Customer Reviews

One Hot Summer

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I had "One Hot Summer" on my Books to Read list for so long, I bought it ready to enjoy a quick beach read while on vacation. I don't know what I was thinking when I included this book on my list because it wasn't a good beach read. It wasn't a good book for anything.

To summarize, Margarita Solana is a successful lawyer and loving mother that has to decide if she's going back to work after her year of absence ends or if she'll remain a stay-at-home mom to her 3-year-old son. First of all, this woman was rarely at home. She employed a woman that worled as maid, cook and nanny. Margarita drove around Miami in her too-big SUV dining with friends as shallow as her, exploring an affiar with her college boyfriend, and grappling with her overbearing mother and sexist husband. In short, she is a spoiled woman that uses her parents exile from Cuba and her family background as an excuse for every unlikeable quality she has.

The story is supposed to be about Margarita and her life during three months. Instead of sticking to that, the author gets preachy with Cuban American issues, reviews Miami's hot spots, and tries a subplot involving one of Margarita's friends that comes about suddenly, then ends with no explanation.

Summer can't end fast enough.

I didn't hate the book. I didn't like it, but I didn't hate it either. It took me until Vivian, Margarita's friend, broke her news to actually like the book and care how things turned out, but was dissappointed with how the author handled that story. I view it as "poor little rich girl" and had no empathy for anyone except Marti, Margarita's son. He's a little boy that's paid attention to only when his parents feel guilty. How wonderful (typed with great sarcasm).

Carolina Garcia- Aguilera's newest book,One Hot Summer is luke warm. It does not have the rich , loveable characters that her Lupe Solano books offer. There is no likeable or interesting character in ther book to cheer for.Margarita, the main character, is not really believeable as a old rich Cuban, well placed successful lawyer. She has two dippy friends that are not really well developed in the story. Margarite hates her mother and has little use for anyone else.She is self centered. Her lover Luther, a New York lawyer, is supposed to have learned Spainsh as an adult and now is in Cuban Miami speaking Spanish without any accent, get real. The only good guy in the book is her husband, but he is a rather bland person, a hard working lawyer working so many hours on his no win, no money case that he doesn't notice his wife's fooling around.The ending is as if the author discovered she had written the required number of pages, being also so bored with this book that she just ended the book as quickly as possible without much thought.If Margarite's husband was truely a self made man, hot shot lawyer, macho Cuban husband, he would never have accepted Carolinas ending. The book appears to be a rushed work with little research or planning and developement of it's characters. I feel that Carolina Garcia-Aguilera is too good of an author to turn out this kind of "beach reading" book. I was dissapointed!

There's nothing suprising in this book...the plot is predictable and the characters are stereotypes. Instead of reading a romance/mystery as it was advertised you get a dissertation on Miami Cubans...how they like their coffee, thier booze, their cars, their food, how they feel about Elian and Castro (as if we couldn't guess) and on and on. Even when the author stuck to the plot it was passable at best. My advice...pass of this book.

Although Garcia-Aguilera captured the funkiness and steaminess of Miami in her story, this book was full of characters that I could not like. In fact, I loathed Margarita -- she is spoiled, boring, and to borrow a term from another reviewer, a "ninny!" I didn't care what happened to her or any other of the characters, except perhaps her husband and her son (though we don't really know much about either of them). Miami itself was the most interesting part of a boring book.

Not a lot of substance to this book or any of the characters, which would be acceptable if the book was funny or had some kind of redeeming entertainment value, but it doesn't. I absolutely loathed the main character, a manipulative, one-dimensional, shallow, self-absorbed ninny, more obsessed with dining in four star restaurants and her designer clothes than in her family, her friends or her job.

Once again Garcia-Aguilera has written a book that I just can't put down. I have read and love all her mysteries- so I picked up this romance with eager anticipation. I was not disappointed. The main character Margarita is easily likeable, which makes the trials she faces that much more intriguing. Sometimes you want to yell at the book and tell Margarita what she should (and shouldn't) do. But the author is measured in the development of the plot and keeps you turning the pages all the way to the end. Mix that in with an interesting take on Cuban exile politics and humorous insights on the world around Margarita and the picture of wild, steamy Miami is complete. Another winner from Garcia-Aguilera.

As a BIG fan of this author, having read ALL of her earlier works, I was greatly disappointed in this book. The plot was thin to non-existant. It was a struggle to continue reading, but I persisted hoping it would get interesting with the next turn of the page. As I read I had the feeling that the author had struggled as much in writing as I was in reading. In her future books I hope she will go back to the themes she has had so much success with in the past. They all were interesting and fun to read.

Loved it! Very well written. Enjoyed the fact that she got asecond chance of getting closure on a relationship that didn't take its course when ended and left her heart broken. I also watched the movie on lifetime that made for this book. The book is much better of course!

I wish they had done a better job on the cover. It looks so cheesy but the book is not like that at all. I recommend this book.

I loved this book, from the moment that I started reading it to the end, I couldn't put the book down. The ending made sick, what they did to margarita was just out of this world! GREAT BOOK.

The cover on this book was unfortunate. Why ? The skimpy bathing suit implies light (airhead) reading to me. Yet this book is not only fun, but surprisingly MEATY, with a lot of serious issues to think about. Don't let the cover put you off.

I picked up the book expecting a continuing saga of the Lupe Solano series (private investigator in Miami), but soon found that the main character was a different woman, a partner in a Miami law firm. Once I got over that initial disappointment, I was more than pleasantly surprised. The book is about a happily married woman whose former boyfriend arrives in town, and the consternation caused when he tries to get her to leave her husband. The main character is pulled into a quagmire. The BEST part is the ABSOLUTELY SATISFYING ENDING with how she gets herself OUT of this quagmire, in a way that leaves you REALLY admiring the heroine.

Suffice it to say that my turn in our bookclub is coming up, and this is the book I will be choosing ! After reading two books by this author, I plan to read every book of hers that I can get my hands on.