Romantic Release for Valentine's Day

  

Summerhaven
By Tiffany Odekirk
Publisher: Covenant Communications (February 14, 2022)
Paperback: 274 pages
ISBN-10: 1524421464
ISBN-13: 978-1524421465

Publisher’s Blurb:

Hannah Kent and Oliver Jennings pledged their hearts to each other as children. Now, years later, Hannah is thrilled to receive an invitation to spend the summer at Oliver’s family’s country estate. The path to wedded bliss is clear―so long as Oliver’s highbrow older brother, Damon, has ceased his juvenile antics, Hannah’s future looks bright indeed.

 

But from the moment Hannah arrives at Summerhaven, nothing is as she expected. Oliver seems disinterested in renewing their acquaintance, and Damon is not the brutish boy she remembers but a man intent on avoiding marriage. Although she has loathed Damon her whole life, when he contrives a ruse designed to win them both what they desire, Hannah warily agrees. All she has to do to reclaim Oliver’s attention is pretend to be madly in love with Damon. But when Damon is surprisingly convincing in his role as a suitor, it proves difficult to discern the line between pretense and true love.

 My Thoughts:

I’ve seen so many advance raves for this book, and my expectations were high. Sadly, the book did not live up to them.

 Oh, it’s romantic. There are lots of pretty words, and lots of feelings. It hit the mark in those goals.

 Interestingly, it’s set in the same “year without a summer” that we saw in Jane and the Year Without a Summer. My reading lately has been full of interesting parallels like that.

 But the protagonist, Hannah, was so disappointing. The whole book is about her wanting to be in love/have someone be in love with her. If she’s not thinking about that, she’s missing her deceased mother. She mentions, a few times, doing charity work for her father’s church, and how much she enjoys it. And we actually see her doing something charitable once. It’s a great scene, but it’s isolated, with no real effect on Hannah. As Damon tells her in the book, she is “In love with the idea of love”. She’s spunky, and wants to ride a stallion. (She insists on it being a stallion…more on this later.) She calls herself a bluestocking because she likes to read books and the newspaper, but she shows none of the real literary or intellectual life of a true bluestocking, just some opinions on how the world should work.

 There is no real antagonist in the story. There are a couple of women who might keep Hannah from the man she wants. She even mentions how cruel one of them was to her—and I went back to that interaction and saw nothing cruel at all. I suppose you could call society an antagonist, because of the demands it places on people’s lives. But that’s a stretch, too. Maybe Damon and Oliver’s father, a little?

 There are some editing issues that I hope are cleared up between the ARC I read and the publication version. First, Miss Diggs is mentioned as having honey-colored curls. Then, when Hannah sees her outside the dressmaker’s shop, she is raven-haired. At the picnic, she is blonde again.

 And then there’s the bit that really brings out the Picky Vicky in me. You have to understand—horses are a big thing in my family. My mother was an equestrian and a riding mistress in the UK before she emigrated to the US, and continued to teach riding into my childhood. I had a pony growing up. My children love to ride, and the youngest takes riding lessons currently. So you could say I know some things. I’m not sure the writer or editor of this book do. Hannah is so insistent on riding a stallion. A stallion, for the non-horsey out there, is a male horse that has not been castrated. They can be a handful. Clearly, Hannah wants to ride a horse that has some spirit. But the insistence that it be a stallion is just silly. Mares can be a handful too. Second, the stirrups are constantly referred to as “footholds”. Every time. I did some googling and could not find any evidence that stirrups are referred to anywhere as “footholds”. I know these things might not be as bothersome to others, but for me, they were highly annoying and I really hope they were fixed.

And can we talk about the use of "okay"? In a fantasy book, I can let it slide, since the characters probably speak some other language that we've put into English equivalents. But this book is set in England in the early 1800s. Okay didn't enter the language until 1839.

 It’s not a horrible book. It’s not as great as I was led to believe. Of all the characters, I think Damon was the best—his big “revelation” to Hannah was no surprise, but I liked that aspect of his character.

The character who grew the most was definitely Oliver. I really disliked him at first, as I believe we are meant to, but he shapes up beautifully by the end.

I didn't hate this book. I'd give it three stars. But I don't love it either.

 Possible Objectionable Material:

As with any book published by Covenant, this is squeaky clean. We witness some poverty. Some anger. Loss of a parent. A woman breastfeeds her baby.

 Who  Might Like this Book:

Romance fans, especially those who like romance that doesn’t have anything past kissing onscreen. Those who like family dynamics, and books set in the regency period.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.