Review: Summer Days

Reviewed by Allison
 

Summer Days is the seventh installment of Susan Mallery’s Fool’s Gold series. In this book, we meet Heidi Simpson, goat girl extraordinaire & her grandfather, Glen. Glen is a sweet old man, but he seems to have swindled a woman out of $250,000 by telling her he was selling her the land & ranch that his granddaughter owned. Enter Rafe Stryker, said woman’s protective (& rich!) son who is determined to take Glen to court no matter how good the old man’s intentions were (he gave the money to a friend to get treatment for cancer). However, coming to a compromise will be easier said than done since his mother, May, is so generous that she is willing to share the house with Glen & Heidi until they can figure something out – but Heidi refuses to leave the one thing she’s wanted her entire life, a home in one place, up to chance.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit; I liked watching Glen & May fall for each other as well as Heidi’s exploration of home & family. It may have been my mood while reading, but I found it sort of difficult to like Rafe. He was sexy & he had his moments of tenderness & sound business advice, but he wasn’t a worthy guy until the end. I hated that even after he slept with Heidi, acknowledged that he cared, he still kept up with his evil development plan. Although, I did thoroughly enjoy how he “got his” at the end – every one got to kick his ass verbally & it made me love Fool’s Gold that much more! I think his brother, Shane, had the best wake up call that is reality for a lot of older siblings out there:

“Sure you worked hard to support all of us and we appreciate that. But the price is too high. You expect ownership for what you did, and no one wants to give you that.”

Fool’s Gold still charmed my pants off & I loved Heidi’s friends, Annabelle & Charlie! They were interesting characters, fun to watch banter & scheme, & I really look forward to each of their books.

All in all, Susan Mallery made me smile & I can’t wait to read Summer Nights.

Rating: B-

*ARC Provided by NetGalley

Click to purchase: Amazon

Summer Days

by Susan Mallery

Release Date: May 29, 2012

Publisher: HQN Books