I picked up These Summer Storms because I was curious. Could Sarah MacLean the longtime architect of swoony Regency dukes and corseted longing, pull off a contemporary romance? Also, the cover practically whispered to bring me to the beach. Maybe a flirtation. Maybe a tan. Definitely not emotional excavation.
Reader, I was wrong.
What I thought would be a breezy escape turned out to be something quieter, sharper, and far more unsettling: a novel about the stories families tell themselves to survive, and the damage those stories quietly rack up over time. This is not a romance-first book. This is a family drama that just happens to include desire, inheritance, and the kind of love that asks you to stay when leaving would be easier.
I was planning to skim this with sunscreen on my hands. Instead, I kept putting the book down to stare into the middle distance and think about my own life choices. Which feels… rude, honestly.
What These Summer Storms Is Actually About (And Why That Matters)
Alice Storm fled her billionaire family five years ago and built a new life in New York, far from her controlling tech-mogul father and a family dynamic so toxic it probably needed a laminated warning label. When her father dies, she’s summoned back to Storm Island (named after the family, because of course it is) for one week.
A contained timeline. A contained setting. A family that insists it’s fine.
It is not fine.
Franklin Storm’s will outlines an elaborate inheritance game: each sibling is assigned a task. Complete them all and everyone gets their money. Fail, and no one does. Knives Out meets group therapy, except the therapist is a morally complicated lawyer named Jack Dean, whom Alice has already slept with on the train ride in, before realizing exactly who he works for.
From there, the novel becomes less about money and more about the quiet question it keeps circling: what does it cost to belong to a family that refuses to change?
This Is Not a Romance (And That’s the Point)
Yes, there’s chemistry. Yes, there’s history. But These Summer Storms is far more interested in the systems people uphold whether knowingly or not, than in grand romantic gestures. Love here is interrogated. Complicity is examined. Nobody gets to opt out cleanly.
Which is refreshing. And also uncomfortable. In a good way.
The Storm Family: No Villains, No Saints, Just Damage
MacLean does something generous here. She refuses to flatten anyone into an archetype.
Elisabeth Storm, the mother, is not a monster. She’s a woman who survived decades of volatility by smoothing everything over: perfect dinners, perfect appearances, perfect denial. Her arc cracked something open in me.
Greta, the eldest daughter (the one I fully expected not to relate to) has spent years choosing duty over desire, family approval over her own happiness. She is the Good Daughter until the cost of that role becomes unbearable. I did not want to see myself in her. Unfortunately, I did.
Sam, the only son, is entitled and infuriating until the narrative quietly reveals he’s losing his grip on everything he thought defined him, including custody of his children. It doesn’t excuse him. It complicates him.
Emily, the youngest, appears untouched by the family rot until she drops a revelation that reframes the entire Storm mythology.
And Alice, our narrator, our runner, our escape artist, is not here to save anyone. She’s someone who left, believing distance was the same as freedom, and now has to sit with the consequences of that belief.
7 Things This Book Taught Me (That I Was Not Prepared For)
1. Family Secrets Are Expensive
Every Storm sibling believes their secret is protective. It isn’t. It’s corrosive. The book makes a quiet but firm argument: peace built on silence is just chaos waiting for better timing.
2. Inherited Wealth Is Not Emotional Insurance
There are billions involved here, yet no amount of money can buy the one thing this family lacks: honest connection. Franklin weaponized wealth. Elisabeth managed it. Sam chased it. None of them were happier for it.
3. The Calm Ones Are Often Carrying the Most
MacLean understands that composure is not the same as wholeness. The people who seem fine are often just practiced.
4. Grief Doesn’t Clarify, It Complicates
A toxic parent dies and the feelings don’t resolve. Relief lives next to anger. Love lives next to resentment. The absence of an apology becomes its own kind of loss.
5. Real Love Requires Accountability
The relationship between Alice and Jack insists on reckoning, not just chemistry. It asks both characters to confront their role in Franklin’s system. It’s mature. It’s earned.
6. Breaking Cycles Is a Group Project
No one gets to be the hero here. Healing doesn’t work unless everyone shows up imperfectly and at the same time.
7. Identity Is a Choice You Keep Making
Being a Storm comes with scripts and expectations. Each sibling has to decide, again and again, who they are without the family name doing the work for them.
Who Should Read These Summer Storms
Read it if you:
- Love family sagas with more emotional depth
- Enjoy character-driven drama with romantic elements
- Have complicated feelings about your family (so… most people)
- Appreciate books that let characters be messy and unfinished
Skip it if you:
- Need instantly likable protagonists
- Prefer fast-paced plot over introspection
- Are dealing with very fresh family trauma
- Want everything neatly resolved
Final Verdict: A Surprisingly Necessary Read
Sarah MacLean didn’t write a beach romance. She wrote a book about what we inherit, what we repeat, and what it takes to stop running long enough to choose differently.
I finished These Summer Storms and immediately wanted to talk to someone. Then I wanted to talk to everyone. Then I wanted to apologize to a family member for something I couldn’t quite name.
That’s not a beach read. That’s a reckoning.
One last thing: there’s a moment where Alice realizes she didn’t escape her family—she just relocated the patterns. That realization will live rent-free in my head for a while.
Let’s Talk
Have you read These Summer Storms? Are you team stay and do the work or team sometimes leaving is survival? Tell me. I’m still thinking about this book and would like company.
jujucation.com 