I remember so well the Kennedy era and, like so many others, still can remember where I was when John Kennedy was shot. As I read this book, I found myself caught up in the belief that these events were true, even though I knew they were based on some true events and supposition. This is a well written novel and I found myself wanting to learn more. So to the computer I went to read further information about Alicia Corning Clark. She, like Jack Kennedy, led a colorful and eventful life, which is illustrated so well in this book. This was an exciting and fast-paced story that was an enjoyable read. I very much appreciated Michelle Gable's writing style and research. (I was given a copy of this book for my honest review.)

The Summer I Met Jack is a fictional account of the real life romance of Alicia Darr and Jack Kennedy. Alicia Darr came to America from Poland hoping to escape the ravages of war and secure a better life for herself as well as her mother back home. It isn't long before she encounters the striking Jack Kennedy and quickly falls under his spell. Their romance is met with struggles over time and resistance from Jack's father, particularly when he finds out that Alicia is Jewish. When her engagement to Jack is squelched, Alicia is drawn to the bright lights of Hollywood. But each time Alicia begins to get her footing, her path crosses with Jack's again and she's drawn into his spell.

It is obvious that the author spent an immense amount of time researching the novel and she brings the Kennedy family and Hollywood glamour to life from the pages. I found it interesting to learn more about the Kennedy family and also especially enjoyed the glimpses into the Hollywood stars. I was not previously aware of that this relationship or controversy existed. I did have some difficulty connecting with the character of Alicia Darr and felt at times the story got bogged down a little. I found the ending very interesting and wondered how the events surrounding Ms. Clark's estate unfolded in real life present times.

I received this book courtesy of St. Martin's Press through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Veena’s review of The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable
Fiction published by St. Martin’s Press 29 May 18

Truth or Fiction! Did Jack Kennedy have an intense love affair complete with a love child before he met and married Jackie Bouvier? This book, which paints a very different picture of the Kennedy family and Jack Kennedy himself, is an expose on the love affair and love child. The Kennedys are painted as a dysfunctional family with complicated undercurrents between the various members.
Alicia has escaped war-torn Poland for asylum in the USA. Thanks to a fellow Polish émigré, she finds herself in Hyannisport, working at the local movie theater with a summer job at the Kennedy compound as a maid. When her love affair with Jack takes center stage, her Polish friend and fellow maid tries to get her dismissed from the household and removed from Hyannisport. Fortunately for Alicia, the theater manager where she works comes to her rescue.

Jack is Alicia’s obsession and she apparently is his. As Jack’s political career takes off under his father’s tutelage, Jack finds every opportunity to spend time with Alicia. At one stage he even gets engaged to her, but when his family find out that she’s Jewish and not Catholic as they were lead to believe, they force Alicia into breaking off her engagement and finding her way to Hollywood.

Between Alicia’s arrival in Hollywood and working as a pseudo escort, Jack’s continued pursuit of her, even as his political career takes off and he starts to have aspirations for the presidency and the Kennedy family – particularly the patriarch, who is a like a spider in the center weaving his web and forcing the outcomes that he desires – I lost interest in the story and gave up trying to continue.

Did Alicia have Jack’s baby? What caused them to separate? Clearly, the Kennedy political machine under Jack’s father had a hand in their fate! Others may enjoy this story to conclusion, but it wasn’t for me.

Grade: DNF

The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable is a interested story about a love affair we never knew about between JFK and Alicia Darr. Alicia is a young immigrant who’s crosses paths with a young and handsome man in Cape Cod. That young man was a congressman names JFK. The naïve Alicia takes a job at the infamous Kennedy compound. She is truly so young and naïve so the things that happened while working at the compound shocks her.
Michelle Gable writes an intriguing story that will shock you. The story will make you question what you thought you knew about JFK and the power the Kennedy family possess.

Thank you to Netgalley for giving me the change to read and review "The Summer I Met Jack"
by Michelle Gable. This is such an excellent work of Women's Fiction. I was hooked right from the first few pages! I was very fascinated by the story and the time period. I would highly recommend this to anyone.

