were unfair and antagonistic throughout and made me want to do something about them, lol. I felt so sorry for the authors of the summer letters and the way things went for them in life. I saw myself in Vanessa as I am a writer myself and am trying to muster up the drive to begin a novel of one’s own. It is true what this book said about writers that one has to have the patience to write a book-length manuscript for I am indeed a busy person and am currently in the middle of three writing obligations that has taken up all my creativity and intelligence leaving no inspiration and imagination for writing a book, lol. This book brings back the old-fashioned notion of writing letters and mailing them via the postal office. It made me want to sit down and write letters to my family overseas, and decorate the envelopes with stickers as I did years ago as a kid.
I recommend The Summer Letters to those who are looking forward to the summer time as it is a very fit book for beach reading or pool reading, does not matter. I previously said that it is an easy read and it will hold your attention while you are sunbathing. I finished this book in four days and was satisfied by the last page. The writing is excellent and if there was a classic author I could compare it to it would most definitely be my romance novel idol, Danielle Steel. Sorry, I just love books where there is minimum sex as that lowers the merit of a book and its author(s). So with that being said, go ahead, buy this book from Amazon now before going to the beach to make memories for years to come.
Most enjoyable read.
I enjoyed this book very much. I’m a sucker for books that take place in two different time periods and I think this one did it very well. It’s a great light summer diversion.
Very enjoyable, interesting and attention holding book.
One of the best I’ve ever read, one you will never forget.
I liked everything about this book: plot, characters, subplot and the way it goes back and forth through time. It’s sad and happy and you want to keep reading to find out what happens to the characters.
The Dominion of Four is the second book in the Crossroads saga, but it is not essential to have read the first one to enjoy this fantasy novel by C. Toni Graham. In the Crossroads Saga, we join four teenagers, who are tasked with protecting the world of magic and mythical creatures as a new threat emerges. Can the teens stop a powerful druid that would see the destruction of the realm, and prevent them from fulfilling their prophecy?
Fans of fantasy fiction will absolutely love the work of C. Toni Graham, she is definitely on par with the likes of Cassandra Clare. Her characters are great, as are the relationships she has created between them.
I want to start by saying I love stories like this, where the bulk of the adventure is told in “the past” while the modern day person recants/reads/enjoys a bit of something they didn’t get to experience themselves.
The action here doesn’t pick up right away, and since this is a romance story it doesn’t get a ton of it. However, the story does pick up quite a bit. It’s hard not to get enthralled in the love. It felt real, as though this truly happened. This story inspires one that there really is true, forever love out there.
The story does go back and forth between the past and present quite a bit. It’s nice to see that some things are constant, and do not change (even if the people, time, setting, etc. do).
The journey starts with Vanessa (modern day) finding some old letters in a cabin. It ends with showing us how love really permeates our lives in great and unexpected ways.
If you want to feel great, and have a good story to cozy up to for a night or two, this is the book for you.
The Summer Letters by Elyse Douglas is a romance that is built around a series of letters discovered in a summer cottage by Vanessa. The year is 2017 and Vanessa has rented a cottage on the beach, only to almost be run over by a handsome bicyclist, and to discover a bunch of love letters in the cottage dated about 50 years prior. As she begins to read the letters, she is amazed how they seem to mimic her own life in a way, with the promise of new love and new beginnings. A fascinating love story that spans time and two different couples, the author writes convincingly, describing feelings that lay dormant, and how romance can transcend time, circumstances, and take on new meaning. A unique story with a wonderfully sentimental message, you will thoroughly enjoy being transported back in time, and fully relate to the current time frame, with a story that is not only filled with romance, but a bit of mystery. Highly recommend for a great beach read, or any time book, The Summer Letters is a book not to be missed.