About Books #47: The Summer Getaway

I cannot tell you how much I’m looking forward to July 11th. It’s the Flemish “national” holiday – and the first day of my summer break. And, as you would have it, it’s also the publication day for Tilly Tennant’s The Summer Getaway!

I was offered an ARC of this book via Netgalley in exchange for a review. All opinions expressed are strictly my own.

The story

Ashley Moon is all set for a dream holiday with her daughter in the glittering French Riviera. But nothing can prepare her for the shock of discovering who’s staying in the villa next door…

Ashley Moon got much more than a suntan on her first ever foreign holiday; one whirlwind romance and nine months later she had a daughter, Molly.

Too heart-broken and proud to ever contact the father, Ashley made a decision to go it alone and raise her daughter herself. Fifteen hard and lonely years later, she finally has the chance to take Molly on her first ever holiday; a gorgeous, all-expenses paid trip to the charming French resort of St Raphael.

It is the perfect setting for a week of quality time together; they plan to cycle through the sun-drenched vineyards, lounge by the glistening pool and practice their French on friendly locals. And just when Ashley thought things couldn’t get any better, comes the news of a handsome new occupant to the villa next door.

But fate has other plans for Ashley. One look in to her neighbour’s dark hazel eyes is all it takes to give her the shock of her life. Standing in front of her is Haydon, Molly’s long lost father and the holiday fling she thought she’d never see again.

As the temperature on the Cote D’Azure steadily rises and Ashley and Haydon begin spend more and more time together, will Ashley find the courage to tell him who she is – and more importantly, who Molly is?

The opinion

This book is pretty straight forward in it’s plot – and there won’t be too many surprises along the way. There’s one twist I did not see coming right near the end – but that might just be me. Other than that, this was your classic story of “boy meets girl, boy leaves girl, boy meets girl x years later and realises what he let go” – but, like, times two.

From the beginning, even without reading the description of the book, it’s pretty clear what’s going to happen. It’s the road to that climax, however, that made me really enjoy this book.

Ashley’s struggles with finding a “right moment” to tell Haydon about his daughter were at times a bit annoying, but mostly just on the spot. I mean, really, how do you tell someone something like that? Now, Haydon could probably do with either A) some biology classes; B) some mathematics classes; or C) a combination of the two. I really appreciated, though, how his character had – at just about every point – his priorities straight.

Naturally, the characters do some things that I would have much rather not see them do. That “nice”, “little” twist at the end comes to mind. But Sue, Ashley’s mum… Man, I wanted to slap her at sompe points. Just like I wanted to kiss and hug Maurice, Sue’s husband. As a couple? Well, let’s just say Ashley is surrounded by some forces to be reckoned with. The same can be said for Haydon actually – can we take a moment to appreciate that here we have someone who was left by his wife (the wife he still loved, mind you) and she is not made out to be the bad guy? Truly revolutionary 🙂

The rating: 3.5/5

Overall, I really enjoyed this book – sure, at times I wanted to smack the characters and tell them to get their head screwed back on straight. But at other points, I just wanted to hug them all until they felt better and everything was alright again, in their world. The one “downside” (if I can even call it that) would be that the plot was definitely somewhat predictable, otherwise this would have been a solid 4-star rating for me. If you want a fun book to read on your “summer getaway“, though? Definitely give this one a try!

-Saar