Happy Friday! It’s the first Friday Five of 2023! This week’s topic is all about books that had something happen at the end that I didn’t love. I’ll include a spoiler section under each book where I discuss the specific thing I didn’t love, so be sure and skip the section if you haven’t read a certain book and don’t want to be spoiled.
28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand
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By the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Summer of ’69: Their secret love affair has lasted for decades — but this could be the summer that changes everything.
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.
SPOILERS BELOW
We know right off the bat that Mallory is dying and her son is having to call a guy that obviously isn’t in her life, so I knew this wasn’t going to have a happy ending, but I wasn’t prepared for how crushed I was. I feel like the book wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable or addicting if they had found a way to be together, but I can’t stop hoping that’s the case. I also understand why they couldn’t be together, but at the same time, I also think it could have been resolved. I was sure that Jake was going to turn out to be Link’s father and that was the reason Mallory named him like she did-like he was her link to Jake. Anyone else think this??
One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid
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In her twenties, Emma Blair marries her high school sweetheart, Jesse. They build a life for themselves, far away from the expectations of their parents and the people of their hometown in Massachusetts. They travel the world together, living life to the fullest and seizing every opportunity for adventure.
On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever.
Emma quits her job and moves home in an effort to put her life back together. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling in love again. When Emma and Sam get engaged, it feels like Emma’s second chance at happiness.
That is, until Jesse is found. He’s alive, and he’s been trying all these years to come home to her. With a husband and a fiancé, Emma has to now figure out who she is and what she wants, while trying to protect the ones she loves.
Who is her one true love? What does it mean to love truly?
Emma knows she has to listen to her heart. She’s just not sure what it’s saying.
SPOILERS BELOW
One True Loves is my least favorite TJR book solely because I didn’t like who she ended up with. I was pulling for the high school sweetheart the entire time, and I just couldn’t make myself fall in love with Sam.
Catch Her When She Falls by Allison Buccola
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Ten years ago, my boyfriend killed my best friend.
When Micah Wilkes was a senior in high school, her boyfriend was convicted of murdering her best friend, Emily. A decade later, Micah has finally moved on from the unforgivable betrayal and loss. Now the owner of a bustling coffee shop in her small hometown in Pennsylvania, she’s happily coupled up with another old high school friend, the two having bonded over their shared sorrow.
But when reminders of her past begin appearing at her work and home, Micah begins to doubt what she knows about Emily’s death. Questions raised on a true crime blog and in an online web sleuthing forum force her to reexamine her memories of that fateful night. She told the truth to the investigators on the case, but was there another explanation for Emily’s murder? A stranger in the woods. An obsessive former classmate. Or the internet’s favorite suspect: Joshua, Emily’s outcast younger brother who hasn’t been seen since his sister’s death.
As Micah delves deeper into the case, she feels her grip on reality loosening, her behavior growing more and more secretive and unhinged. As she races to piece together the truth about that night ten years ago, Micah grapples with how things could have gone so wrong and wonders whether she, too, might be next to disappear.
SPOILERS BELOW
I read Catch Her When She Falls back in February, and I still think about parts of the book months later. It could have been one of my favorite thrillers of the year if the ending had been different. Y’all, this has one of the worst endings I’ve ever read. I love an open-ended ending where everything isn’t completely wrapped up and some parts are left open to the reader’s interpretation, but this book? There was no ending. It just stopped. Literally, the character was on her way to do something and the book ended. It was like the author got tired of the story and then just stopped writing and turned the book into the publisher. I’m guessing there is supposed to be a sequel, but I’m not a fan.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
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The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it.
But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn’t so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is still out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth?
SPOILERS BELOW
Everyone raves about A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder so I was honestly expecting to like it a little more than I did, but the thing that really pushed me over the edge was how Barney died. Really?? The dog??? The dog is never supposed to die in a book. I just thought this was completely uncalled for.
Aside from Barney’s death, I also had a major problem with the fact that her best friend’s dad was keeping this random girl in an attic because he thought she was the girl that he had slept with and gave a head injury to, but it was the WRONG GIRL. He kept her for 5 years, but he didn’t realize it wasn’t the same girl??????? That makes absolutely zero sense.
Songs in Ursa Major by Emma Brodie
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The year is 1969, and the Bayleen Island Folk Fest is abuzz with one name: Jesse Reid. Tall and soft-spoken, with eyes blue as stone-washed denim, Jesse Reid’s intricate guitar riffs and supple baritone are poised to tip from fame to legend with this one headlining performance. That is, until his motorcycle crashes on the way to the show.
Jane Quinn is a Bayleen Island local whose music flows as naturally as her long blond hair. When she and her bandmates are asked to play in Jesse Reid’s place at the festival, it almost doesn’t seem real. But Jane plants her bare feet on the Main Stage and delivers the performance of a lifetime, stopping Jesse’s disappointed fans in their tracks: A star is born.
Jesse stays on the island to recover from his near-fatal accident and he strikes up a friendship with Jane, coaching her through the production of her first record. As Jane contends with the music industry’s sexism, Jesse becomes her advocate, and what starts as a shared calling soon becomes a passionate love affair. On tour with Jesse, Jane is so captivated by the giant stadiums, the late nights, the wild parties, and the media attention, that she is blind-sided when she stumbles on the dark secret beneath Jesse’s music. With nowhere to turn, Jane must reckon with the shadows of her own past; what follows is the birth of one of most iconic albums of all time.
Shot through with the lyrics, the icons, the lore, the adrenaline of the early ’70s music scene, Songs in Ursa Major pulses with romantic longing and asks the question so many female artists must face: What are we willing to sacrifice for our dreams?
SPOILERS BELOW
Songs in Ursa Major would be in my top 5 favorite books of all time if one key detail had been different in the end. This is one of those books that has an epilogue that occurs 30 years after the events of the book. I know some people don’t love a huge time jump in a story’s epilogue, but I normally love it. In this case, I had an issue.
First, the fact that Jesse and Jane don’t end up together devasted me. That alone kept it from being a 5 star, favorite of all-time, book for me, but I didn’t love that the epilogue seemed to bring up so many questions that I was left wondering. And again, I’m all for an open-ended ending, but since this one was so far into the future, I wondered how a lot of what happened with the characters had actually occurred. It felt disconnected from the actual book.
Have you read any of these books? I’d love to hear your thoughts if so!
Check out my past Friday Five posts!
5 Books to Read When you Become Obsessed with Bridgerton
5 Favorite Books from Popular Authors
5 #1 Books from the Past 5 Years
5 Most Anticipated Beach Reads: Romance Edition
5 Most Anticipated Beach Reads: Mystery/Thrillers Edition
