A Special Summer is my first Victoria Wells read and I enjoyed it immensely. She has a great knack for arousing emotion and believe me, this story arouses plenty of that angsty stuff that makes you want to scream one moment and weep the next.
Summer is a beautiful (though she doesn't know it), young and inexperienced young woman who encounters the wealthy, worldly and very jaded Nick Stiles at a charity function, and after some resistance, begins to date him. Summer quickly falls for Nick who-unbeknownst to her-has no intention of falling for anyone, because of a difficult family and romantic history that has left him damaged and somewhat cold. Though he treats Summer well while they were together, he has no compunction about unceremoniously ending their relationship when he decides it's time to move on, and just as Summer is about to confess her love for him.
Five months later he returns, having faced the reality that he was thinking of Summer all along and misses her. When he goes to rekindle their relationship, he finds that she has kept something monumental from him, something that will certainly change both their lives. Feeling betrayed by her failure to tell him this secret, he launches an all-out campaign to make her pay for her deceit-by-omission.
And boy does he make her pay!
Nick's reaction is so unrelentingly cruel, so angry, so incredibly vicious that I had real trouble seeing how this author could pull me back into wanting this couple to end up together. As he grew more cruel, and at times stepped over the line to becoming downright abusive, I stopped liking him altogether and began wishing him ill, wondering whether I would see a bold ending to a romance novel, like Summer walking out on him like Rhett Butler walking out on Scarlett in 'Gone with the Wind'. And I was rooting for that ending.
But somewhere along the line, Ms. Wells began to drop more and more hints about the source of Nick's pain, and the reasons for his irrational vendetta against this young woman who,against all common sense, still seemed to love him. And gradually, I began to understand though not sympathize with him. While we come to learn that Nick, despite his best efforts was repeating the mistakes of his father, and that he once had his heart and hopes dashed by a deceitful woman, I fell just short of loving him the way you want to love the male protagonist in a book.
His manhandling of Summer had been so protracted by that point, that I could scarcely forgive him. Still, given her background, the openness of her heart, her inexperience and the nature of the secret that bound them together, I understood how she might try to forgive him. And his borderline abusive behavior was later dealt with in the storyline, so I can go to sleep not wondering whether I would have told Summer to run for her life and get away from this man.
There were many sweet secondary characters - Summer's two best friends Starr and Ava, and Nick's housekeeper Joan who became close to Summer, all of whom added a dimension to the story I enjoyed. I especially liked that the author took the time to give us Joan's backstory. It made her real to me, and I could see her because of that addded detail.
And because I love this stuff, I couldn't help but notice some places where the description of the characters' emotions were particularly resonant.
Like this, when Summer reflects on her decision to become intimate with Nick despite her inexperience: "In the beginning, the tiny voice in her head warned, don't do it. After months of kisses, hugs and caresses, the tiny voice became a faint whisper, hardly audible. When she decided to . . . share his bed the voice was buried so deep, she never heard its pleas." Very nice piece of writing.
The story was best when the writing was like that, was simple and succinct, like this sentence which heralds the emotional shift in Nick from wanting to punish Summer to wondering whether he might have gone too far: "Summer was letting go, and he could feel it." There were also really clever phrases thrown in as well, the kinds of things that make you smile, like when Nick in his mind describes a woman trying to get his attention as a "cosmetically enhanced nuisance". Hah!
All in all, I enjoyed this story a great deal, and think that if you like romances where the emotional shifts are like riding a roller-coaster, and the hero makes you hate him before finally coming around, this is a book for you. The ending will be particularly satisfying if you need your HEA. All your curiosity about this couple will be satisfied. Four stars rather than five only because if Summer were my sister, I would still, at the end of the day view Nick only with reserved cordiality, at best. And I want to fall in love with my romance heroes, just like the heroine does. Still, highly recommended for an emotional read!