Book Summary and Reviews of Beautiful Nights by Nina George

Beautiful Nights by Nina George

Beautiful Nights

A Novel

by Nina George

  • Published:
  • Jul 2025, 320 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A respected professor begins a secret affair with her son's girlfriend one summer on the Brittany coast in this intense, poetic novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Little Paris Bookshop.

Claire is one of Paris's most esteemed behavioral biologists, with an enviable career and family, but she has become increasingly frustrated by the stasis of her marriage, including her husband's unremarked-upon affairs, and feels caged by the obligations she took on too early in life.

As she and her family prepare for their annual holiday to the Brittany coast, her son Nico comes to her with a request: can his new girlfriend Julie join them for the summer? Nico feels certain this is the next step in merging their lives together, but Julie wonders if this man is really her path or if her passions­—for performance, for intimacy, for a bigger life—will mean there's not a real future for them.

What Julie and Claire don't realize is that they share a secret—they've met before, in a compromising moment whose implications will color their relationship from the moment it's revealed. Both Julie and Claire are at a crossroads, each waiting for something that will set her on fire inside—the rush of life, colors, courage. Under the blazing Brittany sun, by the silence of the sea and in the raging of a nighttime thunderstorm, they will ignite and never be the same again.

Sensual, provocative, and probing, Nina George's Beautiful Nights explores femininity in all its facets and stages. It is a story of becoming who you were meant to be by breaking apart the things you've always known.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"George's fluid and lyrical prose carries the reader along as the story alternates from languid scenes to heavy emotions. It's a worthy choice for the beach bag." —Publishers Weekly

This information about Beautiful Nights 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.

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Author Information

Nina George

Nina George is the author of The Little Paris Bookshop, The Little French Bistro, The Book of Dreams, and The Little Village of Book Lovers. The Little Paris Bookshop spent more than forty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into thirty-six languages. George is the former president of the European Writers' Council. She is married to the writer Jens J. Kramer. Together they also write mystery novels and children's books. Nina George lives in Berlin and in a little fishing village in the Bretagne.

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