Return to Summerhouse [Mass Market Paperback]

Jude Deveraux (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 2008

With her shining gift for "exquisite and enchanting" (BookPage) storytelling, Jude Deveraux sweeps readers away in a breathtaking follow-up to her beloved New York Times bestseller, The Summerhouse -- where a marvelous new adventure awaits.

Magic most definitely resides in the Maine summerhouse where the mysterious Madame Zoya has granted the innermost wishes of its visitors. Now, three women have come to this special place with one thing in common: a painful past they would each like to rewrite. Amy, who hides a heartbreaking loss behind her seemingly perfect marriage and family...Faith, a widow in her thirties whose deepest grief is for a man from years ago...and Zoë, an artist shunned by her hometown for reasons she doesn't know, after a traumatic night erased her memory. With their mystical powers, Madame Zoya and her sister Primrose are about to transport the trio to eighteenth-century England to alter Amy's ancestry. But although surprises await each of them, will stepping back in time bring the women the happy endings they seek?

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Three women meet at a summerhouse in Maine at the request of their therapist. They are strangers and know only that something is wrong in their lives. Gradually Amy, Faith, and Zoë open up about their problems—Amy cannot get over a miscarriage, Faith spent her life caring for an ill husband and dealing with a nasty mother-in-law, and Zoë lost her memory in a car accident only to find out the whole town hates her, and she refuses to find out why. Madame Zoya has the ability to send people back to the past to correct mistakes in their lives. She takes Faith and Zoë with her to late-sixteenth-century England, and their lives are transformed. In Deveraux’s sequel to The Summerhouse (2001), the three women bond while learning to overcome their past and become the women that they were meant to be in an entertaining time-travel fantasy that will leave readers smiling. --Patty Engelmann

Review

"Deveraux's touch is gold." -- Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books (June 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416509739
• ISBN-13: 978-1416509738
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Romance > Authors, A-Z > ( D ) > Deveraux, Jude
  • #8 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Women's Fiction > Friendship
  • #12 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Romance > Time Travel

More About the Author

Jude Deveraux was once a fifth-grade teacher who loved to read. When her imagination began to be filled with her own stories to tell, her career as a writer began. Jude's novels have been set in both contemporary and historical periods. Her strong, lyrical writing style and ability to write stories with memorable characters, rich detail, and believable dialogue has garnered her many devoted readers.

Jude has had over thirty books on the New York Times bestsellers list, has over 60 million copies in print, and has been translated into 18 languages. When she's not writing, she enjoys reading murder mysteries, working in her garden, and in boxing class she likes to show much younger males that she can throw a mean right cross.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not as good, July 24, 2008

By 

K. Robinson "BuysOnlineALot" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Return to Summerhouse (Mass Market Paperback)

Jude Deveraux wrote such a wonderful surprise of a novel in "Summerhouse" that I was eagerly awaiting a sequel. But if you're hoping for a sequel that is as good as the original, this is not it. The only thing similar is that the characters go to the summerhouse. There is some time travel, but there are no characters that are as loveable as in the original story and a lot more casual love-making. This sequel was a big disappointment to me.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Trouble in JudeLand, August 17, 2008

By 

BunniesKill (Connecticut, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Return to Summerhouse (Mass Market Paperback)

They say there are only so many stories to be told. Certainly in the romance genre, one expects an author as prolific as Jude Deveraux to return to the same well more than once.

Deveraux has set up CAMP next to the well, with a stand selling bottled well water.

Here are two things I wish she'd stop already:

1. Mystery plots. Deveraux is a romance novelist--period. She cannot construct a solid mystery, and the solution always involves some garbage she makes up in the end that no one ever could have surmised from the story. That's like playing Hangman where you make up your own words. She likes to drop coy mentions via her "writer" heroines about how novelists usually don't know what will happen to their characters ahead of time. Yeah, obviously, Jude.

2. Time travel. This really has not worked since "Knight in Shining Armor" and "Wishes," where the plot was linear. This convoluted mess where the heroine goes back in time and lives the reality of someone else who IS her, but ISN'T her, but may be RELATED to her, is a headache.

Does anyone else remember when her books actually had sex scenes? And whole plots about falling in love? That's what I want to read, and not this midlife crisis wish fulfillment that I suspect is the author practicing self-therapy. (A third thing I wish she'd stop is intrusively injecting herself into her books.)

Deveraux borrows liberally and shamelessly not only from her other books, but among storylines within the same series. Two of six heroines in Summerhouse nursed a chronically ill husband while being abused by his thankless parents. Three hooked up with men who were too rich to be an "appropriate" match. (Not just rich. Unbelievably, shockingly rich, with access to limitless funds.) Two played the obsessively devoted wife and mother. Most of them discover that they are talented--prodigiously so--in artistic endeavors they have never tried before, and for which there's no precedent.

The author does attempt to break the mold with the "Goth girl," Zoe, but then fails to flesh out the character and follow through. In fact, all of her characters talk and act the same way once she's introduced them by way of a few stereotypes. Occasionally she'll remind you of their archetype by having them bake muffins or something.

**Spoilers ahead.**

Then there are all the dropped plot threads. How did Amy resolve her personal tragedy that was introduced in Chapter One? Why didn't Faith and Zoe ever get business cards after the significance was underscored? (And couldn't Deveraux have been a little more...writerly about the complicity of Jeanne and Madame Zoya, instead of lobbing it at the reader in one contrived lump?) Madame Zoya's "rules for time travel" are all over the place, and Deveraux does a clumsy job of blending them into the dialogue.

Another reviewer mentioned that the characters tend to interrupt each others' stories and turn the subject to themselves. They sure do, and it makes them all annoying. Not *all* the exposition has to happen as a conversation over various lobster salads and blueberry desserts.

Here's what Jude Deveraux still does well: Picturesque descriptions of other time periods. Clothes, food, shopping, and decor, all of which appeal to women's fantasies. The woman who sweeps in and capably "fixes it all," winning her hero's adoration.

For those reasons, I probably could have forgiven her, until I read that trite stink-bomb of an ending. Once again she does a crash conclusion and crams 50 percent of the story into the final chapters, leaving the reader dazed and betrayed. How the hell did all THAT happen?

A good friend tells you what you need to hear, even when you don't want to hear it. So does a good editor, and Jude Deveraux needs one--that is, if she wants to be great again and not keep banking on her (decidedly) former glory.

Give us back to the Montgomerys and the historical romance formula. It's what made you.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jude Deveraux got her groove back...!, June 21, 2008

By 

L. Lam (California, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Return to Summerhouse (Mass Market Paperback)

I finished the book in one day and I love it! After a few not-so-great books, it seems that Jude Deveraux finally got her groove back. The book included lots of elements from her previous stories told, which made her a household name.

If you enjoyed the first book, "The Summerhouse," then you would most probably love "Return to Summerhouse." The book kept the original theme from "Summerhouse", which were three women who needed a good change in their present lives. This time though, Jude Deveraux mixed in some elements from her novel, "A Knight in Shining Armor," and the book flowed.

There is romance, humor, and even a bit of history in this. ALMOST a historical romance. And I found that I liked most of the characters in this story: Amy, Zoe, Faith, Russell, Tristan, and ESPECIALLY Stephen. (I mean, every women in the story swooned at the sight of Stephen's picture, right? *joke*)

Anyhow, give the book a read. It has been years since Jude Deveraux came out with such an entertaining book. Glad she got her groove back!