Summertime Guests by Wendy Francis
Published by Graydon House Books ISBN 9781525895982
Trade paperback, $16.99, 320 pages
If you're the type of person who, when you are staying at a hotel, likes to people-watch and wonder about the lives of the people visiting there, Wendy Francis' novel Summertime Guests is the perfect read for you.
Riley, her husband-to-be Tom, and Tom's mother Marilyn are at the Seafarer for a tasting for their wedding. Marilyn would love for her son to be married at the Seafarer, whose guests have included everyone from Winston Churchill to Jennifer Lopez. Riley would prefer a small, intimate wedding in a meadow, and Tom is just trying to keeping both women happy.
While they are discussing ideas with the Seafarer wedding coordinator, they hear a horrifying crash and discover that a woman has fallen to her death from a balcony right in front of them. Did she fall, jump, or was she pushed?
Jean-Paul, the general manager of the hotel, has recently relocated to Boston from Paris with his wife Marie, who recently gave birth to their daughter. Jean-Paul's job has been all-consuming preparing the hotel for its remodel and reopening, and Marie is having difficulty adjusting to motherhood.
Jean-Paul now has to deal with the police, TV news crews, staff, hotel guests, and a huge wedding party set to arrive, as well as alerting the wealthy hotel owner of the situation.
Gwen has arranged for a special birthday weekend for her boyfriend Jason at the Seafarer. They both teach at a college, but what Gwen doesn't know is that Jason has given up on both teaching his classes and working on his dissertation.
Jason has an explosive temper which has resulted in him attacking people unprovoked. He is jealous of anyone who disrespects or flirts with Gwen. He has even hurt Gwen, something that upsets him because his father used to beat him and his mother when he was a young boy.
Claire is a 61 year-old recent widow who has come to Boston to look up her old boyfriend, hoping that he may still have feelings for her. She is on a leave from her job as a journalist at a Providence newspaper, where a story she wrote about a mobster has had repercussions for both her and the paper.
Wendy Francis successfully combines a summer romance novel with a mystery- we know a woman died, is it someone we have met in the story? The book goes back and forth in time over the week of the death, so it could be.
It can be difficult for an author to keep separate storylines equally interesting, but Francis does a terrific job of investing the reader in each of the four stories, and intersecting them at the right time.
I enjoyed the Boston setting, I felt like we were right there on the water in a beautiful hotel, and found the glimpses of the inner workings of the hotel enlightening.
Now that many of us will be returning to traveling soon, Summertime Guests would be a great book to pack in your suitcase, and pull out on the beach or by the hotel pool while you sip a cocktail and people watch. Wendy Francis pulled me into her story so enticingly that I read it in one day. I highly recommend it.
Thanks to Harlequin for putting me on Wendy Francis book tour.