Review will be posted week of 6/18/18
Barbara, now Alicia Darr, has left Poland and arrives in the USA with many hopes and dreams in the 1950s. She rooms with another immigrant, Irenka, and they become fast friends. Irenka takes a job on the East Coast working as a maid in the affluent town of Hyannisport for the famous Kennedy family. Alicia follows Irenka to the Hyannisport and through Irenka she meets Jack along with the whole Kennedy clan. She is enamored with the family, but especially Jack's charm and larger than life attitude. As time goes by, Jack is also very much into Alicia as she is unlike any woman he has met before. Things become serious between the two, but will the Kennedy family truly accept Alicia into their family? Can Jack really defy his father? And just wait till the Kennedys find out who she truly is. The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable focuses not only Alicia and Jack's courtship, but Jack's political career as well as Alicia's amazing life. Fans of the Kennedys as well as historical fiction will absolutely love this "historical beach read."

Alicia Darr is such an interesting character. Her background story is slowly revealed to us as she isn't your "usual immigrant," which is why Jack is so attracted to her. I also found her mesmerizing and wanted to know what secrets she was withholding about her life in Poland. My heart went out to her at various points in the story, whether it was dealing with the strong Kennedy personalities or dealing with the prejudices of her being an immigrant, Alicia definitely went through some hard times. What I find to be the most fascinating about her is the fact that she is based on the real-life socialite, Alicia Corning Clark. It was interesting to see where this story and real life intersects.

I think it's hard to bring the Kennedy clan to life, but Gable did an excellent job. Whether she was highlighting Rose Kennedy's stern behavior or dedication to Catholicism, Jack's magnetism, Joe's flirting, or simply the Kennedy family's boisterous personality, it was all very well done. I felt like I, along with Alcia, was meeting them for the first time and couldn't get enough.

I liked how Gable followed Jack's career through the years despite the fact that Alicia and Jack weren't always together. It definitely provided a different perspective of the Kennedys than some of the other novels I read. The Summer I Met Jack definitely kept me entertained even though I knew how things would end up for the Kennedys.

If you love a historical beach read, give this one a try this summer, especially if you are curious about the events surrounding Alicia Corning Clark and Jack Kennedy. This book definitely gives an interesting perspective. Don't you love when books do that?

I love reading about a time in history that I didn't even think about before I read the book. Although the author has "created this work of fiction" based on historical events, I like to think that most of it is true. Have you ever thought about J.F.K's life before he became president? Are you fascinated with the Kennedy family? As told from the point of view of Alicia Corning Clark, she was not only an actress, but she was J.F.K.'s fiancee before Jackie O. She also had his love child...or did she? Alicia rose from being a starving immigrant to a very wealthy woman in America. She also had many husbands and love interests along the way.

This book has romance, intrigue, celebrity sightings, friendship, and scandal. I enjoyed this book very much, and it was a light read.

I was given this book for my honest review.

I don't think this was my book. I don't remember requesting and I did not read it. I don't think this was my book. I don't remember requesting and I did not read it.

This story was based on JFK and Alicia. They had one summer that went on for a long time. She had no expectations of him. She knew as a immigrant from Germany her secrets went deep.

This story was not true but it gave a different twist on a story that begins in Hyannisport, Massachusetts and ends in a whole different place.

**I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review**

Quite a fascinating little story. I read most of this while on a Florida beach. A perfect vacation read for summer 2018. 4 stars!

Alicia falls in love with Jack Kennedy one summer where she meets him selling popcorn at a movie theater. He's a flirt. She is smitten. It's fun and engaging. I am not sure how much of it all is true. Gable did a lot of research and it is a great story, even if some of it is fabricated.

I thought it well written and easy to read. There is a lot in here about the Kennedys. But it is more than that too. When Alicia and Jack cannot marry she moves on and builds a life for herself in the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. I enjoyed reading about the actors and others people she was involved with.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC to read in exchange for a review. I highly recommend it!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley for an honest review.

