Alright, if you would delete all pages from about 30% to 75% this book might have gotten 4 stars. First off, no one can identify with these characters. The women are all totally pessimistic and broken, the children are your typical American kids: spoiled brats and all the men have macho-man issues (with the exception of John Walsh, but we don't get to know him well enough). I understand that sometimes life gets you down and occasionally you might feel like there's nothing left except despair, but seriously, I just hate people who hide all their problems inside and then are surprised when they get sick physically. Like, Hello! You're internalizing all this poison and then you're surprised when your body reacts? Come on...Secondly, the author sucked at writing. Perhaps some of her other books are better, but in this one (the first one I ever read by her) I just felt that it was very disjointed. She was aiming to go towards a slowly uncovering all the past, step by step, type of telling and instead I just felt bored out of my skull for the gist of the book. Yeah, we know Brenda hurt a painting. You've alluded to how it happened 12 times already. Now we get the full details described in 15 pages and yet I don't feel like I learned anything new. There were a whole bunch of other, smaller, flaws as well. The author just writes about the setting as though we've all been there. I haven't. I don't even know where Nantucket it... except maybe that it's pretty far from Connecticut that you need to fly there. Caribbean? Canada level? Up near Greenland? In the Pacific? No clue! The only time I've ever even heard of the island were those bottled juice drinks they sold at specialty high-level stores and breakfast places made by Nantucket... presumably from the island but who knows? That aside, I figured out it was an island and not just a peninsula or a block of land a while of the way in. So why did I give this book 2 stars, and not just 1? Well, the story itself wasn't bad. The premise was interesting and the flow wasn't horrendous. As an editor I would have cleaned up a bit (more?) and changed things and simplified other things, but in general, overall, the book wasn't bad. I am still seething over the character depictions (very controversial at times!) and how much mind mud I had to slog through to get to the end of the novel. So I'll just try and focus on the beginning and how much more lovely that was in comparison to the rest of the book. Not sure if I'll be picking this author up again. P.S. This was a summer-read choice for my bookclub, Serious About Books.
Barefoot is a book that was recommended to me (Thanks Lani) because I really enjoyed The Castaways by this author and I wanted to read more of her books. I actually started out not liking any of the characters, and surprisingly by the middle to end, I ended up loving them all! Each character had their own reason for being who they were, and I was endeared to each of them. However, it wasn't until halfway through the book that I became involved enough with the characters that it became a page turner for me. The story is about 3 women who disappear for the summer to Nantucket at a cottage near the beach. Vicki is diagnosed with lung cancer and decides to go away for the summer to get her chemo. She takes her sister, Brenda, her friend Melanie, and her 2 children with her. Brenda is saddled with money problems and a broken heart. This is due to her affair with one of her college students which gets her fired, and destruction of property that lands her in a law suit. Melanie finds that her husband is cheating on her after a lost battle of them trying to get pregnant. Once she finds out about his ongoing affair, which he does not plan to end, she discovers she is pregnant. A perfect reason to disappear for the summer. A college student home for the summer meets the women upon their arrival at the airport and eventually ends up working for them to watch Vicki's 2 boys each day. His presence in the story seems to confirm the fact that Brenda and Melanie are very self centered women, because instead of helping Vicki out as they were intended to do, they instead let a stranger do it, while they wallow in their own pain. But I like this type of story, because it is realistic.I recommend that women who are reading Romance Novels or like Chick Lit put Elin Hilderbrand books on their list of things to read. I look forward to the next Elin Hilderbrand novel!
Do You like book Barefoot (2007)?
It's summer, and even lovers of YA books need a beach read sometimes! I picked this up at my local public library because the cover was about worn out--proof it has been loved!Three women arrive on Nantucket for the summer. Vicki needs to get away from home because she has lung cancer and needs to begin chemotherapy. She doesn't know how to handle it--but at least her two boys can play at the beach if she's at the family cabin. Brenda is running away--she was just fired as a university professor for sleeping with one of her lit students, even though he was older than her. She's hoping to write a screenplay and make her problems disappear. And, I guess, she is trying to help with her sister's kids. Melanie is there on a fluke--she found out that her husband is sleeping with a butch co-worker and doesn't want to stop cheating. Melanie, however, knows that after years of trying, she is now finally pregnant.All three women have some stories to tell and I was fascinated. Josh, the boys' babysitter, adds in the romance/intrigue, but also has a great story to read about. All in all, this was the perfect poolside read--I'm going to add this author's other books to my Goodreads to-read list.
—Sarah
Let me start by saying I was expecting this to be a throw-away book. Something I could start, put down if something else caught my attention, and/or never pick back up (and never regret missing out on if I didn't return to it). I think that impression was the fault of the editors, or whoever put the front cover together. With the tagline, "Three women. Three Secrets. One long, hot summer." and a quote reading, "Summer reading fun. ... Twenty pages in, you'll be ready to drop everything and head for the beach yourself." I was only expecting fluff.So when I ended up neglecting all chores around the house for an entire day while I devoted all my spare, non-parenting time to reading this book that I was hard-pressed to put down, I was really surprised. This book is, indeed, the story of three women who travel to the beaches of Nantucket for a summer, but it's also about so much more than that. This is the story of three women who may look like they have it all together from the outside, but who are falling apart at the seams internally. Their summer spent together, crammed into a tiny, older-than-dirt beach house does not make them fast friends, but enables them to work out for themselves how to deal with the hands life has dealt them.I would not classify this as a beach read. To me, those are books that are picked up and easily put down. I wasn't able to easily put this down; I was wrapped up in the characters and their lives (and the drama within their lives). I wanted to follow through to the end. In the end I was left satisfied and wanting to read more books by this author, and that's always a good feeling to have at the end of a reading.
—Heather
I'd like to begin by stating that once I started this book, I truly did not want to put it down. The lives of Brenda, Vicki, Melanie, and Josh are so captivating and genuine, making it hard not to become invested. The setting is summer on Nantucket, and Hilderbrand's artful use of descriptive language truly made me feel as if I was there, providing yet another reason for why I couldn't put this novel down.While there is a certain, underlying thread of sadness that runs through the story, there are also comical, sentimental, and bittersweet moments sprinkled in abundance. I found myself alternating between bursts of laughter and silent tears, and where good writing is concerned, reactions like those are hallmarks of a well-told story. The characterization is top-notch, making it easy to identify with all of the major characters on many levels.Barefoot is a quick and easy read, and perfect for those warm and lazy days. Allow yourself to get lost on Nantucket this summer...I think you'll enjoy the stay. :)
—Myra
