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Settings & Atmosphere - Fiction, Women's Fiction
Still Summer by Jacquelyn Mitchard — book cover

Still Summer

by Jacquelyn Mitchard
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Overview

Back in high school, Tracy, Olivia, and Holly were known as The Godmothers, the girls everyone wanted to be and know. Unlike many friendships, their bond survived the years. But 20 years later, their glamorous leader, Olivia, whose wealthy Italian husband has died, suggests they reunite on her return to the United States with a luxury sailboat crossing in the Caribbean. With Tracy's college-aged daughter and an attentive two-man crew, they sail into paradise. But then, the smallest mistake triggers a series of devastating events. Suddenly in a desperate fight for survival, they battle the elements, dwindling food and water, the threat of modern-day piracy, and their own frailties. STILL SUMMER is at once a breathtaking adventure and a story about the bonds that hold friend to friend and mothers to daughters, and how facing our own mortality tests the truth of everything we think we know.

Synopsis

A breathtaking novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard.

Back in high school, Tracy, Olivia, and Holly were known as The Godmothers, the girls everyone wanted to be and know. Unlike many friendships, their bond survived the years. But 20 years later, their glamorous leader, Olivia, whose wealthy Italian husband has died, suggests they reunite on her return to the United States with a luxury sailboat crossing in the Caribbean. With Tracy's college-aged daughter and an attentive two-man crew, they sail into paradise. But then, the smallest mistake triggers a series of devastating events. Suddenly in a desperate fight for survival, they battle the elements, dwindling food and water, the threat of modern-day piracy, and their own frailties.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard delivers a breathtaking adventure and a story about the bonds that hold friendships and families together.

The Washington Post - Caroline Preston

…her aim is to create a high-seas yarn with a suburban-mom twist. While the relentless nautical calamities are far-fetched, the women's willingness to throw themselves overboard, literally, to save a precious daughter is not. As the title implies, Still Summer provides an entertaining hammock read…

About the Author, Jacquelyn Mitchard

Tackling themes of death, grief, and emotional turmoil without lapsing into cheap sentimentality, Jacquelyn Mitchard has made a career of pulling the heartstrings without patronizing her readers. With her debut novel The Deep End of the Ocean, the first book ever to be featured in Oprah s Book Club, Mitchard began a career distinguished by intelligent and entertaining explorations of life s darkest moments.

Reviews

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Editorials

Caroline Preston

…her aim is to create a high-seas yarn with a suburban-mom twist. While the relentless nautical calamities are far-fetched, the women's willingness to throw themselves overboard, literally, to save a precious daughter is not. As the title implies, Still Summer provides an entertaining hammock read…
—The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Bestselling Mitchard offers the harrowing tale of four women lost at sea and pitted against nature and a cohort of contemporary pirates. Tracy, Holly and Olivia have known each other since high school, when they were glamorous, popular troublemakers. Twenty-five years after graduation, the three women, plus Tracy's 19-year-old daughter, Camille, set out on a "reading, sunning, gossiping" trip aboard a luxe sailboat helmed by a two-man crew. But a storm leaves the women adrift with no sail or engine and their co-captains gone overboard. With limited sailing experience, failing radio equipment and a rapidly diminishing cache of food and water, the women are vulnerable to the worst threats the Caribbean can offer—the elements, sharks and, most troublesome, pirates. This fast-paced novel borrows qualities from several genres—suspense, survival epic, coming-of-age—and mostly succeeds in melding the better aspects of each, though Mitchard has a surer hand in creating women characters than men. Mitchard's fans will appreciate this high-stakes adventure. (Aug.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Kirkus Reviews

A group of middle-aged friends and one rebellious teenager set sail in the Caribbean on a trip to rekindle high-school friendships, but find their lives at stake when things go horribly wrong. Mitchard (Cage of Stars, 2006, etc.) crams plenty of melodrama and angst into this tale of four old friends who plan an adventure on a plush sailboat at the suggestion of Olivia, the widow of a wealthy Italian. When one of the friends can't make it, Tracy brings her gorgeous 19-year-old daughter, Cammie, in her place. Cammie, who fights constantly with her mother, is foul-mouthed, yet beautiful, as she tries to overcome a recent failed love affair. Tracy's friend Holly, a cheerful nurse and former cheerleader, rounds out the foursome. They soon set sail under star-brilliant Caribbean skies in a luxurious sailboat piloted by down-to-earth Lenny, whose much-younger wife has given him a small child and is expecting their second. His handsome right-hand man, Michel, rounds out the crew. But it doesn't take long before Cammie and Michel find themselves attracted (she is beautiful, as Mitchard relentlessly says), much to Olivia's displeasure. Soon follow a series of mishaps that leave the four women stranded alone on the large ship with no idea of their location, nor any means to call for help. They weather illness, food and water shortages, the hot, unrelenting sun and man-made terror in their struggle to survive. Mitchard's characters communicate in long, tedious backstory written in clunky prose, and she dubs one major character "the young man" without giving him a name, although every other character in the book, no matter how minor, has one. The women also ignore obvious opportunities to escape theirfate in favor of stacking the plot with twists readers will see coming from oceans away. A good beach read if the reader can overlook ponderous plotting and the desire to slap a couple of the characters silly.

Book Details

Published
May 1, 2011
Publisher
Grand Central Publishing
Pages
384
Format
Mass Market Paperback
ISBN
9780446585415

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