Publication Date: July 15, 2025
Fans of Jennifer Weiner and Sunny Hostin will love this emotional dual-timeline novel about two former besties finding their way back to each other.
To heal their friendship, they’ll have to face their past.
Jewel Stone has it all—the perfect marriage, a bestselling author career, her dream home—or so she likes everyone to believe. But between her writer’s block and her husband losing his job, her picture-perfect life is in shambles. And inspiration just isn’t hitting…until she receives a call she never expected: her former best friend needs her help.
When Shelby Andrews wakes up in the hospital after a biking accident, she can’t remember the last twelve years. She knows she owns a bookstore on the beach, but she has no memory of Lacey, her nineteen-year-old adopted daughter who’s away for the summer. There’s only one person who can help Shelby through this—her bestie, Jewel.
With so many secrets and heartbreaks between them, Jewel and Shelby haven’t spoken in years. Yet Jewel can’t turn away from the friend who doesn’t remember their fallout. Besides, the best writing she’s ever done was with Shelby…
But when they learn Lacey’s really spending her summer searching for her birth parents, their tentative reunion might just unravel along with all of their secrets.
A Summer for the Books by Michelle Lindo-Rice is a dual timeline with several journal entries.
There are several characters, which makes it challenging to keep the characters straight. It is also a little choppy and somewhat difficult to read since it’s not only a book within a book. The entries are also written using pseudonyms for the people involved, and they relate directly to the bestseller that one of them wrote many years ago. So, it was sometimes challenging to keep the characters straight.
Jewel and Shelby have been best friends since kindergarten and did everything together. When one of them got pregnant, they were there for each other, but neither kept the baby. Their secret destroyed their friendship ten years later, and they had no contact until this summer.
When they unexpectedly reconnect, we get to know each of them a little at a time, along with their history. Shelby’s adopted daughter, who’s now in college, is woven throughout and could be considered the third main character.
Jewel is married, and they face some stresses and financial difficulties, especially when she is unable to write her next book. Shelby owns a bookstore in a small beach town in Delaware, which serves as an essential backdrop.
Much of the story is set at the beach, and it plays a vital role in all their lives, even when it’s in different locales. Many stories are told and woven together, and most are integral in both timelines. There is a resolution to most of the stories, but several loose ends remain, and the ending seems rushed.
A Summer for the Books is a nice summer read, thanks to its engaging setting. With dual timelines and numerous secrets that impact the present, it’s a complex story about friendships, betrayals, and the cost of keeping secrets.
National bestselling author, Michelle Lindo-Rice, is a Publisher’s Weekly Bestselling author, an Emma Award Winner and a RWA Vivian Award finalist. Michelle enjoys reading and crafting fiction across genres. Originally from Jamaica West Indies, she has earned degrees from New York University, SUNY at Stony Brook, Teachers College Columbia University, Argosy University and has been educator for over 20 years. She also writes as Zoey Marie Jackson.
