Summer Sisters By Judy Blume

Driving my scooter home from my favorite pub, I saw a paperback in the road. It was a book by Judy Blume, and my daughter is a big fan of hers; and I saw from the blurb on the back that it’s set in Martha’s Vineyard, where I and my cousins used to visit my grandmother in the summer when we were kids.

Summer Sisters by Judy Blume is a great read. It’s about the friendship between two young girls in Santa Fe, one rich, one not.

The rich one, Caitlin, invites the poor one, Victoria, to spend the summer on Martha’s Vineyard with her and her father and stepmother. They become fast friends and go back every year.

We hear all about their adventures growing up, sometimes in great detail, which was interesting for me because I grew up in a family with three brothers, and girls and women were always a big mystery to me.

Vixen and Cassandra, as they are known, become known as “double trouble” and explore the world of teen romance with two islander brothers they meet at the Flying Horses, the famous carousel in Oak Bluffs.

The author introduces lots and lots of characters and paints them all very realistically, even the minor ones. We even shift into the point of view of each of them for short vignettes: the ancient countess that Victoria’s mother takes care of, the sour-faced aunt who’s waiting to inherit from Caitlin’s grandmother, the brother, the brother’s friend, the stepmother, etc. etc.

All in all, this is really a great read, a wonderful slice of life, by a real master of the art, with a lot of hot sex scenes thrown in for good measure.

I’m going to send it to my daughter, who wants to read it, but I hope I don’t get a visit from the postal inspectors for sending prurient materials through the US Mail.