The format of the ebook I got from NetGalley was terrible. However, I saw it on audio from my library. I listened to some of the book, but I couldn’t get into it either. I guess this just wasn’t for me.

Expected to enjoy this one a little more but it was still a decent read overall. Being as it was just alright for me I don’t have a lot to say

I really wanted to love this one - maybe it was 2020? - but I started it and just couldn't pick it back up. Love the cover and the synopsis sounds great, but I just couldn't get invested.

The Summer in Maine was one of my favourite books this year. I highly recommend this novel if you are looking for something to captivate you with phenomenal writing.

The past meets future with family secrets, social media and teenagers all coming into play in this mother/daughter story.

Years ago, during a certain summer in Maine, two young women, unaware of each other, met a charismatic man at a craft fair and each had a brief affair with him. For Jane it was a chance to bury her recent pain in raw passion and redirect her life. For Sue it was a fling that gave her troubled marriage a way forward.

Thank you for the ARC of this book! I thought this was written so well but I just, there's a lot in this that's hard to unpack. Seeing different family dynamics and how past decisions affect your children in the future is a lot to think about, even as a mother myself. As someone who has had this somewhat happen to, I just felt like it could have been handled a little better.

It was fine. I liked it for what it was but it was nothing special. The characters were ok and the premise was interesting.

I really, really, really wanted to love this book but I just couldn't get into it and it was a chore to read. I loved the setting in Maine but the backstory with the Moms was somewhat annoying and the girls was not engaging.

I thought this book was cute but just a bit odd to me. There was a lot of disconnect and missing plot points and the characters just felt really underdeveloped unfortunately. I loved the premise and concept of the book!⠀
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Two girls find out they have the same dad and so they go spend the summer together with him in Maine. They are both teenagers and go through some critical development during this time and are able to come to terms with their life back home while in Maine with their dad.⠀
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It sounds so sweet right? Except Maine is the smallest part of the book and most of it is about the moms of the girls facing their past mistakes and not really about the girls. The girls are also really underdeveloped and super cliche.⠀
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I wanted to love this book, and I gave it a pretty high star rating despite my issues because the overall concept was great and there was some really enjoyable scenes.⠀
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My six word review:⠀
Underwhelming summer coming of age story⠀
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If you're a fan of The Parent Trap, you'll love this story. It's an intriguing, refreshing premise and a lot of fun. Loved this one!

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

A great summer read.

This story struck several personal chords with me and I found myself not only relating to the daughters, specifically Hazel, but also to the mothers. Choices we make will always affect us, and choices as big of these are bound to come back in unexpected ways.

Since her mother, Jane, had twins, Hazel has felt left out of her family. It used to be just her and her mom, but then her mom married Cam and they had twin sons. She doesn’t even look like anyone in her family, with her dark hair while they are all blonde. One night, she gets a message online from a girl who claims to be Hazel’s half-sister. Eve suggests that Hazel and her go to visit their father, Silas, together for the summer. That seems like the perfect escape for Hazel to leave her family behind and find new relatives. Hazel and Eve seem to bond over their new found biological father, while their moms have their own shared history with Silas.

This was an intriguing concept for a story. I read an article once about a young woman who found out she had 30-something half-siblings because their mothers all used the same sperm donor. That isn’t the way Hazel’s and Eve’s mom’s had their daughters, but it was similar in the way that these girls had many close relatives that they didn’t know about.

There were a few loose ends at the end of the story. Some of the subplots weren’t explained. Silas had a former girlfriend who he almost had a baby with, and their story was only told in parts, though it seemed important to the overall story. The format of the story was a little confusing as well. The first part was about Jane and Hazel in their home. The second part was about what Jane did when Hazel was visiting Silas, as well as stories about how she met Silas and how Eve’s mother met him. The next part was about Hazel and Eve spending the summer with Silas. The final part was when they were leaving his home. The second and third parts happened simultaneously, so I wish they had been combined so the story continued to move forward. The way the story jumped between time periods was disjointed and anticlimactic.

I liked the premise for the story, but I wish it had been organized more clearly.

Thank you HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a rough read for me, I’m not going to lie. While I did not hate this book, I did not love it either. This was a middle of the road book for me. I really liked how the book was divided up into parts and I think the overall story was good I just found myself putting off wanting to read this book. It never really pulled me in. And it may very well have been me in a funk.

I feel as though this book started off strong and then faltered for me. It explores an important theme of children of divorce/single parent households. I loved how it spoke to how that child may not fit into their parents' new life/family etc. I was hoping for more of a celebration of Maine scenery and activity. Overall, it was a light and easy read.

