Review Detail

I had no idea that Nantucket Red was a sequel. I never read Nantucket Blue, but even without the background I was fully able to understand Nantucket Red.

I hate to be the Debby Downer and say that it was just a so-so read for me, but it's the honest truth. I group this one in my "beach reads" category. It wasn't deep and thought provoking. It was, however, easy to get lost in. I have a love-hate relationship with contemporary novels. I want to love them, but most of them seem so unrealistic to me. I had similar feelings with Nantucket Red-- mainly with the mom being okay with letting her barely out of high school daughter stay on an island all summer with no parental supervision. Maybe I'm just horribly old fashioned for my young number of years?

The characters were mostly enjoyable. I felt like Jules was a conceited snot and I did not like her at all. Cricket was likeable enough. She seemed as real as I was going to get in this book. She was not perfect, which lead to some believable unfortunate situations. I don't know the back story here, but it was pretty easy to get caught up with the drama between Cricket and Zack. I thought it was going to be a book about moving on and letting go, but it wasn't. Yes, there were some hints to that but there were other themes going on as well. (Acceptance, loss, finding oneself-- all heavy hitters here.) It would certainly be a coming of age story for Cricket, and a story of moving on for Ben (for shame, too, because he was smokin').

Anyhow, if you want a book to pass the hours away at the beach, Nantucket Red is a good read for you. I would have to say, though, to fully enjoy the book it seems that reading Nantucket Blue is a requirement.