Book Description:
Ginny Masters manages a popular boutique hotel in Seattle and manages it with aplomb. But the daily challenges and irritations of a fast-paced job and a demanding boss are starting to get to her. Jacqueline Potter manages her grandfather’s fishing lodge in Idaho because it was the only job she could find after graduating with her hospitality degree. She’s grateful for the work but longs for a more sophisticated and cosmopolitan life she’s just not going to find in this backwoods town.
The solution to both their problems seems obvious. Just for the summer, they’ll swap jobs and lifestyles. But they never anticipated swapping love interests . . .
In this fabulous new twist on an age-old fable, award-winning and bestselling author Melody Carlson introduces you to two career-focused women who are about to discover that there’s more to finding happiness than just switching up the scenery.
Narelle’s Thoughts:
I enjoyed reading Just for the Summer, set in Seattle and rural Idaho. Ginny has been a hard working employee at a Seattle boutique hotel for years, and she’s now managing the hotel. Ginny’s boss, Diana, is a horrible bully boss who blames Ginny for everything that goes wrong at the hotel, including Diana’s own mistakes. As a result, Ginny is a workaholic who’s always stressed and utterly miserable. When she comes across a job swap opportunity at an Idaho fishing lodge for the summer, she’s keen to try something new and different.
Jacqueline is bored and frustrated in her job where she’s managing her grandfather’s fishing lodge. She’s like a round peg in a square hole, and dreams of a more glamourous life in the city that’s more in keeping with her L.A. upbringing. The opportunity to swap jobs with Ginny for the summer seems like an amazing opportunity for Jacqueline to live in the city and use her hospitality degree.
I loved seeing how the job swap plays out in the story, and the different journeys and lessons learned by the characters. The romances that bubbled along in the background were sweet, and the side characters were delightful and often hilarious. I recommend Just for the Summer to contemporary fiction readers who like fish out of water stories with strong romantic elements and a relevant faith thread in the story.
Many thanks to Revell and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.
