The Best Summer of Our Lives

by Rachel Hauck

Overview

Twenty years ago, the summer of '77 was supposed to be the best summer of Summer Wilde's life. She and her best friends, Spring, Autumn, and Snow—the Four Seasons—had big plans.

But those plans never had a chance. After a teenage prank gone awry, the Seasons found themselves on a bus to Tumbleweed, "Nowhere," Oklahoma, to spend eight weeks as camp counselors. All four of them arrived with hidden secrets and buried fears, and the events that unfolded in those two months forever altered their friendships, their lives, and their futures.

Now, thirtysomething, Summer is at a crossroads. When her latest girl band leaves her in a motel outside Tulsa, she is forced to face the shadows of her past. Returning to the place where everything changed, she soon learns Tumbleweed is more than a town she never wanted to see again. It's a place for healing, for reconciling the past with the present, and for finally listening to love's voice.

Praise for The Best Summer of Our Lives

"Rachel Hauck sets the gold standard in inspirational fiction. The Best Summer of Our Lives is a nostalgic novel of friendship, romance, and the choices that define a life."—Brenda Novak, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author

"The Best Summer of Our Lives blends faith and hope into a story about the seasons of life, the seasons of friendship, and the seasons of love."—Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends

"The Best Summer of our Lives brought me back to my teenage years, with all the angst, the hope, and the friendships, and reminded me that the best times of our lives don't have to be perfect to be loved."—Susan May Warren, USA Today bestselling, award-winning author

"Rachel Hauck fans will savor this sparkling story full of depth and heart!"—Lauren K. Denton, USA Today bestselling author of The Hideaway and A Place to Land

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780764240973
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/27/2023
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	65,414
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 5.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Rachel Hauck is an award-winning, New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. She is a double RITA finalist, and a Christy and Carol Award winner. Her book Once Upon a Prince, first in the Royal Wedding series, was filmed for an Original Hallmark movie. A graduate of Ohio State, Rachel lives in sunny central Florida with her husband and ornery cat. Learn more at rachelhauck.com.

Editorial Reviews

03/27/2023

The feel-good latest from Hauck (You’ll Be Mine) follows four former best friends who find their way back to one another. Snow, Summer, Spring, and Autumn have been friends since kindergarten, when they met and dubbed their clique “the Seasons.” The summer before college, the four fill the nearby university swimming pool with car wash soap as a prank and are sent to Camp Tumbleweed to serve as counselors to complete a community service sentence. Meanwhile, each girl is caught at a tenuous personal crossroads: Summer struggles to find her place in a family that’s falling apart, Spring’s hiding a pregnancy, Autumn contends with debilitating anxiety, and Snow navigates the emotional aftermath of her older brother’s death. At the end of the summer, the four have a friendship-ending fight that lays bare the secrets they’ve been keeping. When Summer ends up back in Tumbleweed 20 years later, a friend calls the other three to return and mend things, though forgiving one another proves harder than anticipated—and will require some faith. While the four protagonists don’t always feel equally developed (Summer comes across most vividly), Hauck’s exploration of friendship, second chances, and faith is tender and often emotionally nuanced. It’s an undeniable heartwarmer. (June)

Publishers Weekly

05/01/2023

"The Four Seasons" have been best friends their whole lives—each girl named after a different season and brought together by fate. The summer of 1977 was supposed to be their best yet, with a planned European vacation, until an impulsive prank (filling the university pool with car-wash soap) earns them a punishment of community service at a rundown Oklahoma summer camp. In the face of multiple tragedies, including a gruesome murder at a nearby Girl Scout camp, each comes of age carrying secrets. Looking back, these four creative women can still trace many of their failures and insecurities to that fateful summer. Told from the perspectives of the four teenage girls in 1977 and the same women full of regrets 20 years later, Hauck's (The Fifth Avenue Story Society) latest brings her trademark mystical encounters with the divine to a convoluted storyline. VERDICT Themes about the endurance of friendship and the ability to come home give readers plenty to think about, and those nostalgic for childhood summers will enjoy this novel.

Library Journal