A Summer in Sonoma

Lovely story of 4 best friends since the 7th grade, Now with all on the cusp of 30, their lives have diverged in different directions. Cassie still hasn't found Mr Right, but Mr Wrong aka a long-haired biker starts off as a friend, but maybe more? Julie married her high-school sweetheart, but the family is just a heart-beat away from bankruptcy when she's pregnant again. Marty is wondering why she's sticking around with her marriage, when her husband has not only forgotten about romance, but thinks that being a good provider should be enough. An old flame is starting to look tempting. And OB Beth's body has betrayed her with cancer for a second time. But she doesn't want to let anyone in to help her, until she becomes a difficult patient and finds a trusted friend in her oncologist.

I love her writing. I really enjoyed the characters and plot of this book.

Have you ever picked up a book knowing exactly what you expect from it and get that and so much more? For me, I knew when I picked up this book, that I was reading a romance, so I expected love and marriage and I got that. But what I also got was a kick in the teeth because of what it showed me about myself and others.This is the story of 4 girls who grew up together and how through thick and thin they stick together. Their lives are all different but when trouble strikes they bond together and carry on.Cassie, an ER nurse, is almost raped but is rescued by a big burly biker. A friendship develops and the two spend the summer visiting all over the Sonoma Valley on Walt's Harley.Julie, a stay at home mother of 3, is married to Billy, a firefighter, and even though their love and marriage are strong, their financial situation is not, fighting constantly to make ends meet.Marty, a hairdresser, is married to Joe, also a firefighter, and together with their son Jason, live in nice house and have all the toys that most men have - boat, big screen TV, etc.Beth is a OB/GYN Doctor who shuts herself off from men because her previous fiancé left her after she had a battle with breast cancer in her mid-twenties.Each of the character's stories could have been a book on their own but the tales are interwoven so that the comparisons of their lives is front and center.SPOILER - I don't like to put spoilers in my reviews but in this instance, it wouldn't be fair not to. The reason why this book kicked me in the teeth is that it showed the characters' flaws and made this reader, at least, stop and think. Cassie doesn't want to get romantically involved with Walt because he's not what she envisioned the man in her life should look like. Billy is forever optimistic and gets a rude awakening when he realizes that the world does react to a positive attitude. Marty and Joe hear but don't listen. Beth feels that she can't burden her friends with her problems but is there to help with theirs.I can't believe how much this book made me stop and think about the people in the world around me. Our world/society seems so intent on physical appearance - that the people that are beautiful inside seem to be lost and that means we are missing out on so much. A possible attitude can be helpful but it is important to be realistic as well. Our relationships could be infinitely better if we learned to listen better - shouldn't this be a class in school? Lastly, I now understand an old saying I heard "a trouble shared is but half a trouble, a joy that's shared is a joy made double." If we are willing to help our friends and family through hard times, why should we expect them to be any different in helping us if we have hard times. This really was a very thought provoking book. Very well-written.

This book was good. It was a bit slow until the end where I forced myself to plow through it. There were a few surprises bit the end is somewhat predictable.

