Secrets in Summer

Secrets in Summer is Nancy Thayer’s 2017 Nantucket novel, one of many she has set on the Massachusetts island that has been her literary home for decades. The novel follows Darcy Cotterill, a Nantucket librarian and longtime island resident, through one summer that brings unexpected complications into her carefully arranged single life. Darcy lives alone in the cottage she inherited from her beloved grandmother, and her summer routine has been shaped by the island library work she loves and by the various neighbors and friends whose lives have been intertwined with hers across the years.

The summer that drives the novel begins when Darcy’s ex husband and his new wife move into the house next door for the season, bringing along their teenage daughter from his new wife’s first marriage. The proximity is uncomfortable in obvious ways, but it becomes more complicated when Darcy realizes that the teenage girl is dealing with her own difficult situation that the new family has not been addressing. The novel develops Darcy’s slow involvement with the teenager alongside the various other plot threads of the summer, including a new romantic interest, the ongoing dynamics with her wider Nantucket friend group, and the practical complications of living next door to her ex husband and his current family.

Nancy Thayer handles the multi character situation with care, giving the various supporting characters enough perspective to feel like fully developed people rather than just plot pieces. The Nantucket setting is rendered with the kind of specific detail that only an actual island resident can produce. The summer rhythms of the place, with its tides and its tourists and its small year round community, give the novel its particular flavor.

What distinguishes Thayer from a lot of writers in her general territory is the affection she clearly feels for her setting and her characters. The Nantucket of her novels is a real place rendered with specific detail, not just a postcard backdrop, and her families are written with the kind of warmth that allows them to be flawed without being unlikeable. The library setting gives Darcy a particular professional identity that the novel develops with care, with the small island library and its various patrons providing additional supporting context that the wider plot draws on.

For longtime Nancy Thayer fans, Secrets in Summer is a satisfying entry that delivers what her readers come to her for. For new readers, the novel is a fair introduction to her style and a good entry point into her wider Nantucket catalogue. Readers who enjoy Elin Hilderbrand’s Nantucket novels will find similar pleasure here, though Thayer’s voice is slightly quieter than Hilderbrand’s high gloss summer fiction.