Martine’s Must-Reads for Summer 2022

1. The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

 Texas, 1934. Elsa Martinelli had finally found the life she’d yearned for. A family, a home and a livelihood on a farm on the Great Plains. But when drought threatens all she and her community hold dear, Elsa’s world is shattered to the winds.

Fearful of the future, when Elsa wakes to find her husband has fled, she is forced to make the most agonizing decision of her life. Fight for the land she loves or take her beloved children, Loreda and Ant, west to California in search of a better life. Will it be the land of milk and honey? Or will their experience challenge every ounce of strength they possess?

From the overriding love of a mother for her child, the value of female friendship and the ability to love again – against all odds – Elsa’s incredible journey is a story of survival, hope and what we do for the ones we love.

2. Goodnight Nathan: Mary Jane Visits by Malvina De Salvor

It’s bedtime for Nathan but he isn’t too great at actually laying down and going to sleep. Goodnight Nathan is a series following Nathan on his many bedtime adventures. Naturally inquisitive with a great imagination join Nathan on his hilarious journeys. Great read for parents with many inside jokes and hidden meaning.

It’s bedtime for Nathan but Mary Jane is paying Mommy a visit. Nathan can’t resist bedtime shenanigans. Join Nathan on his quest to meet Mary.

3. 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand 

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.

4. The Beach House (South Carolina Sunsets) by Rachel Hannah

Julie’s husband of twenty-one years was living a secret life, which ended her marriage and forced her to start over alone at forty-three years old.

Faced with a new reality, she decides to rebuild her life on an island off the coast of South Carolina and learn to make it on her own.

The only thing she isn’t expecting is to be thrown together with her estranged sister, the flower child wanna-be, yoga teaching bane of her existence. She also doesn’t expect to meet a handsome stranger who will help her transform the money pit she accidentally bought into the home of her dreams.

As she starts to create a life she loves, her husband causes a wrench in her plans once again. Will she be forced to help the man who broke her heart? Or will she finally break away and live life on her terms?

You’re going to love The Beach House and its quirky cast of characters, including Dixie, the epitome of Southern charm and wit, who runs the local bookstore called Down Yonder!

5. Split Rock: A Martha’s Vineyard Novel by Holly Hodder Eger 

In 1997, forty-year-old Annie Tucker, wife and mother of three, inherits a house on Martha’s Vineyard from her beloved and recently deceased Aunt Faye. She decides to spend the summer there with her young children. Gordon, Annie’s ambitious husband, plans to come out on weekends from their home in Maryland, but a business crisis forces him back overseas, leaving Annie and the children on the island without him for most of the summer. Annie must deal with grieving her aunt, inheriting a dog, being a single parent, and the reappearance of Chase, her first love, while her romantic notions of the Vineyard–and people–are tested … Eger’s prose is smooth and polished, and story highlights include pivotal ocean scenes that pull the reader into the tumultuous water alongside Annie.