Summer at Oyster Bay by Jenny Hale

Published: June 9, 2016

Book Blurb: Summer at Oyster Bay is the perfect, feel-good summer romance, about the importance of home and family, learning what love is, and living for the moment.

They say falling in love is easy. But what if you know it’ll break your heart?

For Emily Tate, returning to her charming childhood home Oyster Bay is like coming up for air after the fast pace of her city life. At the farm her grandfather built, surrounded by sister Rachel’s chatter, Gram’s buttermilk biscuits, and the soft, white sand, Emily is reminded of exactly who she is and what she holds most dear.

When Emily starts work at elegant Water’s Edge Inn, Charles Peterson, the handsome new owner, asks for her help. He wants to expand and needs Emily to teach him the local ways, so he can convince the planning commission. Emily vows to make him fall in love with her hometown, just the way it is.

At work, Charles is reserved and serious, yet once Emily has him kicking off his shoes in the sand and sailing across the glistening Chesapeake Bay, she sees another side to him, and their easy rapport feels like the start of something big.

But when it becomes clear Charles’s plans for the inn involve bulldozing Oyster Bay, Emily is heartbroken. Will she lose her home and Charles all at once, or can she save Oyster Bay, and give true love a chance?

Book Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK | Goodreads

My Review

You can always count on Jenny Hale to write a heart-warming novel filled with love, laughter and happily ever after. Although the story-line was a bit predictable, the novel held my attention from beginning to end and was thoroughly enjoyable.

Summer at Oyster Bay is a story about a woman named Emily that just moved back home to Clearwater -a small coastal town near Chesapeake Bay- after turning town a marriage proposal from her now ex-boyfriend. Emily left it all behind three years ago to move to Richmond with her boyfriend Brad but over time she realized big city life wasn’t for her, and now she’s back to her small town roots and back to square one.

Temporarily living with her grandmother on the family farm in Oyster Bay brings back old history and countless memories for Emily. She just took a job as an event coordinator at Water’s Edge Inn, which has a new owner from New York named Charles Peterson who purchased the Inn as an investment. He happens to be single and very attractive and has absolutely no plans to stick around past the re-modeling of his investment.

I enjoyed Hale’s writing and loved the main theme of the novel of family, life and love mixed with a combination of holding on to old memories and making new ones. Family and loved ones are the most important things in life and it’s important to be there and support one another through anything that comes their way. Home is wherever you make it, but sometimes when a place has so much history it’s hard to let go and move on.

“Listen, Emily. I know how you think, but you can get yourself into a lot of trouble by prioritizin’ memories over real relationships. Don’t be afraid to have them. It’s the relationships that will carry you through the hard times and help you grow. Not the memories.”

Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

I received a free Advanced Review Copy from the author via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Please note the quote above may appear differently in the finalized published novel.

About the Author – Jenny Hale

Author Links:Website | Facebook | Twitter

Author Bio: When I graduated college, one of my friends said, “Look out for this one; she’s going to be an author one day.” Despite being an avid reader and a natural storyteller, it wasn’t until that very moment that the idea of writing novels occurred to me.

Sometimes our friends can see the things that we can’t.

While I didn’t start straight away, that comment sowed a seed and several years, two children, and hundreds of thousands of words later, I completed a novel that I felt was worthy of publication. The result is Coming Home for Christmas, a heart-warming story about friends, family, and the magic of love at Christmas.

When I’m not writing, I’m a District Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages, a mother of two boys, and a wife to a very supportive husband.