"A delightful and exhilarating novel that will remind you of why you started reading in the first place-to be enchanted." -John Dufresne, author of My Darling Boy "Perfect for fans of Elin Hilderbrand and the Gilmore Girls ."-Jami Denison, reviewer, Chick Lit Central Slinging fried clams at a dumpy tourist trap in Florida's panhandle at thirty-one and being a single mom was not the future Adrienne Harris envisioned. As a girl in Harbor Point, she dreamed of becoming a chef and spending her life with Quinn Merrit, the rich and handsome boy next door. But her dreams crumbled the summer she turned seventeen, ending with her running away pregnant, heartbroken, and notorious. Adrienne's world is upended again when she gets the call that her eccentric grandmother has nearly burned down the family cottage. Adrienne has no choice but to return, and the town wastes no time in thrusting her back into the harsh limelight. When local fishmonger Christopher Crane offers Adrienne a chance to be the chef at the fish market her grandfather once owned, Adrienne might just figure out how to face the past and forge a new future. The Summer Knows follows Adrienne Harris, a single mother and weary chef, as she's pulled back to her Florida hometown after a kitchen fire forces her estranged grandmother, Elizabeth, into vulnerability. With her teenage daughter Kali in tow, Adrienne is forced to reckon with the past she left behind. The ghosts of trauma, a long-lost love, the mystery of her daughter's paternity, and a town that remembers everything. Across one summer, memories rise like heat off the pavement as Adrienne navigates decaying family ties, grief, and the haunting call of the Merritt house next door, once home to the boy she loved and the brother she lost. What gripped me most about this book was the prose. It's rich and lush in all the right places, but never heavy-handed. Pearsall doesn't just write scenes, she pulls you into them. The dialogue is sharp and honest, and the characters, especially Adrienne, feel heartbreakingly real. She's tired, brittle, often angry, but there's a flicker of hope always buried deep, refusing to die out. Watching her wrestle with her own shortcomings as a mother, while trying to care for the woman who never quite knew how to care for her, was gutting in the best way. And then there's Christopher, the quiet backbone of the town, and her past. He's a steadying presence in the storm, and I found myself rooting for their complicated connection. The story hits heavy emotional beats that don't always resolve cleanly. It's not a light read. There's trauma here like death, poverty, abandonment, and Pearsall doesn't soften those edges. At times, I found the generational conflict between Adrienne and Elizabeth exhausting, but maybe that's the point. It's not supposed to be easy. Some scars don't fade, and some relationships don't get fixed. I appreciated that honesty. Also, the mystery surrounding the Merritt boys unfolds slowly and subtly, but for me, the tension and slow burn only added to the beauty of the thing. The Summer Knows is a story about coming home, not to reclaim the past, but to finally face it. It's raw, evocative, and filled with aching truths about family, memory, and the kind of love that leaves a mark even when everything else fades. I'd recommend it to anyone who's a fan of emotionally layered fiction, especially readers who loved Kristin Hannah's The Great Alone or Ann Patchett's Commonwealth . This book is for those of us who've ever been haunted by where we came from, and wondered if we could ever really leave it behind. Review by Literary Titan THE SUMMER KNOWS by Sarah E. Pearsall ‧ Kirkus Reviews Book of the Month for November 2025 and one of the Best Books of 2025. An emotionally layered coming-of-age story of how family dynamics and secrets shape lives. In Pearsall's novel, a single mother must come to terms with her relationship with her estranged grandmother, and with a past she left behind nearly two decades ago. In 2012, 30-something Adrienne Harris suddenly finds herself without a job after the closure of the restaurant where she worked as head chef. As she contemplates what lies next for her and her teenage daughter, Kali, she grapples with feelings of inadequacy while facing the challenges of financial instability and single motherhood. Then she receives a late-night phone call from family friend Christopher Crane, asking her to return home to the town of Harbor Point to care for the ailing grandmother who raised her. Adrienne feels that she has little choice but to go back to the town she left, pregnant and heartbroken, at the age of 17—even though it was her grandmother who threw her out. She finds Gran in worse health than she anticipated and the house in serious disrepair, Adrienne realizes that she and Kali will be staying longer than expected. As Adrienne struggles with the idea of reconciliation, she faces the past and the secrets she's