Robyn Carr is a little perverted. But I’ll get back to that.Reading a Carr book is usually a strange experience. From page to page I go from, “I love this book - five stars,” to, “I hate this book - zero stars.” The zero star moments came from a creepy focus on women’s health, and also in this book from the fact Carr devoted ten pages at a time at regular intervals to writing about meetings with financial advisers. I’m sorry, but even if you’re super into accounting, NOBODY picks up a work of fiction hoping to hear how to make mortgage payments. They really don’t.So, welcome back to Robyn Carr’s world. I swore I’d never return, and yet here I am. If you’ve never read a book by this writer before the way she jumps from subplot to subplot is probably going to drive you crazy. If you’re familiar with her work you’re going to come into the book expecting it.I’ve read fifteen or sixteen Robyn Carr books and have only ever given one rating above three stars. The thing is she’s an unbelievably talented writer. Her characters are endearing, her dialogue entertaining and often downright funny. She can make me laugh and cry.My biggest problem with this author’s writing? She’s a one woman women’s healthathon. Every second character is a gynaecologist and when the women in her stories meet with friends they don’t have a bottle of champagne; they give each other pelvic exams. In this book the women’s health doctor character gets breast cancer and gets into a relationship with the doctor who’s been taking care of her boobies. In this author’s world, professional ethics don’t exist. It’s absolutely bloody creepy.After slogging my way through all of the dull and dreadful Grace Valley books and the decent but pelvis-obsessed Virgin River series (hey, I had them, thought I might as well read them!), now I’ve got A Summer In Sonoma. I’m sorry but it just has to be said another time. Robyn Carr is one perverted lady.No book EVER needs lines like these:“Beth began to work, talking to Julie’s vagina.”“Right before she scrolled off some toilet paper, she prayed, Oh God, let there be blood!”“But the girls - Cassie, Julie and Marty - though nothing like her, loved her,.....And now that she was newly transplanted back in the Sacramento Valley in a small women’s clinic, they were bringing their privates to her for their exams and other medical needs.”Now seriously, imagine if a male writer had his characters giving their best friends prostate exams and devoted all their spare time to discussing erectile dysfunction. Imagine. It’s just not on. I don’t care how obsessed this woman is with this stuff (and why oh WHY you’d choose gynaecology as your favourite pastime I do not know), normal, sane people do not make this subject a priority in every one of their books!So. Anyway. The story.This is a book about everything and nothing. Four women - lifelong friends - go through their own dramas over a summer.Cassie is almost raped, but is rescued by a big, burly biker. What started out as a great story - Cassie’s loneliness and sadness was realistic and her developing relationship with Walt sweet - turned out to be terrible as she rejected the poor man again and again, certain she was too good for him. She made endless comments about his work and finances, only giving in to a relationship with him after learning he had more money than she originally suspected. What really surprised me was how incredibly stupid she was. I had it figured out from the beginning and it didn’t even occur to me that Cassie didn’t know! Poor Walt should have got a better woman.My favourite was Julie’s story. She married an amazing man - her high school sweetheart - and they are still so in love. But they are basically bankrupt and she can’t seem to stop getting pregnant. Her husband Billy thinks they can get through it by being positive, not knowing just how poor they are until everything goes wrong. I really did like their story, but when they started visiting financial advisors I started skim reading their sections.Marty thought she was going to have a perfect life but her husband has no idea how to be part of a marriage. She is at the point of having an affair and leaving him. Their story was a bit silly at the beginning, but I liked it in the end.Beth has cancer, again. She was the character put into the story to continue the author’s obsession with women’s health, and I didn’t care for her much.There’s an undercurrent through all of Carr’s books that irks me. She has few characters who are not Anglo-Saxon, and they all have really stock-standard Anglo-Saxon names (she’s admitted she only likes really regular English names). The only times she does have characters who are anything else - even just originating from other parts of Europe - she demonises them in some way. In Virgin River her evil, scheming villains were from Eastern Europe. In this book Marty’s husband is of Italian origin, and we constantly hear about him being a ‘pig-headed Italian’ and ‘that good old Italian temperament’. It’s incredibly ignorant of her to constantly stereotype like that. The only character she ever had who wasn’t of British origin and wasn’t the devil incarnate was Miguel in Virgin River - and she had everyone Anglicise his name to Mike.This book is women’s fiction in a major way. I usually hate women’s fiction, but this story was going along fine at the beginning. Robyn Carr keeps a nasty trick up her sleeve. She always writes brilliant beginnings to her books. It’s only once she’s hooked you and reeled you in that her stories start meandering all over the place and losing their focus. This one did get better again though - I must say I loved that these characters had issues that couldn’t be solved by a visit from Super Mel and Super Jack down in Virgin River. The story was more realistic than that series, and these were more realistic characters.However somebody really needs to tell Carr not everybody is - especially not every man - crazy about pregnancy and babies. Her most used phrase (or perhaps tying with ‘put the baby to the breast’) is ‘I have four kids, and if I had it my way I’d have twelve more.’Yes, the author is far too idealistic in most of her books - small towns are PERFECT and the bad guys are super bad. Many of the good guys are too perfect and caring to be realistic. I mean, the Virgin River Marines get together at the bar and all they can talk about is how much they love pregnant women and babies - no, just...no. It might be a nice fantasy (for some!), but I prefer characters who might actually be able to exist.I could really love Robyn Carr’s books if she dropped the weird obsessions and kept her focus.