All The Summer Girls

Donohue (How to Eat a Cupcake) sounds an irresistible call to spread a blanket on the nearest beach with three best friends who reunite on the Jersey Shore to commiserate, imbibe, and confess the dark secrets that have haunted them since college. The ladies—newly jilted Philadelphia lawyer Kate, restless Manhattan “yummy mummy” Vanessa, and drug-and-alcohol-abusing San Francisco writer Dani—are a hot mess in “the summer of our discontent,” mishandling the past and present as they move Kate’s canceled Las Vegas bachelorette party to their favorite summer haunt in Avalon, N.J. But problems old and new follow them to the beach: Kate is pregnant; Vanessa is flirting with an old boyfriend; and Dani can’t keep a job, find a home, or finish her novel. The elephant in the room at their rambling beach house, however, is the eighth anniversary of the drowning death of Kate’s troubled but lovable twin brother, Colin, a disaster that became a “lever pulled, sending them each hurtling down a different track.” The girls’ shared and private guilt predictably brings them closer, but Donohue gives the chick-lit buddy trope an appealing twist and a lot of depth, turning a familiar yarn of regret, trust, and loyalty into an elegant ode to late bloomers. Agent: Elisabeth Weed, Weed Literary. (July)