Secrets of a Summer Night (The Wallflowers, #1)

by Lisa Kleypas

[Amanda]

My "thrown back to the library gods" shelf was created for books like Secrets of a Summer Night. Not because I didn't finish it -- I did finish. No, because I spent a good chunk of the book experiencing reading deja vu.

Because I had read the book except Goodreads said I hadn't. And that poses problems. For my sanity. It created all sorts of questions.

"Did I read this book in some past life?"

"Have I read so many historical romances they're all blurring together?"

"Am I thinking of a different historical romance book with similar characters and circumstances?"

"Did I read it and not mark it in Goodreads?"

Quite the dilemma I had, especially since this isn't the first time I've experienced something similar. Near I can figure, I have read Secrets of a Summer Night before -- at least about half of it -- but for some reason, never finished. Because the ending, I am quite sure, is not anything I remember.

And I remember the endings. Because the endings are why you read. Well, most of why. Okay, part of why. You get the idea. I suspect I gave up (if I'm not going crazy and really have read part of this book before) because there was a lull in the second half and I wasn't sure why the book had to continue for so long.

I've done this before when the marriage isn't the end of the book. There's always a change in the tension and I probably got bored, set the book down, and didn't pick it up. In case it's not obvious, I powered through this time.

I'm glad I did because the ending was EXPLOSIVE. Yeah, I'm punning here. Anyway! Annabelle. And Simon. I was kind of disappointed we didn't get more Simon's POV, because I liked him, standard historical romance hero that he was. Annabelle I was less enamored of, mainly because she struck me as rather snobby even though things like character development happen.

Annabelle just gets a lot of page time. And sometimes, I like witnessing the man's downfall from his perspective. It's so much more delicious that way.

Secrets of a Summer Night is definitely a "read in one day" sort of books, purely for pleasure, that you don't put a lot of critical thought to. I'm determined to plow forward with this series because, as everyone has told me, Devil in Winter is worth it.