It's Memorial Day and New York socialite Lily Dane has come back to Seaview, Rhode Island, where her family stays for the summer. Unfortunately for Lily it's not going to be quite what she expected - the Greenwald's have decided to spend their summer in Seaview as well. Budgie is Lily's former best friend who has recently married Lily's former fiancé, Nick Greenwald. She inserts herself back into Lily's life as if she didn't steal the love of her life. But secrets and lies will eventually come out and turn everyone's lives upside down.

I love, love, love the author's writing. It's descriptive, flows smoothly, and is easy to get lost in. The book has great characters and alternating chapters of past and present - how Lily and Nick met, fell madly in love and how their engagement ended, and now, almost seven years later, how they react to seeing each other for the first time since it ended and how Nick came to marry Lily's best friend.

This is a perfect beach read. So of course that means that I read it during December. That's okay because I loved this book and reading it in December didn't make me love it any less. This book transported me back in time to a small beach community. This alternates between the present events (1938-1939 oh and also 1944) and the past (1931-1932). I felt the author did a really good job writing about those time periods

 

Lily is back at the beach for the summer with her family, when to her surprise her former fiance and her former best friend who have now gotten married show show up on the beach. The further you read into this story the more you learn about the past and you learn about why her best friend and former fiance end up married. I hated Lily's former best friend Budgie (That is her stupid nickname. I have a better one for her, pardon my language, Bitchie). I can't believe the nerve of this girl. I could just go on and on rambling about my hatred for her but I'll spare you.

 

I was on the edge of my seat for what happens towards the end. I had a hunch at what some of the revelations would be and I had actually managed to guess some. I was holding my breath towards the end after what happens when Lily finds out the truth. I was yelling at my kindle thinking the book would end a way I didn't want it to end, but then it ended perfectly. I was flailing with joy when I read the last page.

 

So to recap (since I just ended up rambling on and not making much sense in order to avoid spoilers) I loved this book and would highly recommend it especially as a beach read.

This really would make a good beach read but of course I am reading it in the middle of a snowy December day. I have loved this so far. Well actually I have loved almost everything in this, everything but Budgie. I absolutely hate her. I call her (please excuse my language) Bitchie. I just can't believe the nerve of that girl. Everything that happened in the past hasn't been revealed yet but quite frankly I don't think anything would lessen my hatred of Budgie any. Another thing, what kind of nickname is Budgie?

I don't know about you, but I rarely have truly visceral reactions to books. I obviously love reading and get really excited about them sometimes, but I can't remember the last time that I was so thrown by a plot twist that I've reared back in my chair, shouted creative expletives, and slapped something.

I got to a certain point in A Hundred Summers, though, and that's exactly what happened. I had to slap something.

Graham gettin' it on with the teenage neighbor?


When I was the merchandising supervisor in my bookselling days, I always put together an endcap of beach reads for the summer months. I went through the shelves and grabbed anything with images of sand and surf on the cover. It's actually a little disheartening how many women's fiction books have such similar covers and it's easy to dismiss them all as homogeneous, mindless stories of sex and crying.

If I were still in merchandising, I'd be putting this book up on top of the endcap: the cover fits in thematically (though a little more interesting than most) but it's also the best kind of diversionary reading. It's a little fluffy -- kind of soapish, even -- but it's so well done that I didn't really even notice.

This is a love-and-backstabbing story set in 1930s New England. In 1938, Lily Dane is summering in Rhode Island with her mother, Aunt Julie, and young sister Kiki when an unwelcome blast from the past shows up: her former best friend Budgie and former fiancee Nick -- newly married to each other. The story flashes back and forth between the "present day" and 1931, when the two women were in college and Lily was first meeting Nick. As the story unravels, we learn why their relationship fell apart, secrets come spilling out, and the drama ratchets up.

This is definitely a plot-driven book and the characters aren't the most well-developed or dimensional, but it's fairly well-written and I found myself completely absorbed. I liked how Williams handled the back-and-forth storytelling, slowly revealing pieces of the plot, and I was genuinely shocked by many of the plot twists. This isn't great literature, but it will surely make for a great weekend of reading in the sun.

Sorry, I don't do the beach. Or the pool. This girl doesn't swim, hates sand, and is practically bathing suit-phobic. So it would be a lie to say this was my beach read. I imagine it could be yours, but I read it mostly while sitting on dry land in a park.

I am rather disappointed by this one. I expected so much more I guess. The historical part of the book was pretty great but the romance, instead of being enjoyable, just seemed to cheesy and dramatic. There was the whole forbidden thing going on and a whole lot of other stuff. Spring Fever went along somewhat similar lines when it came to family secrets but it was done so much better and was so much more enjoyable.I guess I'd recommend this to people who enjoy passionate romances?