Tag: beatriz williams

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Historical Fiction

Lovvve me a summer drama/romance set on an island. The Beach at Summerly explores Emilia’s life in both 1946 and 1954. The earlier storyline explores the Winthrop Island community as they readjust after the war. Two childhood friends, Amory and Shep Peabody are back on the island introducing a tangle of confused romantic feelings on Emilia’s end. New to the island, is the boys’ aunt, Olive, who is well-traveled, liberated, and entirely independent. In the present, Emilia is summoned to CIA headquarters to confront the consequences of the summer past and the help she provided in capturing a Soviet spy.

The earlier timeline of this story felt much more rich and fully fleshed to me. It explored the class dynamics between Emilia’s family and the wealthy ‘summer’ families and how it played into her feelings towards the Peabody boys and about her future. The dynamics between her and each family member were complicated and helped me understand her. I loved being immersed in the whirlwind of her life.

I felt like the later narrative didn’t do Emilia justice. To me, it didn’t really speak to the complicated feelings she must have had about the earlier summer and I had trouble connecting as much with her character and understanding how she’d gotten to where she was.

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