I found this book to be a very intriguing read. I was a baby when JFK was killed, so I don't really know much about him and the Kennedys besides the little I've read. I'm aware of the whole Camelot mystique and also some of the not so good theories about the family. I don't know how much of this book was fiction or not, but boy did it blow my image of the Kennedys to bits.

In fact, the whole time I read this I was questioning how much was true and how much was fiction. Even though the author states at the end of the book that it's fiction, she also lists all the books she used for research. Since the book is based on real people, I'd think there is a grain of truth to a lot of the story.

I don't know how I felt about the main character Alicia. Initially she had my sympathy for her doomed love affair with JFK, but as the book progressed I felt she was more of an unsympathetic character mainly because of her obsession with the famous, her looks and fashions. She reminded me of a Kardashian because she was famous for basically doing nothing, just being around the right people. I also found the instant friendship with Kate Hepburn a little far fetched.

An interesting read about a time period I'm not too familiar with. Definitely made me want to read more about that era.

The Summer I Met Jack is based on John F. Kennedy and Alicia Corning Clark meeting in 1950. Alicia is a poor immigrant who works at the Kennedy's home in hyannisport, Massachusetts as a maid and at a movie theater trying to find her way to a bigger and better world. Jack and Alicia fall into a complicated love story that follows throughout novel. The Kennedys are revealed as a very complicated, yet dedicated family who has high expectations for their goals in life. Although I didn't know as much about the Kennedys as most, the book compelled me to research and seek out more books about their lives.

I received an Advance Review Copy of this book. All Opinions are my Own. Thank you Netgalley!

For me, this book was a huge disappointment and while I wouldn’t say that I regretted reading it, I do wish that I had stood my ground a bit more in terms of not accepting widgets for books that I wasn’t tremendously interested in reading. Of course, I already knew going into this book that it would be a story about the Kennedy family (albeit a fictional story), more specifically about JFK and the love affair he supposedly had with a woman named Alicia Corning Clark (Alicia Darr for most of the story) in the early years prior to him becoming the 35th President of the United States. I actually had never heard of Alicia Corning Clark prior to reading this book and being that this was an “imagined” story of the affair, I deliberately refrained from looking up anything about her until after I finished reading, as I didn’t want any preconceived understanding about who Clark was in real life to affect my feelings toward her character in the story (more on this later). Despite the mention of “love affair” in the book summary, I was fully expecting this story to lean more towards historical fiction given the historical context with the Kennedy family, however it turned out that this fell more heavily into the romance category. In addition, parts of the story felt a bit YA to me, mostly due to the main female protagonist being in her early 20s for much of the story, yet acting like a defiant teenager majority of the time, plus the style of the writing felt less mature and many of the scenarios were melodramatic (more about the writing later). Unfortunately, both of these genres (romance and YA) are ones that I don’t really care for, so this did put me off quite a bit.

Genre aside, there were actually quite a few things that made this book a disappointment for me (hence the low rating), though interestingly enough, in reading through the reviews, I seem to once again be the outlier here, as there are a lot of 4 and 5 star ratings for this book and most readers didn’t seem to have the same issues I did. It does make me wonder whether I actually read the same book that everyone else read….

