Nikki’s review of The Summer Wives by Beatriz Williams
Women’s Fiction published by William Morrow 10 Jul 18
I usually love Williams. Her prose, the periods she writes about, her characters, her intricate, emotional plots…unfortunately, while this book has the lovely prose and interesting historical notes, the rest was…lacking.
There were supposed to be two big mysteries in this book: one interpersonal and one a whodunit. The interpersonal one was obvious within the first few interactions to any big reader. Maybe if you never read genre fiction, it would surprise you, but I cannot believe that it will come as a shock to any of Williams’s regular readers who take a steady diet of either romance or mystery.
If you enjoy mysteries, the whodunit will just irritate you. It’s not “playing fair” and the biggest clues are not shown until after the murderer is revealed.
The characters are all miserable. Every single one. If you’re like me, the only thing that will upset you is that only one of them dies. The heroine, Miranda, is a complete Mary Sue. The hero, Joseph, is…a jerk. I mean, you can make a lot of excuses for his behavior, for him missing the fact that the heroine has a crush on him as a teen, no idea of the conclusions she’s drawing about some of his other island relationships, and if he does have an idea I suppose you could think maybe he doesn’t really feel the need to clarify them for her. But “big misunderstanding” relationship hitches just irk me. They always have. A SINGLE SENTENCE could have solved this one instead of having it drag on for what amounts to the entire relationship. And the sentence doesn’t happen because he’s a jerk.
He is also SO GOOD that he takes the blame for a murder he did not commit. There’s a giant plot hole over this, because Miranda, who supposedly had been dreaming all summer about having a relationship with Joseph, is not excited enough on their first night together to stay awake, so she misses the whole murder thing and cannot testify that he didn’t do it. But she is sure he didn’t and, as he is the hero, so are readers.
The murder victim is a vile piece of garbage from the first moment he appears on the page. It’s pretty hard to redeem him, and although Williams makes a valiant attempt to humanize him in the pages just preceding his death, it failed for me. Every other character is equally flat. Miranda’s stepsister is a raving B who snidely and deliberately keeps secrets that she knows will make Miranda feel bad. Miranda’s stepsister’s fiancé follows her around like a whipped puppy. Other than the fact that he’s rich, she seems to have no reason to accept his proposal since she is terribly bored by him. And when she finally kicks him to the curb, he decides to feel up Miranda. Who (naturally, because she’s a Mary Sue) forgives him.
Another thing that annoyed me about this book is it plays into the stereotypical “rich people bad, poor people innocent and uncivilized and free” mythology. Miranda’s new family are summer people—people who live on the tourist island only three months a year—and are very wealthy and patronizing toward the Portuguese fishermen and “townies.” The “rich folk” take advantage of the “poor folk” all the time and consider them less than human in many ways.
So, very sorry for the rant, but the only reason I didn’t immediately DNF this book was that I hoped more people would die. Let me spoil that for you. They don’t.
To sum up, beautiful writing does not make this one readable.
Grade: D
Summary:
In the summer of 1951, Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island as a schoolgirl from the margins of high society, still reeling from the loss of her father in the Second World War. When her mother marries Hugh Fisher, whose estate on Winthrop overlooks its famous lighthouse, Miranda’s catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails, status and swimming pools.
But beneath the Island’s patrician façade, there are really two castes: the summer families with their steadfast ways and quiet obsessions, and the working class of Portuguese fishermen and domestic laborers. Uneasy among her privileged friends, Miranda finds herself drawn to Joseph Vargas, whose father keeps the lighthouse with his mysterious wife. As the summer winds to its end, he and Miranda are caught in a catastrophe that will shatter Winthrop’s hard-won tranquility and banish Miranda from the Island for nearly two decades.
Now, in the landmark summer of 1969, Miranda returns at last, and she begins an impassioned quest for justice to the man she once loved… even if that means laying bare every last one of the secrets that bind the families of Winthrop Island.
No excerpt available.
