A NIGHT OWL REVIEWS BOOK REVIEW | Reviewed by: Vee
When four-year old Abby Gray is killed in a hit and run accident, her mother Tessa Gray sinks into a bitter depression. Unable to function, she quits her job and becomes obsessed with finding her daughter’s ‘murderer.’
She begins seeing Celia Reed, a therapist. As Tessa slowly, painfully comes to grips with her grief and makes progress toward identifying the car that hit her daughter, Celia’s life slowly and painfully falls apart.
Divorced from an alcoholic, Celia remarries only to find herself at odds with her new husband and her teen-age son who becomes more aloof by the day.
Their world’s overlap and collide in unexpected ways.
Simply put, Life Without Summer was depressing. For those of us with children, imagining the loss you’d feel at having your child’s life senselessly snuffed out, is horrible. As an author I can’t imagine writing this story and I can only hope it gives solace to someone.
That said, the story was written in an interesting way through journal type entries from Celia and Tessa. I felt the writing was well done the grief, distress, stress were described well. Ms. Griffin is a talented writer.
Aug 15, 2010 | 9780312599546
5 = Rare - Top Pick | 4.5 = I Loved It - Top Pick | 4 = Good Solid Read
3.5 = Enjoyable | 3 Stars = OK - Needs a few changes | 2 Stars = It just didn't click / DNF
Book Blurb for Life Without Summer
Fans of Deep End of the Ocean and Good Grief will be transfixed by this stunning debut about family, forgiveness, and the struggle to find hope in healing.
Life Without Summer deftly weaves together the lives of Tessa, a young mother who has just lost her four-year-old daughter in a hit and run accident outside her preschool, and Celia, the grief counselor who tries to help her put her life back together. Once the picture of domestic bliss, Tessa now grapples with the terrible emptiness left by her daughter’s absence, made worse by police insistence that the case is unsolvable. As Celia struggles to keep Tessa from getting caught up in a bleak crusade for answers, she finds that their sessions open the door to emotions she’s spent years ignoring, forcing her to face the rising tensions in her own life– her troubled teenage son, her alcoholic ex-husband, and her fragile new marriage. Celia soon finds that she must come to terms with the tragic mistakes of her own past and the choices that have led her family to the brink of destruction.
Told in two voices, this novel is a haunting portrait of two women whose lives begin to converge unexpectedly when the answers one needs turns out to be the other’s only chance for peace. Life Without Summer illuminates what can happen to one’s self-identity and love relationships in the wake of tragedy. Each woman’s intensely personal journey reverberates universal themes about the connections between love and marriage and truth and forgiveness, which no reader will forget.
|