In any case, one of the things that frustrated me most with this story were the characters and the way they were written, especially Alicia, a character I disliked almost from the start. Like I mentioned earlier, I didn’t know anything about the real-life Alicia going into this (and I still don’t know that much about her to be quite honest), so I can’t comment on how she compares to the real person, but to me, Alicia in the story came off as a caricature and, at times, somewhat stereotypical. Everything about Alicia (the character) seemed to be contradictory in that her behavior never seemed to sync up with her thoughts and more often than not, she would say one thing and do the complete opposite. Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for flawed characters in fictional stories and in fact, prefer them over characters that come across too perfect, but in this case, I felt like the author went a bit overboard in the opposite direction in that Alicia seemed to have all her worst personality flaws exaggerated and brought into the spotlight while her positive traits (aside from her looks of course – there was constant reference to Alicia being “blonde and beautiful”) were mostly pushed to the background. Most of the other characters as well were depicted this way (negative personality traits magnified tenfold) -- though of course, with the Kennedys, it’s not surprising given all the scandals and rumors surrounding that infamous family, but still, given that this was a fictional story, I was expecting the characterizations to be a bit more balanced. Instead, I felt at times that I was reading a “tell-all” biography of sorts about the various transgressions of the Kennedy family with an emphasis on JFK and the scandalous life he led (um, I think most of us already know that JFK was a charmer who had numerous affairs both while he was president and before that – I didn’t need this fact to be reinforced throughout the story by depicting his character as a sex fiend who couldn’t seem to get near a woman without wanting to have sex with her…it seemed like every couple pages I was reading about either his or Alicia’s sexual exploits, which honestly got tiring after like the 5th mention barely a quarter of the way through the book….).

Plot-wise, there really wasn’t much there outside of Alicia’s various relationship “adventures,” which honestly didn’t interest me much – in fact, I felt bored reading the same repetitive bits about Alicia striking up a relationship with one famous person after another (the second half of the book was basically about Alicia’s “colorful” dating life -- the various people she met and had flings with). Included in this were details about Alicia’s 3 marriages, most notably the one to Alfred Corning Clark, the heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune who left Alicia a hefty fortune after his death within weeks of their marriage. This wealth came into play in a second timeline taking place more than 60 years later, in 2016, when the executor of the now deceased Alicia Corning Clark’s estate searches for a rumored potential heir to all the money she left behind (a search that really did take place back in 2016 and was reported on in the media). To be honest, this part of the story felt like a completely different book, as the writing was more engaging and the narrative was framed as a “mystery” of sorts that I actually wanted to get to the bottom of – unfortunately, this second narrative was way too brief, only a few dozen pages max, and the format of interspersing snippets of this narrative sporadically throughout the main story meant that when I started skimming the book at around the 25% mark (yes, things started getting repetitive very early in the story), I ended up missing more of the second narrative than I intended.

Overall though, the issues I had with the story and the unbalanced character depictions pale in comparisons to the problems I had with the writing, which already wasn’t that great to begin with, but when you add tons of grammatical errors to the mix, this became a tedious and exceedingly frustrating read for me. I’m not sure if this had to do with the ARC version I received being messed up somehow (or perhaps the version I received was a very early rough draft), but it appears that there was little to no editing to speak of with this book. The biggest issue I noticed is what I call the missing “f” dilemma: all words that were supposed to have “ff” in them were missing one “f” for some reason – so “offer” became “ofer,” “affair” became “afair,” “off” became “of” etc. – these last two (missing “f” in the words “affair” and “off”) were especially egregious given the extraordinary number of times both words were used throughout the story (basically it was every few pages -- trying to differentiate the instances between when the author was trying to use “off” versus “of” alone ended up giving me a headache). As if that weren’t enough, there were also sections where the narrative voice switched back and forth in between dialogue, which really threw me off and made this an even bigger chore to read. For example, there was a section where one of Alicia’s friends George asks about her family back home – instead of that section being written as a conversation between two people with dialogue set apart by quotation marks as it was in most of the other parts of the book, it was written in an odd half conversation half third person manner – George would ask a question “But your mother…?” (only including part of the quote so as to avoid spoilers) and instead of Alicia answering the question directly like we would expect in a normal conversation, what followed was 7 paragraphs explaining what happened to her mother but written in third person (i.e.: Alicia left school, Alicia filled out a form, Alicia tried looking for her, etc.) – then the next paragraph after that switches back to conversation mode with George’s dialogue in quotations and Alicia’s response also in quotations, but then the paragraph after that switches back to half and half mode again. I thought at first this was just an isolated issue with that particular section of the book and so was ready to ignore it and move on, but then a dozen or so pages later, the same thing happened again, except this time it was a “conversation” between Alicia and Jack (though this time, there was the added confusion of switching from dialogue in quotes, to a third person response, to a second person response, and then back to dialogue again). For the most part, I tend to be a little more lenient with ARCs, since it IS an uncorrected / unedited version after all, but this one was particularly bad – I’ve read several dozen ARCs over the past 2 years and this is the first time I’ve come across one with so many issues, mistakes that spanned every couple pages. The only reason I didn’t DNF the book at this point was because I had already made the decision earlier on (around the 25% mark as I mentioned above) to skim through the rest of the book due to my inability to connect with the story and majority of the characters, so I stopped paying as much attention to these issues after that.

