Nantucket Blue by Leila Howland Series: Nantucket #1
Published: May 7, 2013
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For Cricket Thompson, a summer like this one will change everything. A summer spent on Nantucket with her best friend, Jules Clayton, and the indomitable Clayton family. A summer when she’ll make the almost unattainable Jay Logan hers. A summer to surpass all dreams.
Some of this turns out to be true. Some of it doesn’t.
When Jules and her family suffer a devastating tragedy that forces the girls apart, Jules becomes a stranger whom Cricket wonders whether she ever really knew. And instead of lying on the beach working on her caramel-colored tan, Cricket is making beds and cleaning bathrooms to support herself in paradise for the summer.
But it’s the things Cricket hadn’t counted on--most of all, falling hard for someone who should be completely off-limits--that turn her dreams into an exhilarating, bittersweet reality.
A beautiful future is within her grasp, and Cricket must find the grace to embrace it. If she does, her life could be the perfect shade of Nantucket blue.
I wanted to like this book, I really really did. It seemed like the perfect summer read. An island during the summer, a cute romance, and a small mystery. Sadly all the parts just didn’t add up and I was left feeling disappointed and yearning for what could have been. It wasn’t a bad book, in the long run, it just wasn’t what it could have been.
It’s hard for me to describe what Nantucket Blue was truly about because it wasn’t really 100% clear. On the surface, it seemed to be about Cricket wanting to be there for her friend after a horrible loss. But then it seemed to be about Cricket playing matchmaker and unraveling a mystery about her mom. But THEN it seemed to be about Cricket and Zack and their uncertain relationship. All three stories had the potential to be great, but that was the problem because they were three stories. There was no true cohesion to them, no detail that linked them together. They were just three stories on their own.
Besides the three separate story aspect, I also wasn’t 100% into the characters. Cricket, for instance, seemed young, really young. I got that her mom didn’t really want her to do much but hang out with her, but I didn’t get the vibe that she was sheltered and yet that is how she came off. And don’t even get me started on the mother/father. They were both there on the outside and yet managed to annoy me. And then there was Jules. Jules was just awful. I mean I got where she was coming from based on the fact that people deal with tragedy differently, but she treated Cricket like a doormat and it seemed to make Cricket like her and hero-worship her even more. It just didn’t make sense to me that she would act that way. Which brings us to the final main character, Zack. I talked about this book with Gail after we both read it and I think she hit the nail on the head in her review. Zack seemed like two different characters. He wasn’t consistent. I almost wish he was written as older and maybe a college freshman opposed to the way he was portrayed. I think if he was made older then I would have understood more of their relationship and how Zack didn’t seem to know some stuff about Cricket when she had been over his house for years and years and years.
Basically Nantucket Blue was just there. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t particularly love it. The stuff that worked was canceled out by the stuff that didn’t and made everything else just okay. I won’t deter you from reading it because a lot of others loved it. It just wasn’t the right book for me.
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