Angry and humiliated, her car already loaded with her possessions, Conley sneaks out of her own celebration and heads to Silver Bay, Florida, where she and her sister Grayson grew up. Grayson has been running the family newspaper, the Silver Bay Beacon, but can barely afford to keep putting out the weekly, and somewhat resents that Conley escaped and made a name for herself elsewhere.
Silver Bay is full of interesting characters, Conley and Grayson’s delightful grandmother, Lorraine, who helped raise them; her housekeeper, Winnie; Skelly, the boy next door, now divorced and fixated on Conley; young Mike, the Silver Bay Beacon’s only reporter; and the absurd Rowena, who has been the Beacon’s gossip columnist for generations, writing the Hello, Summer column. Two characters who intersect but Conley never meets, although they become important to the story, are Congressman Symmes Robinette and Buddy Bright, the Up All Night DJ of the local station.
Coming back from a bar about 3 am, Conley and Skelly come across a fatal car crash, which turns out to be Congressman Robinette, deceased despite their attempt to rescue him. Conley’s reporter instinct takes over because she knows there’s a story his family isn’t telling. She starts writing for the family paper and tries to use her reporting to build the Beacon’s audience and profitability – her sister is simultaneously annoyed and appreciative, as sisters sometimes are. Also, enjoyably, Conley’s former colleagues start calling her when her coverage of the mysterious death and Robinettes’ complicated family situation becomes national news. I liked the descriptions of the small town newspaper although was skeptical whether, if Conley decided to stay in town, the paper could (a) break even and/or (b) support both sisters and their two employees.
Near the end, Andrews reveals she is a kindred spirit as Conley goes into her childhood bedroom:
Title: Hello, Summer
Author: Mary Kay Andrews
Narrator: Kathleen McInerney
Publication: Macmillan, Audiobook, 2020
Genre: Fiction
Source: Library
Silver Bay is full of interesting characters, Conley and Grayson’s delightful grandmother, Lorraine, who helped raise them; her housekeeper, Winnie; Skelly, the boy next door, now divorced and fixated on Conley; young Mike, the Silver Bay Beacon’s only reporter; and the absurd Rowena, who has been the Beacon’s gossip columnist for generations, writing the Hello, Summer column. Two characters who intersect but Conley never meets, although they become important to the story, are Congressman Symmes Robinette and Buddy Bright, the Up All Night DJ of the local station.
Coming back from a bar about 3 am, Conley and Skelly come across a fatal car crash, which turns out to be Congressman Robinette, deceased despite their attempt to rescue him. Conley’s reporter instinct takes over because she knows there’s a story his family isn’t telling. She starts writing for the family paper and tries to use her reporting to build the Beacon’s audience and profitability – her sister is simultaneously annoyed and appreciative, as sisters sometimes are. Also, enjoyably, Conley’s former colleagues start calling her when her coverage of the mysterious death and Robinettes’ complicated family situation becomes national news. I liked the descriptions of the small town newspaper although was skeptical whether, if Conley decided to stay in town, the paper could (a) break even and/or (b) support both sisters and their two employees.
Near the end, Andrews reveals she is a kindred spirit as Conley goes into her childhood bedroom:
Upstairs, she sat on the bed in her old room, looking out the window at the treetops. She went to the bookcase in the corner of the room and picked out her childhood favorites – Little Women, because like Jo, she intended to be a writer one day; her favorite Maud Hart Lovelace Betsy-Tacy books, because Betsy wanted to be a writer too; and Anne of Green Gables, because she’d always loved Anne Shirley’s fierceness and ambition.Part of the fun of this book is the beach setting, which is important to Conley and her family, but I also appreciated the depiction of the two determined Hawkins sisters and their growing understanding of each other, following a period of self-absorption by Conley. And I had heard that Andrews was a Betsy-Tacy fan but had not previously seen evidence of it! The congressman's death is a mystery, which Conley eventually solves, so I will count this as my eleventh book for the Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge.
Author: Mary Kay Andrews
Narrator: Kathleen McInerney
Publication: Macmillan, Audiobook, 2020
Genre: Fiction
Source: Library
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