The Summer She Stayed

A lush, emotionally charged novel about a young woman who must confront how class and privilege muddy the waters of truth, justice, and complicity, set in a historic New Jersey shore town as it barrels toward a season-ending wedding of the decade, despite the misdeeds of the groom, as a hurricane approaches, for readers of The Paper Palace and These Summer Storms.

Edie Lane has never stayed in her seaside hometown for its shiniest season: summer. Her family rents out their shore house, surrendering Cape June to the wealthy Vacationers. This year, that’s all changed. After an abrupt end to Edie’s intoxicating affair with Roger Knight—the handsome heir to the town’s most powerful family and namesake hotel—Edie was relieved to have an escape. But when a family crisis sends the Lanes racing back to Cape June at summer’s peak with nowhere to stay, Edie is soon slipping between borrowed rooms at the Knight Hotel, pulled into the glittering circles she’s always envied and forming a fast and potentially treacherous friendship with a glamorous guest. When news surfaces that a girl from Edie’s past has gone missing—someone with ties to Roger Knight—Edie is swept into a dangerous current. As summer swells toward Roger’s lavish Labor Day wedding, old secrets rise with the tides. But a storm is brewing. Torn between escape and reckoning, Edie must decide whether to confront the truth or leave it behind.