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The Summer Club
By Hannah McKinnon
Atria Books,9781668025185, July 23, 2024, 336pp.

The Short of It:

Dishy neighborhood gossip.

The Rest of It:

Mayhaven is the best keep secret in Massachusetts. Tucked between old cedars and a spring-fed lake, the Mayhaven beach club has long been the ultimate escape to understated exclusivity. It’s the place where Darcy Birch is supposed to be experiencing the best summer of her life, but there are a few things standing in her way. ~ From the publisher

The Summer Club is all about the Mayhaven “country club”. Quotes because the members and staff of Mayhaven choose not to think of it as a country club per se. To them, it’s an association and not quite as exclusive as a typical country club but don’t be fooled, it is and only certain types are fit be members.

Darcy’s summer is not going as planned. Her love for golf came to an end, so there is no golf for Darcy but her proximity to the course as she works as a summer counselor reminds her daily of what she’s lost. Especially the time she and her dad spent on the course.

Mr. Birch wants what’s best for his family, but he doesn’t understand Darcy’s sudden mood swings or the complicated nature of club membership. As president, membership equates to dollars so when new folks join, he doesn’t really care if they are the right types or not. His board doesn’t agree.

Enter the Creevys. They are rich, loud and flashy and they happen to be Mr. Birch’s neighbor. Parties into the wee hours of the night, statement cars and the hugest monstrosity of all, a gigantic luxury RV, parked where everyone can see it. Mr. Birch is not happy but when the Creevy’s apply for membership, dollars are dollars after all.

There is a lot of tension in this story. Darcy’s reasons for quitting golf are revealed slowly and her relationship with Flick Creevy proves to be a little surprising. He doesn’t really seem like her type, and yet she finds herself drawn to his quiet nature. Mr. Birch is regularly caught putting out fires. Someone is stealing from the club, there’s vandalism, and there is the day to day routine of the inebriated members as they try to tell him how it should be.

This was a good read but I wouldn’t call it a beach read. There are some heavy topics and the tensions run high throughout the story. However, McKinnon held my attention and I literally read it in one sitting.

Source: Sent to me by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

House of Cotton
By Monica Brashears
Flatiron Books,9781250851932, April 2024, 304 pp.

The Short of It:

Raw and brutal.

The Rest of It:

One night, while working at her dead-end gas station job, Magnolia Brown encounters a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton. He offers to turn her luck around with a lucrative “modeling” job at his family’s funeral home–where she will pose as clients’ dead loved ones. She accepts. ~ From the publisher

This story will hit you with a closed fist. The author holds nothing back. Magnolia’s struggle to live has her doing things that at first won’t shock you, but then as the story plays out, I found her desperation to survive shockingly sad. The people she encounters never have her best interests at heart. No. And deep down she knows it, but her walk to freedom is alarming at times. So much so that I almost put the book down more than once.

This was chosen for my book club so I felt the need to finish it and it left me in a strange place. On the one hand, the writing is peppered with beautiful moments but the story is dark, very dark. Death and decay hang out at every turn and it’s pretty explicit.

There are moments though, that reveal Magnolia’s true heart, like her relationship with a homeless man and the many memories of her grandma that are shared throughout the story. Life in a funeral home is rough and when you choose to play a dead loved one, things can get a little dangerous. Not so much the action of it, but what it does to your psyche. When you are so fully immersed in death, how do you separate life from death?

I will be honest here, House of Cotton was a FINALIST for the 2024 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award and NPR’s BEST BOOK OF 2023, but it’s explicit in detail and might be a lot for someone not used to reading something so raw and ragged.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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