Book Summary and Reviews of 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand

28 Summers

by Elin Hilderbrand

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  • Readers' Rating (7):
  • Published:
  • Jun 2020, 432 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

By the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Summer of '69: Their secret love affair has lasted for decades -- but this could be the summer that changes everything.

When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election.

There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other?

Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere -- through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise -- until Mallory learns she's dying.

Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love.

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What’s the last book you read that would qualify as a beach read? Is there one you can name that you’d heartily recommend?
Currently into Elin Hilderbrand's "28 Summers." Getting the feeling it is a "Same Time Next Year, one of my favorite flicks, theme. Feeling like I needed a "beach read" after having read Klune's "We Burned So Bright" which I thoroughly enjoyed but needs to be considered as a heavy read. I like to...
-Carol_N

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Come for the sailing, the sunsets, and the sweet romance, stay for the cold gin and tonics, the lobster dinners, and truly unparalleled picnics...Hilderbrand sets the gold standard in escapist fiction." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Hilderbrand steers this tightly written novel with ease and skill, introducing each chapter with the year's current topics...Because Jake and Mallory meet only one weekend a year, their relationship is rendered, a perpetual holiday. Less a story about a secretive affair and more a tale of sweet nostalgia and fate, this title will be popular with a wide audience." - Library Journal (starred review)

This information about 28 Summers was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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PGA57

Stuck with me
It's weird, while reading this book there were moments that were redundant, of course, but other aspects of the story were compelling. When I finished it I felt it was average. But in the almost 5 years since reading it I have found myself, many times, remembering bits and pieces of the plot. It has stuck with me. I think it may be because of the breath of the story. The characters had to and did evolve with the passage of time. Their aging process was believable.

MM2

Was not worth the anticipation.
The book held no substance. Very predictable.
Disappointing.

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Author Information

Elin Hilderbrand Author Biography

Elin Hilderbrand is the author of twenty-eight novels, including The Hotel Nantucket. She is a proud 1991 graduate of Johns Hopkins University where she majored in Writing Seminars. In her senior year at Hopkins, Elin had her first short story, "Misdirection," accepted for publication in Seventeen Magazine.

After a short stint working in publishing and teaching in New York City, she moved to Nantucket permanently in 1994. She attended the University of Iowa writers workshop and earned her MFA in 1998, and published her first novel, The Beach Club, in the summer of 2000. Her 2019 novel, Summer of "69 SUMMER OF '69 was her first novel to debut at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. She is the mother of three children and loves riding the Peloton, cooking, and going to the beach. She...

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