Review: All Summer Long by Dorothea Benton Frank

All Summer Long by Dorothea Benton Frank

Blurb from Amazon:

All Summer Long follows one charming New York couple – prominent interior designer Olivia Ritchie and her husband Nicholas Seymour, an English professor and true southern gentleman.  They are seemingly polar opposites, yet magnetically drawn together and in love for more than fourteen years.

As they prepare to relocate to Charleston, S.C., Olivia, the ultimate New Yorker, has reservations about the promise she made to retire in the Lowcountry, where Nick wants to return home and lead a more peaceful life.  They are moving north to south, fast pace versus slow pace and downsizing.  Nick is ecstatic.  Olivia is not.   She can’t let Nick know that their finances are not what he thought.   Her client list is evaporating, their monetary reserves are dwindling and maybe that house she picked out on Sullivans Island needs too much work.  Thank God, for her assistant, Roni Larini, her right (and sometimes left) hand. 

As they find themselves pondering the next step of their lives, Olivia and Nick travel with her billionaire clients and their friends and are swept up into the world of the ultra-rich and explore the globe with a cast of zany eccentrics over one tumultuous, hot summer. All as Olivia grapples with what lies ahead for her and Nick.

This is a story of how plans evolve and lives change in unexpected ways, how even those who have everything are still looking for something more.  Even the most successful people can often struggle to keep things together.  All Summer Long asks the ultimate question: can money buy happiness?  From Sullivans Island to Necker Island to Nantucket to the beaches of Southern Spain, we’ll come to recognize the many faces of true love, love that deepens and endures but only because one woman makes a tremendous leap of faith. And that leap changes everything. 

My Review:
 

I suppose I had high expectations since this was my first from this author and I'd heard nothing but amazing things about her.  But this book . . . really didn't work for me.  Ostensibly, it's about Olivia, an interior designer for Manhattan's elite who is getting ready to retire to her husband's hometown of Charleston except she hasn't told him that she's blown their retirement fund on a few projects that didn't pan out.  So she's forced to pander to her wealthiest client who essentially jets them around the world on several rich people vacations -- private jets, private islands, insane yachts, $26 million dollar homes on Nantucket -- and, really, nothing else happens in this book.  I kept waiting for something to happen -- some sort of progress -- but, nope.  Of course, everything magically works out and I liked Olivia (except for the fact that she calls her 67 year old husband "baby boy" ?!?) and some of the other characters but there was little to no story to this book.

If you're already a fan of this author, maybe you will love this -- I'm not sure if it is like her other books or not.  I would choose something else for a beach read but if you just want to read about rich people and their crazy vacations and "problems," this might just be for you.  All Summer Long came out earlier this week on May 31, 2016, and you can purchase HERE.

I'm a shallow man, he thought.  All I've ever cared about was making money, having a beautiful woman on my arm, and living large on my terms.  Somewhere along the line I forgot about things that were supposed to matter because, because because . . . why? 

Because he refused to be vulnerable. 

Love made you vulnerable.