That Last Carolina Summer by Karen White ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

A brand-new contemporary stand-alone novel about sisterhood, secrets and one woman’s reckoning with the past

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site.  A free book was provided for an honest review.

July 2025; Park Row; 978-0778310693
audio, ebook, print (325 pages); southern fiction

This is a perfect book to take to the beach or the lake to read while you are sitting out in the sun.  In fact, I read it last week while I was at my favorite SC beach.  It has all of the things that a good book needs - fantastic characters, family issues, a bit of romance, and a deep underlying mystery.  It grabbed me on page 1 and kept me rapidly turning pages until the end.

The story is told from two points of view.  The first POV is from Phoebe, who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, with her parents and sister Addie.  Addie was the oldest daughter and had always been their mom's favorite - she was interested in beauty pageants and boyfriends, while Phoebe was interested in the outdoors and spending time by herself.  When Phoebe was nine, she was struck by lightning, and after she recovered, she developed the gift of premonition.  As soon as she graduated from high school, she left SC for Oregon, where she became a science teacher.  She went home occasionally but hadn't really talked to her sister in the 10 years since their father died.  When Phoebe gets a call from her sister telling her that she needs help with their mom due to her dementia, Phoebe agrees to spend the summer in the family home.  When she arrives home, she finds that her mother is having major cognitive problems, their once perfect house is a mess, and Addie's nine-year-old daughter is often neglected.  Her sister is interested in having fun and pretty much ignores her daughter, Ophelia.  Phoebe realizes very quickly that she has her work cut out for her.

The second point of view comes from Celeste, who was still grieving the granddaughter who disappeared years before.  She is also the grandmother of Liam,  the young man who saved Phoebe after she was struck by lightning years before, and is now a doctor.  Celeste befriends Phoebe and doesn't tell her about the connections between their two families.  Deep down, she is hoping that Phoebe might know through her premonitions what really happened to her granddaughter. As they become better friends, Celeste becomes a big help in taking care of Phoebe's mother.

The book goes very deeply into the life of someone suffering from Alzheimer's and the effect that it has on the people around them, and at times, it was difficult to read what the family was going through.  The other key plots in the book are: the estrangement of the two sisters and how Addie seems to be on a destructive path, Addie's daughter and the new bond between Phoebe and Ophelia, the new friendship with Celeste and the mystery of her granddaughter's disappearance, and the sparks that fly between Phoebe and Liam.  It's an action-packed book with well-written characters.  My favorite characters were Phoebe, who could have easily turned her back on her sister and mother after the way they treated her growing up, and Ophelia, Addie's daughter, who is very precocious and loves to read.  She continues to try to establish a relationship with her mostly absent mother.   

As I said earlier, this is the perfect beach read -- but it's a fantastic book no matter where you read it.  This is one that you don't want to miss!

Buy That Last Carolina Summer at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she is three hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.   

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