Things to Do When It’s Raining

by Marissa Stapley

This book is more fiction than romance but I was tempted by the reconciliation storyline mentioned in the cover copy:

After more than a decade, Mae and Gabe find themselves pulled back to Alexandria Bay. Hoping to find solace within the Summers’ Inn, Mae instead finds her grandparents in the midst of decline and their past unravelling around her. A lifetime of secrets stand in the way of this unconventional family’s happiness. Will they be able to reclaim the past and come together, or will they remain separate islands?

Alas, there wasn’t much there.

The story opens with Mae learning that her fiance has been running a Ponzi scheme and has fled the country. She’s in an emotional fog of grief and confusion when she heads to Alexandria Bay to her grandparents’ inn. Meanwhile, her grandmother Lilly is sliding rapidly into dementia, and one night reveals a painful secret that causes her husband George to leave abruptly. George has no idea that Lilly has been having trouble remembering things, though I was suspicious that there would have been no other external signs of her mental confusion. Anyway, George splits, Lilly is alone, Mae shows up lost and with her ex’s dog – whom he also abandoned lest anyone have any sympathy for this toerag – to find that her home is a hot mess of loss and confusion, too.

The plot careens from point to point, but the emotional development remained very shallow. There is hardly any description of space or environment, and a lot of the time I pictured the characters spinning chaotically against a white backdrop. Moreover, the story skips over the happy moments, such as Mae and Gabe reconciling part way, and spends far more time in the misery and grief. The romantic reconciliation is also very unsatisfying because a few weeks prior, Mae was engaged to an entire other person (who pops up in a minor moment midway through and then at the end in an abrupt and contrived way). Suddenly she’s exchanging “I love yous” with Gabe like there isn’t several years of secrets and bad feelings standing in the way. The positive, happier emotional moments have very little build up and payoff, and the characters spend a more time in their misery and grief with little progress.

The grief portrayal is layered, sometimes poignant though more often melodramatic. The writing from Lilly’s perspective is particularly moving as she recognizes that she’s missing parts of her memory, but doesn’t know how to ask for help. The characters take responsibility for things that aren’t at all their fault nor within their control, but don’t take adequate responsibility for the actions that were. George as a character in particular bothered me greatly, especially because of how he treats the dog, Lilly, and Mae.

There are a few lyrical phrases and some moments of palpable bittersweetness, but while I really wanted to enjoy this story set in a summer town with multiple generations of secrets, I was more frustrated than pleased. The main protagonists’ relationships jump forward in emotional progress far too quickly to a payoff they don’t earn, while they remain stuck in past wrongs and secrets, and that imbalance was dissatisfying. This was not a book for me.

– SB Sarah

When secrets tear love apart, can the truth mend it?

Mae Summers has it all: a loving fiancé, Peter, a job at the flourishing company he owns and a beautiful New York City apartment. But Mae’s life shatters when she wakes up one morning to discover Peter gone—leaving only a cryptic note behind him—and the company in shambles, its investments founded on lies.

There’s only one place for Mae to go: home to Alexandria Bay, the small tourist town in upstate New York where she was raised by her grandparents in the inn they own. And not all is right in Alex Bay, either: Mae finds her grandmother struggling with dementia, separated from Mae’s grandfather thanks to a terrible secret she never meant to reveal.

She also finds Gabe, her childhood best friend who became the love of her young life—now a handsome if brooding adult, working through a private trauma that still haunts him.

A lifetime of secrets stands in the way of Mae and her family’s happiness. Home may be where the heart is, but sometimes it takes equal parts love, forgiveness and will to mend that heart.

Contemporary Romance, Literary Fiction, Romance, Women's Fiction