The Girls of August - Review

Review by Darcie Czajkowski

Friendship. That is what bound Madison, Rachel, Barbara, and Melinda together for fifteen years. Their husbands' common profession as physicians inspired their bond, but the girls fell in love with each other in a way so sacred that they chose to carve out time each August to spend a week at the beach. And became the Girls of August.

But the sudden, heart-stopping death of Melinda put an abrupt end to their summer vacations. They could not fathom reuniting without her.

And so they separately lived their lives until Melinda's husband remarries and the girls decide that they must reunite. Even though nothing about this summer vacation will be like they once were. Because Melinda is irreplaceable. By anyone. Certainly by Baby, a young, ripe beauty with a penchant for speed-talking and skinny-dipping.

That being said, Baby is gracious enough to allow the Girls of August into her family's beach house on a far-flung island off the South Carolina coast.

The original, real Girls of August come into the vacation saddled with prejudice and Baby's youthful antics seem to confirm their fears. And then some. Yet as time ticks along on the removed, rustic island and secrets seep from cracks and rise to the surface, it appears that the only thing the ladies were right about is that nothing is as it once was.

Despite a slow start, The Girls of August navigates the depths of genuine friendship. It shares a real, true story of girls whose love, respect, and admiration for one another started as youthful kinship and developed into solid relationships that have endured for a generation and will continue blossom for decades to come. The gap in time initially feels nonexistent to the women as they reminisce about past summers and the joys and sorrows of those moments, but when the stories emerge about the years since their last reunion, it is both amazing and startling just how much has transpired. Anne Rivers Siddons writes with clear, precise language and realistic dialogue in this rich story of women who, despite their different life paths, chose to treasure the moments in life that matter the most. For time is a gift and there exists no better way to spend it than with those who make you grateful to be alive. 

Purchase the book at:

Amazon * Barnes & Noble

About the Author:

Anne Rivers Siddons is an American novelist who writes stories set in the southern United States.  She was raised in Fairburn, Georgia, and attended Auburn University, where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta Sorority. While at Auburn she wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman, that favored integration. The university administration attempted to suppress the column, and ultimately fired her, and the column garnered national attention. She later became a senior editor for Atlanta magazine. At the age of thirty she married Heyward Siddons. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and spends summers in Maine.