Summer at Wishing Well Cottage by Pippa Summers

Phoebe is grieving the sudden death of her twin, Tiffany. While going through the mail, Phoebe finds one addressed to her late sister. The mail’s from Wishing Well cottage Artistic Commune – an invitation to the summer program. Tiffany was an artist and was very much looking forward to attending the summer program.

Phoebe decides to honour her late sister’s name and takes the paintings to Wishing Well Cottage. Judith Finlay, the owner of Wishing Well Cottage mistakes Phoebe for Tiffany. (They do not know that Tiff’s dead) Phoebe doesn’t have the courage to tell Judith that Tiff’s dead so she plays along. Soon, Phoebe learns that when Tiff was here for her interview, she had a brief fling with Judith’s grandson – Dexter.

Dexter seems to be angry on Tiffany. Phoebe falls in love with Dexter but for how long can she hide the fact that she’s not Tiffany?

The blurb of this book sounded exciting (plus the rave reviews) so I decided to borrow this book from KU. The part up to where Phoebe goes to Wishing Well Cottage seemed fine. Phoebe not telling others that she’s not Tiffany was also okay- acceptable.

But Phoebe’s inability to make decisions was annoying. Her indecisiveness goes up to a point where at one instance she thinks she’s Tiffany and not Phoebe (the romance of sorts at the pool!) I do not care much for the story if the character portrayals are strong. Not all stories need to have a moral at the end, you see. Character transformation plays a major role in such stories. But in this story, Phoebe is confused till the very end. She’s confused about her feelings for Dexter. And she also manages to confuse Dexter with her yes, no, maybe, no, yes statements. At times, even I was confused as to what was happening!

I would have liked this story if Phoebe transformed for good in the second half. But as the story ends, she decides to leave Wishing Well Cottage and leave Dexter. Even when he tells her that he loves her, she makes confusing statements. Sorry for the spoiler in the last two statements but this is what I did not like about the story.

Phoebe is attracted to Dexter and vice versa. When Dexter makes a move, she pushes him away. Then she regrets making such a decision. Various characters were introduced at the beginning of the story – and Phoebe flirts with one of the attendees of the program so I was thinking there’s going to be a love triangle or something – I guess this would have made the story interesting – but no. The story concentrates only on Dexter and Phoebe and somewhere, in the end, Claire comes in. Claire’s role was interesting in the beginning but then it turned out to be something else – again, another disappointment!

Claire’s hatred towards Tiffany/Phoebe wasn’t explained well. Also, the attraction between Phoebe and Dexter was more of lust than love. Most of the story is about how Phoebe felt when Dexter touched her or held her hand or kissed her! Also, there were certain scenes that were totally silly. Like, when Judith comes to talk to Phoebe (she’s Tiffany and not Phoebe, remember?) and asks if Tiffany has a sister, Phoebe chokes. When Judith asks what happened, Phoebe says she swallowed a bug or something! She chokes again when Dexter is around and yeah, same bug story again.

As this was a disappointing read, I will not be rating it.

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