One perfect villa, four old friends, and a holiday that will change everything...
Amy, Linda, Kate and Jane were best friends at school. Now, years later, they have grown apart. When Amy discovers her husband has been stealing from her successful interiors business, and with a milestone birthday looming, she decides it is the time to reach out to her old friends once again.
So, she decides to invite the other three to her beautiful villa in Mallorca for a reunion weekend. As the four friends gather, secrets are unearthed, old scores settled and new friendships forged. Will this holiday bring them together or tear them apart? And will each of them grasp their second chance for happiness...?
Many thanks to Orion via NetGalley for my copy of A Summer Reunion to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
Without doubt The Summer Reunion has become my favourite book by Fanny Blake. It was thoroughly enjoyable and even though it had a relatively short timeframe overall, as it was more or less set across one long weekend, there was so much happening that the story was kept fresh and invigorating keeping the reader on their toes. The book itself has a simple concept, a group of four women now in their early sixties gather together at a reunion of sorts at a villa on the island of Mallorca. Each woman comes to the gathering with plenty of baggage just waiting to spill forth and the events of the past while they were in their final year of school still have a heavy emotional impact on their lives today. Will the weekend away prove all fun in the sun or is now the right time for everyone to get things off their chest, to air their grievances and reveal hidden secrets which have long been tearing them apart?
A weekend away sounds glorious, so peaceful and relaxing but from the outset I'm not sure that's what was in store for everyone. I really enjoyed how everything was more or less drip fed to the reader at a steady pace. The stages of reveal were just perfect, not too slow to have me slogging through chapters and finding them hard going with little or no action or moving forward with the story. Just at the most apt moments a little nugget was thrown in to have you questioning everything you had thought to be true. It showed how certain characters in particular could not be taken at face value and that really you were best to sit back and let everything unfold and observe the fallout from what was said or done.
Initially we are introduced to the four women and given some information about their backgrounds and their current life situations. Often I find it difficult to keep track of who is who and what is ongoing in their lives but here I found it relatively easy. I was keen to see how each of them connected together and what exactly was it that was eating Amy up inside. Amy was the instigator for the reunion as she was the one who issued the invitations to her villa bought on the back of her success with her interior design company Amy Green. It has been very successful but things are looking a little ropey both personally and professionally as she discover two things about her husband Rob that have thrown her ordered world into chaos.
She has to re-evaluate everything and having the weekend away will also provide her with the ideal opportunity to confront a major event from the past the affects of which she still feels deeply in the present. She was expelled from school in her final year, the full and true circumstances of which only become known the further we delve into the story. This life changing event had an adverse affect on her as her dreams were shattered and she feels at times she had to settle for second best even though she loves working in interior design. Amy feels her life was overturned, that an injustice was served and that if she can right the past she can begin to put some control on her life which she believes may be beginning to spiral out of control.
Amy was clearly still being eaten up by the cruelty she feels has been inflicted upon her and that in order to right the wrongs she needs to find out the truth. But which of the three other women was the one who made sure the blame was laid at Amy's door and why did they do this? Over the course of several days Amy bides her time but one thing is for sure they will not leave the villa until all the facts are out in the open. I loved the tension that was simmering from every chapter. As the feelings of unfinished business intensify, I felt everything was like a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. With one careful nudge everything would explode. As we progress further through the story it soon becomes apparent that everything wasn't as straight forward as one might have first thought and that there are many layers to be peeled back.
It was obvious for some this weekend away was about recharging the batteries but for others there were ulterior motives. It sounds like this was a sinister read but it wasn't in the slightest but nor was it a lovely, easy, light read and I was thankful for that. Fanny Blake really gave her readers something to get stuck into. I found the story to be thought provoking and interesting and it tells a lot about women and the inner workings of a group who seem so close at school yet over forty years later they have rarely if at all made contact with each other. Amy was the catalyst seeking understanding, retribution and answers. But would she be willing to forgive once she heard the true extent of what was going on? I admired her for having the courage to face what had tormented her for so many years but would she be willing to deal with what she slowly starts to uncover as the pieces of the puzzle begin to slot together?
Kate's story was perhaps the weakest in my opinion. She just seemed a little too stereo typical of a character. She was perfectly nice but I did feel her story had been covered many times before in books. She had what she had always wanted in life but now was unhappy with it. She is married to a farmer and has four more or less grown up children and lives in a beautiful house but she feels put upon and taken for granted. That her life is one of routine and the same old thing day in day out with her family presuming she will always be there to answer to their beck and call. She decides to do something for herself in the hopes that her husband and children will recognise and value her more. So she accepts Amy's invitation to get away from it all in the hopes of overturning her mundane life. Her storyline once on the island, again seemed like I had read it plenty of times previously and I didn't like the direction it was taking. Would she give into temptation when a little interest is shown her way or will she realise the love she has for her family and maybe there is a way to make her feel more valued and worthwhile?
Linda was the one out of the group who I felt was really floundering in her life and perhaps she was the weakest. She seemed all over the place emotionally and now that she is faced with a life changing decision she hasn't the courage to just go for it. Abandonment issues and work problems formed the core of her character. What she viewed as her rock and crutch had been taken away from her and without this it was like she was cast adrift at sea searching for the life ring but it always seemed to elude her grasp. In a way Linda surprised me the most when she tries to come clean with things and time and time again the opinions I had formed of certain characters changed because of something they said or did and I didn't know who to believe with regards to past events or current developing situations.
The final woman to make up the group and perhaps the most reluctant to accept the invitation is Jane. She works as an oncologist in a very high powered role that is emotive and stressful. With regards to her job she is facing a major challenge which could see her carefully constructed career go up in smoke. She is nervous and apprehensive about the trip but also fearful of certain things about her being discovered. I can honestly say I didn't like Jane at all. I thought her personal situation with regards to romance what on earth was she up to. She was like the cat that got the cream but went about doing so in the most despicable of ways and if the others knew their already shaky viewpoint of her would rapidly change.
Jane was playing a very risky game and I felt she was very unpredictable and she was a loose cannon that could go off at any minute. She didn't endear herself much to the other women nor to me. I thought she was selfish wanting two major things and keeping one hidden from the other. Why couldn't she be satisfied with what she had but perhaps the drive she has for her job overlapped into her personal and family life and once she was on a roll with something she had no desire to stop it. I did want her to get some sort of comeuppance not necessarily amongst the group of women but within her family life as I thought she was cruel and egotistical.
As the women gather for an eventful few days at the villa. I thought all the problems, feelings, assumptions and judgements were perfectly balanced with the glorious descriptions of the island which Fanny Blake showcased to perfection. It would definitely make you want to go to Mallorca and read this book while you were there and be thankful that you yourself weren't going through such tumultuous times. It was certainly a revelation to watch carefully constructed lives and façades fall apart and it made for a riveting, compelling and engrossing read. Don't be fooled by the beautiful cover there is certainly a lot more going on in this book than at first meets the eye and I was so glad I choose to read this story. Definitely recommended to be read a soon as possible.
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