Summer State of Mind by Kristy Woodson Harvey ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

After the worst day in her professional life, burnt-out NICU nurse Daisy Stevens runs to Cape Carolina, North Carolina, looking for a new life—and possibly a new romance. On her first day at her “simpler” job, high school baseball coach Mason Thaysden discovers an abandoned baby, sending ripples through the entire tight-knit town of Cape Carolina.

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May 2026; Gallery Books; 978-1668074886
audio, ebook, print (384 pages); Southern fiction

I’m a major Kristy Woodson Harvey fan and have read every word that she’s written.  When someone asks for Southern fiction recommendations, she is always the first author that I recommend.  All of her books become favorites as soon as I read them.  Even though this book may not be my very favorite of her books, it is still high on my list of favorite summer reads.

THE SET-UP

Daisy is a NICU nurse in Charlotte who is burnt out after the heartbreaking death of one of her patients.  She decides that she needs a change and gets a job in a small hospital in Cape Carolina, NC.  During her first week on the job, a newborn baby is found in a dumpster behind the high school and is rushed to the hospital by the baseball coach Mason and his star player.

Mason is another person who is still trying to recover from his past.  When he was a student at Cape Carolina, he was the baseball star who was headed for the big leagues.  When an injury changed his plans, he went through a bad time in his life and eventually ended up back at his high school as the coach.  

When Mason first meets Daisy at the hospital, he is interested in her, and after spending a bit of time with her, sparks really begin to fly between the two of them.  

To further complicate things, Daisy had been abandoned by her mother when she was 11 and never got over her feelings despite the fact that she had a loving, caring father.  Daisy falls in love with the abandoned baby and wants to make her part of her family.  She gets approved for foster care and gets custody of Maisy (a name derived from Mason + Daisy) and will go to great lengths to keep the baby in her care even though she violates some of her basic nursing principles.  

Along with the growing relationship between Daisy and Mason, there is Mason’s huge family full of love and friendship who immediately accept Daisy into their group.  There is also great-aunt Tilley who has been a bit ‘touched’ over the years and sometimes loses track of what century she is in.  

LOTS OF QUESTIONS - ALL ARE ANSWERED

Will Mason and Daisy get their happily ever after, and does that include baby Maisey?  Will Daisy find a family to accept her so that she can get over her feelings of abandonment?  And most importantly, will Maisey end up in a good situation considering that her life started by being abandoned in a dumpster?  There are lots of questions surrounding the main characters in this book that will all be answered by the end, along with a romance that you don’t see coming until it happens.

My THOUGHTS ON THE STORY

I thought that the author did a wonderful job on this novel with her characters and her setting.  You can almost see Cape Carolina as you read the beautiful descriptions of the fictional coastal town.  I really liked the characters of Daisy and Mason – I didn’t always agree with some of Daisy's decisions and thought that she might benefit from some counseling, but I pretty much understood that much of her current life was colored by her feelings of abandonment at a young age.  Once again, Kristy has brought her readers a well-written story with real characters set in a town at the beach.  It’s a perfect book to read at the beach or the pool and will definitely leave you in a summer state of mind!

Buy Summer State of Mind 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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