Synopsis:
Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar… in Washington.
Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face.
Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan—and this town full of memories—may have already caught her heart.
Review:
I attempted to read It Happened One Summer a year ago and only got seven chapters in before a different book took priority. Well, I’ve finally gotten around to finishing it and no, I didn’t restart it. Which I know, sounds a little crazy because it’s literally been a year, but I could actually remember everything that happened, which I thought was a good sign.
Well, I didn’t like this anywhere near as much as I thought I would. It has a pretty solid average rating on Goodreads so I had a lot of faith in how good it would be. But now I’m realising if a book has a good amount of smut in it, people will rate it highly either way. Don’t get me wrong, the actual story was pretty strong and the characters had a decent amount of development, but it does feel like the smut is the only reason why it’s rated so highly.
Which brings me to my next point. The smut. I knew this book would have it as I flipped to a random page and it was intense to say the least, but I didn’t expect it to make me cringe quite so badly. I’m not a prude, smut doesn’t bother me, but there was something about this smut that made me cringe and actually laugh out loud at some points. I don’t know why, maybe it was how forward Brendan was and the way he would speak to Piper. I didn’t expect him to be like this considering it had been seven years since he’d even been near a woman. He was a very intense man and if my boyfriend spoke to me like that, I think I’d burst out laughing. Don’t even get me started on the bonus scene where Fox refers to “down there” being like a crustacean. I’m sorry what?
I really didn’t like Piper at first, but I will say her development was done pretty well. By the end of the book I really liked her – well other than the party situation, that was just silly and a huge backstep if you ask me. It does really feel like Westport became her home though.
The whole ‘how is Piper going to handle not having money and lavish things’ plot line was ruined by the fact that apparently Brendan is absolutely loaded. Are fishermen actually rich? I don’t know, but I feel like her giving up everything to live with him (sorry spoiler) would have meant a lot more if he didn’t have money. I’m nitpicking, it’s not that deep.
Overall, It Happened One Summer was a good read, but it took me so long to get through that my experience was a bit ruined. I do think it’s far too long and a lot of the will-they-won’t-they got too repetitive.
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