Summer in the Bluffs is about a childless African American power couple, Ama and Omar, and their three goddaughters. Omar is gone and Ama wants the goddaughters to spend the summer with her one last time on her estate on Martha’s Vineyard, before she gifts one of them the house.
First of all, I really liked the characters in this book. Yes, all of them were flawed, but they were interesting and passionate and each had a good story.
Then, even as a white woman, I felt that I was able to at least take away a bit of insight into this individual African American author’s life experience: The ability to only truly relax and be oneself when around those with the same life experience, the need to constantly be better than a white person to be treated as less than them but passable, and even the particular shade of one’s skin being judged within the African American (and white) community.
However, while I liked the characters and the story, I had a lot of problems with the writing. Between the clichés (the sex scenes read like they were out of an old-school romance novel) and the inconsistencies in events in the plot, I was constantly distracted from the story. From characters who saw someone laughing on the phone when they didn’t wake up until hours later to someone being adamant that she wasn’t ready to introduce her girlfriend to her family to suddenly having the girlfriend meet the family the next day without any explanation or acknowledgement, it drove me crazy. I started trying to find all the mistakes instead of being able to fully immerse myself in the story. The name dropping was also a lot throughout, although it did introduce me to a couple new jazz albums, so that’s a good thing to come out of it.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley and the Book Club Girl with William Morrow Publishing in exchange for my honest review. It has not influenced my opinion.