The Summerhouse

I loved this book.. could not put it down

This was fun to read, I really cared about the characters and what happened to them. It is a cross between romance and fantasy. With some real issues, that women go through. Makes me think about the choices we make, in life. This is the first book I have read by Jude Deveraux. Her writing style makes the story intriguing.

Although I don't really like the typical "girly book" I really enjoyed this novel. Deveraux weaves the sad story of three women who's lives have been less than fair and how they come together on a chances circumstance and have the oportunity to change their past. A fantasy that all of us sometimes dream about, Deveraux really makes the reader empathize with the charaters and leaves the everyone feeling good at the end.

Jude Devereaux can tell a story. Who cares if the plot is somewhat implausible and if she doesn't quite tie up all the loose threads... The Summerhouse still is very entertaining and fun to read. One day 3 beautiful but different girls all meet by chance at the DMV in New York City. They are all 21 years old and none are native New Yorkers. They bond quickly as they share stories and a birthday cake for a few hours in their lives.Skip to their 40th birthday and one of the girls, who has in the meantime become a rich and famous author, decides to find these two other women to share her 40th birthday with. Of course, she finds them with no problem and of course, they decide to meet her in northern New England to get away from their lives for a few days.As this book is somewhat of a time travel book, anyone who is used to that genre knows what will happen. The women are given a chance to relive 3 weeks of their life - and then decide if they want to change their life to the new one or stay with the old.The book is fun to read and one that gets passed along just because you know your friends will like it too. If you like books where the main characters get to relive the past, I highly recommend "This Body" by Laurel Doud.

I read through the other reviews and the story is pretty well summed up in them. This book is so good - and represents a new, extremely welcome direction for Devereaux. Her last few books have held up my belief, that a writer can only write a limited number of truly great stories of a specific type (in her case, romance novels), before it's time to shift directions. With the Summerhouse, Devereaux remains focused on women's concerns in the romance department, but shifts the focus to women's inner lives, as well as their material situations after the romance has progressed beyond the first flushes of love. Don't you wonder what happens to the characters twenty years down the road? Yeah, this story is "fantasy," but for me it represents a much more realistic attention to women's real life concerns - the state of their marriages, their careers, their children, their own well-being, and not just lust-centered needs to be with a man. And how many of us wonder what would happen if we could go back and redo parts of our lives? This book combines that desire with characters who have real concerns, who deal with the same problems we all do. Maybe I'm just growing up with Devereaux's writing - all I can say is, with this book, that maturity is very welcome. Did I mention, the story is great, and keeps the reader turning the page to see what happens next? I could not put this book down.

Despite many of the mixed reviews I read here, I ordered this book anyway, and was very glad I did. I find Ms. Devereaux's work to be hit-and-miss, but overall enjoy her work quite a bit. This novel, however, was truly excellent. It helped me face my impending aging with the perspective that life is not over at 30, or 40, or 50, depite what many books, magazines and movies seem to tell us, and that we can start over or re-make our lives in whatever way we wish - even if we don't get to go back in time. These women were very rich creatures, had made mistakes as all of us do, and yet were given the opportunity to retrace their steps and right an ancient misstep - what a fantasy! I found Madison's story the most compelling and wished for more. This reminds me somewhat of Katherine Stone's work, in the development of such different stories at once, and I think we receive enough detail but each of these stories could easily fill its own book. Great read, you won't be able to stop turning the pages until you finish.