Obviously I wouldn’t recommend this book, but like I said earlier, in reading through the many glowing reviews, I seem to be the only one who had issues, so perhaps, unlucky for me, I just received a bad ARC version of the book? I haven’t read any of this author’s other works so there’s nothing for me to compare against in terms of the writing. Probably those interested in the Kennedy family will feel compelled to read this, though if so, I recommend getting a library copy or a fully edited version. As for myself, I don’t intend on re-reading this even if a “cleaned up” version becomes available, since the subject matter is only mildly interesting to me anyway.

Received ARC from St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley

It wasn’t the romance between Alicia and JFK that was my favorite part about this book but it was Alicia’s friendship with George. I liked how he always told her how he saw it, whether she wanted to hear it or not.

This was such an interesting book to read!! I admit to having mixed feelings at time, though. I have done some reading on JFK in the past, but not extensive by any means. (I recently read several books on his sister Kick, and am truly enchanted by her.) I had never heard of Alicia Darr or Barbara Kopczysnka and definitely not in conjunction with our former President. It really was a fascinating story, and had me checking google and Wikipedia for photos and information all the while. The characters had real voices and I could visualize it all. Even the accent of President Kennedy. Alicia was such a changeable person, becoming who she needed to be for each situation. She truly lived through a LOT. At times I got mad at what she or Jack did, but was able to move past it, as you have to do when reading. I would recommend this to any Kennedy buff or anyone who enjoys well written and good reading historical fiction! I have read most of Michelle Gable’s books and will continue to seek her writing out.

On a side note—I would have loved more info at the end on what was true and what was false, but also understand that can be hard to do when writing fiction:)


**Many thanks to NetGalley, Michelle Gable, and St Martin’s Press for an e-ARC to read and honestly review!!**

What even to say about this book. I will honestly say I almost DNFed this about 3 times. The reasons I held on were that I was curious where Alicia's story was going and I was curious how Gable would handle her reaction to the death of JFK. Well I got answers on one and not on the other. I don't think it's a spoiler to tell you not to expect an answer to the second. The story basically wraps Alicia's story in October of 1962. About a year shy of JFK's assassination. I was pretty salty about this fact.

The story itself is about Alicia Corning Clark and her life and is based around what is rumored to have been a real life romance between the real Alicia Corning Clark and JFK. While Alicia's story was intersting, I couldn't get behind what felt like revisionist history when it came to the Kennedys. I will not dispute that the real life Kennedys were a privileged, pampered, and underhanded group of humans, but Gable literally laces this book with every conspiracy theory out there that can paint the Kennedys as America's own family of evil villains. There's a point when you stop thinking wow the Kennedys were kind of awful and start thinking ok this is getting ridiculous.

The book ambles through the first part of Alicia's life after meeting JFK and then starts to pick up in the middle as we are inundated with name dropping of celebrities of the time and Alicia is tied again and again to scandal. It tumbles towards what I thought would be an interesting and emotional end to her story with JFK, but stops just short of giving the reader what they expect.

Alicia was a compelling and interesting character and while I alternated between routing for her and wanting to shake common sense into her, I do think Gable did justice to her turbulent life. She was absolutely a dynamic and complex character. I do wish there was more out there on the real life Alicia Corning Clark as I want to know more about her and found myself googling her and various Kennedy antics through out my reading of this book.

