BOOK REVIEW: Summer's End

Deanna Duras was only nineteen when she fell in love and got married to Marc-Edouard, a very successful French lawyer based in San Francisco but always on the move. She had met him just in time when she lost her father who was the only family member in her life and Marc-Edouard was her saving grace. They were such a loving couple then and now years later, it all seemed like a short fairy tale. Their marriage was lack-lustre and more of a show to the outside.

It didn't help that he was never around as he was always out of the country on business trips and their daughter Pilar travels with him to France to visit his mother. His mother never liked her because she wasn't French, her relationship with her daughter was non-existent and her husband was barely ever affectionate. She was living the trophy wife life but was border-line depressed. What kept her going was the love she had for them and then her painting.

On this particular summer, Marc-Edouard had a business trip to Athens and Pilar was going to spend hers with her grandmother in France. Deanna couldn't stand the thought of spending three months in France with her mother-in-law so she decided to stay back in San Francisco. It was going to be a long summer alone but she'd rather have that than subject herself to living with Marc-Edouard's mother.

With her husband and daughter gone, Deanna decides to go on a weekend trip with her friend Kim where she meets Ben, a gallery owner who's interested in showing her long stored art works. Deanna then gets involved with Ben and she feels like her life had begun adding some color, falling in love with someone and showing her art.

Summer comes to an abrupt end when a tragedy occurs and Deanna also finds out Marc-Edouard had long been cheating on her with a younger woman in France.

I really was wrapped up in this book and it's one of my favourites from Danielle Steel. The opening pages seemed a bit slow but you could immediately tell it was leading somewhere and that there was an unfolding drama. The characters had remarkable personalities, it feels like you know them on a personal level and were not very predictable.

The story itself is a very typical plot (which I'm not tired of by the way) of an unhappy marriage that one party just can't seem to let go of. What makes it fun to read are the twists and turns till the end of the book. You'd be in such a hurry to know what happens next.

Stories like this makes me wonder why people can't just leave relationships they're tired of instead of hurting the other person and living in a web of lies. It also shows how the relationship between parents deeply affect their kids' personalities.

Does tragedy draw a couple close or further apart? Will true love once again triumph? I'd leave you to find out.

Although published in 1979, this story is timeless and doesn't even seem like a vintage novel.

This gets an 8/10 rating from me. Totally worth the read if you're into romance novels.

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