The summer that changed us (by Cathy Bramley)

(Amazon UK link)

I’ve liked all the books I’ve read so far by Cathy Bramley. She’s quite a prolific writer of thoughtful, character-based women’s fiction. Every so often I add a few more of her books to my wishlist, and I was given ‘The summer that changed us’ for Christmas a couple of years ago. It’s been on my to-be-read shelf since then, and I’ve finally read it.

It took me a little while to get into this novel, which focuses on three quite different women. The youngest is Katie, who’s in her late twenties and runs a lingerie shop in the seaside village of Merle Bay. It was founded and run for years by her beloved aunt, who passed away a year or so before the story begins. Katie is now making a success of it by herself, with just one assistant. Then, out of the blue, she receives an anonymous letter with a scandalous photo of herself ten years previously, and the threat of sending it to the newspaper. 

Then there’s Robyn, who is happily married to Finn. They are in their thirties. They live in Merle Bay, next door to Finn’s brother and his family. We learn quickly that Robyn had a double mastectomy, but don’t learn until a bit later in the book why this has happened. She is coming to terms with her reconstructive surgery, and is regaining her health. But Finn is very stressed due to business and money issues, and Robyn has not been able to work for a while. And Finn doesn’t seem to be attracted to her any more. 

Grace is the oldest of the three, in her mid forties. She was widowed some months earlier, after fifteen very happy years of marriage. She’s very well off, due to the sale of a successful company, but is sad that she and her husband never did the travelling they had hoped to do. She’s decided to have a few months’ break in Merle Bay, in a new property designed and built by her old friend Ned. She’s going to miss her sister, but she needs to get away from her memories. And then she gets a phone call from her solicitor, telling her that her stepchildren are challenging their father’s will… 

Each of these three women feel unable to talk about their worries, until a minor incident throws them together, and they realise that, despite huge differences in background, they somehow click. They determine to meet regularly and to talk about their worries. 

I thought the book very well written with believable people, and realistic conversations. There are other people too, in particular the local newspaper editor Barney and his delightful daughter Amber, who is fourteen. I liked them very much, and thought Amber an excellent, feisty teenager who wanted to be more grown-up, and yet was extremely intuitive and kind. Barney’s wife had died a year or so previously in a nasty accident which nearly took Amber too. 

Once I had the three main protagonists in my mind, I found myself reading at every odd moment, eager to see how the different stories progressed. Katie receives more letters, Grace has a worse shock when her husband’s ex-wife gets in contact, and Robyn begins to think she’s unattractive to everyone. But their support for each other is believable and quite moving at times. Perhaps it’s a cliché that sharing problems reduces them, but they all begin to get them a little more in perspective. They also help each other to make plans for trying to resolve them, or at least to open communication lines.

I could see where some of the storylines were going fairly early on. I had guessed what had happened to cause the shocking incident Grace learns about. I had also guessed at least part of why Finn was reluctant to get physically close to Robyn, too. I had begun to have an inkling about what might have caused Katie’s issues, too, although I wasn't expecting what transpired; I kept mentally urging her to talk to people, including Barney, so that if the worst happened they would at least know. It’s indicative of how much they all got under my skin that I was rooting for them, trying to push them to talk more to other people. 

It’s perhaps a tad unrealistic that all three of the stories reach some kind of a climax and resolution (positive or negative) around the same time. But I didn’t mind. I quite like the ends of different subplots in fiction to be tidied up with hope for the future. There’s even a short epilogue spelling out what happens in the future, which I very much appreciated.

Definitely recommended if you like this kind of character-driven women’s fiction. 

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