I did find the modern portions to be unnecessary, especially towards the end. We were never really made to care about the character introduced in the modern portion. She honestly just felt like a convenient way to explain Alicia's eventual death and headline making choice of inheritors.

All in all... this is not Gable's strongest work and not one that I particularly recommend.

Thank you St. Martin's Press for providing me with a Netgalley ARC of this book for reviewing purposes.

I became a fan of Michelle Gable's with A Paris Apartment and she's yet to let me down.

The story based on the youthful romance of JFK and Alicia Darr was eye-opening and always intriguing, yet at times heartbreaking. Kind of like their romance.

As JFK was killed when I was a toddler, I only know the stories of legend. So, to read beyond the legend was a treat. At times I felt as if I were the proverbial fly on the wall at the Kennedy compound as I read through the lens on the past and watched the relationships of the family members.

I have to be honest that a few times I took to Googling names to see if some of the lesser known players had actually existed and found they had. As had Alicia Darr in the many variations of herself.

My mom once said that every time she watched the Way We Were, she hoped that Hubble and Katie would live happily ever after. I feel that way about Serenity--every time I watch it, I hope Wash doesn't get struck by the reaper rod. Spoiler alert, he does.

Anyway, that's how I felt about this story. Even though I knew it couldn't happen, I kept hoping Jack and Alicia would end up happily-ever-after. Maybe if they had, we'd have a different history...

Michelle Gable is a new author to me, her book The Paris Apartment has been sitting very patiently waiting but instead I grabbed this, her latest. I was given an ARC from the publisher (with my sincere thanks) but time just got away from me. The Summer I Met Jack was released last week. I grabbed the audio version and my kindle alternating between the two.

Beginning in 1951 when Alicia meets Jack Kennedy. I don’t know a lot of Jack's history but I’ve gleamed enough over the years to get a feel for his character. It’s obvious that a lot of research went into this book. Based on fact the author filled in the gaps nicely to create this fictional account of Alicia and Jack's long affair. There were lots of well known names dropped and the Kennedy’s were a powerful family that took care of themselves. Told from Alicia's side of the story it wasn't hard to feel her plight, from immigration, to friends, to the Kennedy's and just surviving in this new country.

“...my goal was to make the story plausible” and that Michelle Gable did very nicely.

Thank you to St. Martin Press (via Netgalley) for an advanced copy.

Because this was based on a true story, I was intrigued from the beginning! Hard to believe that the Kennedy's are human and their family secrets included this!
Fascinating stuff and now I need a biography of Alicia Corning Clark.

The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable is historical fiction but based on actual real life people. So that is a little challenging and difficult to do, perhaps. I think of the TV series The Crown - which I love. I know its not what these characters actually said or even did, but it resembles them all enough and the events of those times to keep me watching fascinated. Was I as fascinated by The Summer I Met Jack? To be honest - not really.

This is the story of a polish refugee after the war who comes to America, and meets Jack Kennedy before he is married or becomes the President. Alicia carries secrets and guilt and is determined though to make a good life for herself in the new country. When she meets Jack at the picture theatre where she works, an immediate liaison begins. It is eventually of course frowned on by his father and things proceed downhill for both the romance and Alicia from there.

Downhill? Well she strikes me as someone wanting to go somewhere, be someone and always searching, for happiness perhaps. Did I like her? Not really as she is presented here, although there were times I felt sympathy for her.

Michelle Gable has researched the Kennedy clan painstakingly from the list of books given at the end of the book. She presents them in quite a harsh light. I felt that harsh light was somewhat one sided and it turned me off a little.

For me the little excerpts that included a mystery lawyer and a young woman Serena, who was refreshing and beautiful, were the best. A fictional character who for me was the the saving grace, in the whole story.

Now it could just be this book wasn't for me! However Kristin over at Always With a Book, gives another viewpoint quite different to mine so go on over and read her review of The Summer I Met Jack.