Favourite summer romances in books
Juliet West, author of The Faithful and Before the Fall shares her favourite romantic summer reads.
Juliet West, author of The Faithful and Before The Fall shares her pick of the best romantic summer reads.
There's no denying that romance and summertime make brilliant bedfellows in fiction. It must be something to do with all that uncovered skin, and the balmy nights, and the way that emotions (good or ill) are heightened in hot weather.
My second novel The Faithful is a love story that opens in the summer of 1935. The book has some dark themes, but it begins on a beautiful July day that's full of promise. Tom, a seventeen-year-old south London boy, is setting off to the Sussex coast for a seaside camp. There he meets local girl Hazel, and the connection between the two of them is immediate. Tom and Hazel's not-so-straightforward romance plays out over months and years, but neither of them will ever forget the intensity of their first summer together.
As a reader, I've always enjoyed a novel with a passionate love story at its heart, and if the weather's warm and sultry, so much the better. Here are a few of my favourite summer-inspired love stories:
The Muse
by Jessie Burton
Love and passion permeates both timelines of this novel, which alternates between 1960s London and 1930s Spain. In the Spanish narrative, eighteen-year-old Olive becomes infatuated with Isaac, an anti-fascist and an aspiring painter. Olive is herself a frustrated artist, and her relationship with Isaac unleashes a frenzy of creativity in the stifling months leading up to the civil war.
Prodigal Summer
by Barbara Kingsolver
Set in the Appalachian mountains, this is a novel of many layers – friendship, community, the natural world - but it’s the passionate affair between reclusive Deanna and a young hunter called Eddie Bondo that sears into the memory.
Mothering Sunday
by Graham Swift
I’m cheating a little, as most of the action takes place in springtime. But in my defence, here’s a line from the first chapter: ‘It was March 1924. It wasn’t June, but it was a day like June. A window was flung open, and he walked, unclad, across the sun-filled room as carelessly as any unclad animal.’ This intimate and desperately poignant novel traces the affair between housemaid Jane Fairchild and Paul Sheringham, the young heir to a country estate.
Atonement
by Ian McEwan
The unforgettable first section of this novel plays out over one smouldering-hot day in the summer of 1935. Cecilia and Robbie are childhood friends who grow up to find themselves irresistibly in love.
But Cecilia’s younger sister Briony is watching . . .
Brokeback Mountain
by Annie Proulx
Not a novel but a heart-stopping short story about Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar, ranch hands who take a summer job herding sheep in the Wyoming mountains. Their intense love affair haunts the rest of their lives. The 2005 film adaptation is breathtaking, but the original story is definitely worth seeking out.
At First Light
by Vanessa Lafaye
There are many strands to this historical novel, but the driving force is the love story between brothel-owner Alicia Cortez and WW1 veteran John Morales, a mixed-race couple living in Key West, Florida, at a time of violent segregation. It’s tender, tragic and uplifting – all the ingredients of an epic romance, complete with sun-drenched beaches and steamy swamps.
The Faithful
by Juliet West
The Faithful by Juliet West is out now in Hardback, and as an Ebook and Audiobook.
As Britain is pulled towards war, the secrets within two families threaten to tear them apart.
July 1935. In the village of Aldwick on the Sussex coast, sixteen-year-old Hazel faces a long, dull summer with just her self-centred mother Francine for company. But then Francine decamps to London with her lover Charles, Oswald Mosley's blackshirts arrive in Aldwick, and Hazel's summer suddenly becomes more interesting. She finds herself befriended by two very different people: Lucia, an upper-class blackshirt, passionate about the cause; and Tom, a young working-class boy, increasingly scornful of Mosley's rhetoric. In the end, though, it is Tom who wins Hazel's heart - and Hazel who breaks his.
Autumn 1936. Now living in London, Hazel has grown up fast over the past year. But an encounter with Tom sends her into freefall. He must never know why she cut off all contact last summer, betraying the promises they’d made. Yet Hazel isn't the only one with secrets. Nor is she the only one with reason to keep the two of them apart . . .