The Summer Country, Lauren Willig
The Summer Country, Lauren Willig
10 Rating(s)
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

The Summer Country
A Novel

Author: Lauren Willig

Narrator: Nicola Barber

Unabridged: 16 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 06/04/2019


Synopsis

The New York Times bestselling historical novelist delivers her biggest, boldest, and most ambitious novel yet—a sweeping Victorian epic of lost love, lies, jealousy, and rebellion set in colonial Barbados.
Barbados, 1854: Emily Dawson has always been the poor cousin in a prosperous English merchant clan-- merely a vicar’s daughter, and a reform-minded vicar’s daughter, at that. Everyone knows that the family’s lucrative shipping business will go to her cousin, Adam, one day.  But when her grandfather dies, Emily receives an unexpected inheritance: Peverills, a sugar plantation in Barbados—a plantation her grandfather never told anyone he owned. 
When Emily accompanies her cousin and his new wife to Barbados, she finds Peverills a burnt-out shell, reduced to ruins in 1816, when a rising of enslaved people sent the island up in flames. Rumors swirl around the derelict plantation; people whisper of ghosts.
Why would her practical-minded grandfather leave her a property in ruins?  Why are the neighboring plantation owners, the Davenants, so eager to acquire Peverills? The answer lies in the past— a tangled history of lies, greed, clandestine love, heartbreaking betrayal, and a bold bid for freedom.
A brilliant, multigenerational saga in the tradition of THE THORN BIRDS and NORTH AND SOUTH, THE SUMMER COUNTRY will beguile readers with its rendering of families, heartbreak, and the endurance of hope against all odds. This audiobook includes an episode of the Book Club Girl Podcast, featuring an interview with Lauren Willig about The Summer Country.

About Lauren Willig

Lauren Willig is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. An alumna of Yale University, she has a graduate degree in history from Harvard and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bkwmlee on June 16, 2019

It’s not often that I come across a book where I fall in love almost instantly not just with the characters, but also with the setting, the story, the writing – basically everything about the book from the first page to the very last. It’s also increasingly rare nowadays for me to get so swept up in......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth of Silver's Reviews on June 05, 2019

A run-down sugar plantation was the last thing Emily thought her uncle would leave to her, but Emily was thrilled about it even though her cousin wasn't. Emily, her cousin, and his wife traveled to Barbados to meet a few people and to see the plantation. We meet the family from 1812 and the opulence......more

Goodreads review by Camille on December 24, 2018

Lauren Willig's THE SUMMER COUNTRY is a sumptuous read, evoking M.M. Kaye's lush and sweeping tales of nineteenth century colonial life. Set in the island location of Barbados, Willig attains the ideal aim of the historical fiction genre: educating the reader about a little-known part of history whi......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on May 15, 2019

I want to thank Haper Collins for this ARC. I do love Historical novels but did find this one a little slow in the beginning. Trying to go back and forth from the year 1812 to the year 1854 Barbados and keep the characters straight was a tad tricky. But to Lauren Willig's writing skills I did become......more

Goodreads review by Marilyn (not getting notifications) on September 09, 2019

The Summer Country by Lauren Willig was the first book that I had read by her that she wrote by herself. I had read two other books that she wrote with Beatrice Williams and Karen White. What a wonderful family multi-generational saga that took place in Barbados and alternated between the years 1812......more