SUMMER NIGHTS AND METEORITES

Another linked but stand-alone Nantucket romance reunites readers with the Barbanel family.

The Jewish Barbanels, like modern-day Bridgertons, provide fodder for any number of romantic adventures; this time they’ve provided a perfect foil for Jordan Edelman, who wears black lace and fishnets (even on Nantucket) and lives life fully. She flirts hard, falls harder, and cries hardest whenever the inevitable breakup comes. Jordan manages to be both uncomplicated and a muddle of messy emotions: She worries about her single, widowed father and how he’ll cope with her impending departure for college, she struggles with resenting the much-lauded Ethan Barbanel (her father’s summer research assistant, whom Jordan has never met but feels has taken her place as the perfect child), and she has questions about the late mother she never really knew. After a meet-sexy with a stranger who of course turns out to be Ethan, this novel settles into a story of self-discovery peppered with great banter, a minor historical mystery (an initially exposition-heavy but eventually intriguing narrative about underacknowledged women in STEM), and a lot of Jordan getting out of her own way. The Summer of Lost Letters (2021) established the Barbanels as being Sephardic Jews; less-religious Jordan is implied Ashkenazi. Judaism runs through their lives naturally and without fanfare.

Light, sweet, and a little salty: just beachy.