The Quick Cut: A girl finds her world shifted when her half sister reaches out and offers her to come along to their mutual father's house in Maine. Chaos ensues when not everything is as it seems.  
A Real Review:    Thank you to Harlequin for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review. 
  Knowing the people who make up your DNA is something that we put a lot of weight on. Something about sharing that genetic coding says a lot about what we are predisposed to, what personality traits we are likely to inherit, and the struggles we may be predisposed to. However, when your parents turn out to not be those who contributed to your birth (or only one is), it can still feel like a piece of you is missing. What does it feel like to suddenly have access to that other part of who you are? This is the scenario that appears in Hazel's life when your half-sister Eve reaches out. 
 Hazel may have one eye each from her mother and father, but the only one she has ever gotten to know is her mom. Until recently, Hazel's family consisted of just the two of them until her mom Jane met Cam and they had their own set of twins. Now Hazel feels like the odd man out and wishes she could get back the family she used to have. All that is changed when Hazel receives a message on social media from a girl named Eve who claims to be her half-sister and offers her a chance to come with to spend the summer at their mutual father's house, Silas. Will it answer all the questions that she's been dying to have answered? Or will it just make her miss the family she used to know? 
 This book is an odd blend of many different writing styles. The book is comprised of narrative from both Hazel and her mom Jane, along with the book being broken up into four parts. In my opinion, it would have been better off if she stuck with only one of these mechanisms as I don't think together they enhanced the story. The dual narrative that continued together time wise would have been a much more interesting reading experience. While the mom Jane worked her way through the feelings of having her mom suddenly gone, Hazel would have felt what it was like when she met the family she never knew she had. 
 The other issue I have with this book is that there are no likable characters here. The mutual father Silas is hiding from the world because of his past, Jane is so wrapped up in her desires that she doesn't see her daughter (and once Hazel makes herself known, Jane throws herself a pity party), Cam justifies his crappy step-father behavior as a way to allow teens to be "independent", Hazel blames everyone else for her issues rather than standing up for herself (and once she does, acts emotionally irratic), and Eve is just flat out mean. Of them all, Eve is the most consistent and once she shows her true colors - she turns in HARD on that evildoer personality. 
 With no likeable characters and too many writing mechanisms, this book fails to tell the story it means to. 
My rating: 2 out of 5

3.5 stars from me! That Summer in Maine is a a beautifully written book, that is emotional and really highlights the way the choices we make effects others.

Jane and Susie both have connections to Silas, in completely different ways. 16 years after their meeting, Jane's daughter Hazel is contacted by Eve, who claims they are half sisters. Both want to spend the summer with their father in Maine.

This book was poignant, and there was a lot of really beautifully written passages. However, I found all the changes in timelines, and point of views a little bit confusing to follow. I also felt Eve was an annoying and immature character. So though this book was well-written, I did struggle a bit with it.

Overall I enjoyed it, and would recommend it as a summer read with a bit of substance!

Thank you to the publisher for providing me an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A brilliantly observed and wonderfully written tale of love, loyalty and friendship, That Summer in Maine is an immensely enjoyable family drama by Brianna Wolfson.

Jane and Susie had been two perfect strangers spending the summer in Maine when they had met a charismatic young man at a craft fair and fallen completely under his spell. Both of them had succumbed to his charm and indulged in a brief but passionate affair. This affair was a way for Jane to forget about her pain and redirect her life while for Susie this fling was a catalyst which gave her troubled marriage a way forward. However, what these two perfect strangers hadn’t realized was that this affair was going to have serious repercussions with dangerous consequences stretching well into the coming decades…

Sixteen years later, Jane and Susie’s daughters meet on social media and concoct a plan that will enable them to spend the summer in Maine with the man who is their biological father. Naturally, their mothers are absolutely appalled by their decision. Both Jane and Susie have spent years trying to put that summer behind them, but now that their daughters are forcing them to confront the past and face forgotten demons, the two they must come together, finally meet and work in unison to ensure that they do not lose their girls.

This summer in Maine is going to be confronting, scary and painful, but it may also provide Jane, Susie and their daughters with everything they have always wanted.

Brianna Wolfson’s That Summer in Maine is a heart-warming, feel-good and captivating tale of redemption, renewal and healing written with heart, sensitivity and humor. Full of wonderfully nuanced characters, compelling emotional drama and insightful and honest emotional veracity, Brianna Wolfson’s That Summer in Maine is a superb tale of sisterhood and secrets you will want to tell all your friends about.

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Ruthie – ☆☆☆
3.5 stars

This is a book with a number of layers, but we get to see the story from different viewpoints – partly due to the reading/writing of never to be opened letters to the daughters and partly as the chapters swap between narrators. There is a lot of inner monologue, which I am not a huge fan of, particularly when it is expressing feelings which could have been demonstrated in other ways. But I did enjoy finding out all the nuances and reasoning that they protagonists had for their actions. Each of them believed that they were doing the thing that worked best for them. Thankfully, once they work out that happiness can be found in the simple and the honest. It can be found all around you, and sometimes being open to it, communicating clearly, and giving a hug when you want one, can work wonders.

There are some really fun bits, like the girls and Silas lying on the grass in the rain, the trip out on the boat. But there were some very discordant ones for me too – especially the beer incident, and a few times I wanted to put Eve on the naughty step! I was very curious as to how it could all work out, but I was mostly satisfied with how it ended. I think anyone in that situation might find it a salutary reminder of how lies definitely find you out, and how the grass is never greener on the other side!

That Summer in Maine is a book about family secrets and the truth finally coming out. I truly wanted to like this book, but it was a big miss for me. After getting 25% of the way through the book and the daughters are just getting on their way to Maine, I had to give up. There just wasn't enough to keep me coming back for more, even though I made several attempts. The main character just felt whiny and her mom was out of touch. I usually love books like this and I so looked forward to this one, especially because I have spent many summers in Maine.