Lyrical, emotional, dramatic, and packed with Nancy Thayer’s trademark warmth and wisdom, Heat Wave tells the moving story of a woman who, after her, seemingly perfect life unravels, must find the strength to live and love again.

After her husband’s sudden death, Carley Winsted is determined to keep her two daughters in their beloved home on Nantucket. To ease the family’s financial strain, she decides to transform their grand, historic house into a bed-and-breakfast. Not everyone, however, thinks this plan prudent or quite respectable—especially not Carley’s mother-in-law. Further complicating a myriad of challenges, a friend forces Carley to keep a secret that, if revealed, will undo families and friendships. And her late husband’s former law partner is making Carley confront an array of mixed feelings. Then, during a late-summer heat wave, the lives of Carley and her friends and family will be forever changed in entirely unexpected ways.

It took a while for me to get into this book, and I didn’t completely connect with the characters, but I did eventually finish the book and overall I enjoyed it.

There’s definitely some tension and heartbreak in this book, but sometimes I felt like it could have been set in the 1950s — there’s so much pressure on the women to need/have a man. Maude was the worst. She doesn’t even try to learn about “manly” things (like tools, which any woman should know about anyway). Instead, she steals one of her best friend’s husband and is hurt when her best friend doesn’t want to instantly forgive her and move on. Actually, the more I think about it, I think Maude is pretty much the one thing I don’t like about the story. I don’t know that I would have been comfortable maintaining a friendship with her, and it sort of surprised me that the other friend was so easy to just overlook the infidelity/homewrecking.

Not the most captivating story I’ve ever read, but (if you can get past Maude) it’s not a bad way to spend a few days of the 2020 quarantine. Get your copy here!