Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Life Without Summer: A Novel
    Life Without Summer: A Novel
    Life Without Summer: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Life Without Summer: A Novel

    Written by Lynne Griffin

    Narrated by Tanya Eby

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Tessa Gray’s life changes forever when she loses her four-year-old daughter, Abby, in a hit-and-run accident outside her preschool. Once a vivacious, joyful mother and wife, Tessa now spends her days holed up in Abby’s room, sleeping in her bed, clutching Abby’s Tootsie Rabbit stuffed animal—anything to keep her memories close. As Tessa grapples with a terrible grief, made worse by the police’s insistence that the case is unsolvable, she finds solace in Celia Reed, the therapist her husband has pushed her to see, and in the journal she’s keeping, where she compulsively counts the “days without Abby” and maps out her plan for catching the driver who tore her family apart.

    As Celia struggles to keep Tessa from getting caught up in a bleak crusade for answers, she finds that their sessions open the door to emotions that she’s spent years ignoring, forcing her to face the rising tensions in her life—her troubled teenage son, her alcoholic ex-husband, and her fragile new marriage. Celia begins to realize that she must come to terms with the tragic mistakes of her past and the choices that have led her family to their own brink of destruction.

    A haunting portrait of two women whose lives converge unexpectedly, Life Without Summer illuminates connections between love, marriage, truth, and forgiveness no listener will forget.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 14, 2009
    ISBN9781423390565
    Author

    Lynne Griffin

    Lynne Griffin has spent more than 20 years as a child development and behavior management consultant. She is the author of Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment (Berkley/Penguin, 2007). She is the parenting contributor for Boston’s Fox 25 Morning News where she regularly appears in the segments Family Works and Parenting and the News. Her writers' group has been featured in the Boston Globe and the Patriot Ledger. She lives in Scituate, Massachusetts with her family. This is her first novel.

    Related to Life Without Summer

    Related audiobooks

    Family Life For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Top 10 Books

      Jun 16, 2023

      Top 10 Books
      1 min read

    • Article

      3-Year-Old In Idaho Dies After She Was Stabbed At Her Birthday Party

      Jul 3, 2018

      The girl was one of six children and three adults stabbed in Boise over the weekend. Timmy Kinner was taken into custody after the attack and was charged with first-degree murder, among other things.

      1 min read

    • Article

      Good Bones

      Mar 19, 2020

      Good Bones
      18 min read

    • Article

      Come with Me

      Dec 1, 2022

      Come with Me
      12 min read

    • Article

      Siphons

      Feb 6, 2020

      Siphons
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Hard Truth

      Jul 12, 2021

      The Hard Truth
      2 min read

    • Article

      Me & Davey Waters

      Jan 15, 2023

      Me & Davey Waters
      4 min read

    • Article

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time

      Dec 1, 2023

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time
      9 min read

    • Article

      THE CYBER Saviour

      Feb 10, 2021

      THE CYBER Saviour
      3 min read

    • Article

      Now That I’ve Arrived

      Dec 30, 2020

      Now That I’ve Arrived
      5 min read

    • Article

      Counting

      Feb 12, 2021

      Counting
      18 min read

    • Article

      Lech

      Feb 8, 2022

      Lech
      4 min read

    • Article

      Supportive Husband

      Sep 12, 2023

      There were less intimate places available, so it was odd when a woman took the seat directly facing mine across the subway aisle. I looked up from my book and right back down: a couple of months before, we’d gone home together. She had a Southern acc

      22 min read

    • Article

      A Good Samaritan

      Dec 6, 2022

      It was hot that day, hot for the morning and hot for April and with a stickiness in the air that suggested something had to break. I was headed up the street to ask my neighbor Meech to give me a jump when I heard a scream come from the fourplex next

      10 min read

    • Article

      Battle Of The Parking Space

      Nov 12, 2021

      Battle Of The Parking Space
      5 min read

    • Article

      Coming To Terms

      May 25, 2021

      Coming To Terms
      14 min read

    • Article

      The Change

      Feb 2, 2019

      The Change
      3 min read

    • Article

      We’re All Just Butterflies

      Sep 29, 2020

      We’re All Just Butterflies
      4 min read

    • Article

      Ann Beattie

      Sep 15, 2017

      I’d started to visit Olivia more often because it was obvious she was lonely. The ALS lady who’d been moved to Hopkins had been Aunt Olivia’s closest friend, leaving aside Merton Hillstead, who actually went home. Even the friendly paperboy who somet

      23 min read

    • Article

      A Nose For Trouble

      Apr 12, 2022

      A Nose For Trouble
      6 min read

    • Article

      Not My Cat

      Aug 21, 2023

      The rise and fall of fur, sunlight rippling across his perfectly groomed coat – it’s enchanting, hard to look away. For 30 minutes, she’s watched the cat sleeping on three blankets, folded and piled on top of one another. She’s cold, but can’t bring

      6 min read

    • Article

      It Shouldn't Happen To A Film Journalist

      Jan 12, 2023

      THIS MONTH… RELIVING AN INFAMOUS HORROR STORY Yesterday I was crossing the kitchen intent on popping two eggs into a saucepan to boil for breakfast, when my wife called goodbye as she set off for work. I scurried to the front door to say farewell… an

      2 min read

    • Article

      Metaphors

      Mar 10, 2023

      I’m knitting on my front porch when a car roars to a stop in front of my house. It’s a red Mustang convertible, top down on this warm Thursday afternoon in June. Two girls sit in the front, two in the back. They smile and wave at me. I smile back tho

      8 min read

    • Article

      Hell Is A City in Texas

      Jun 14, 2021

      Hell Is A City in Texas
      10 min read

    • Article

      Our Year With Penny

      Dec 24, 2019

      Our Year With Penny
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Duplex

      Jun 9, 2020

      I moved to Los Angeles to sing. When was this? August? June? I was twenty-nine, and those were shapeless months, when the days blended together and I refused to pull them apart. My landlord was unusually close to her adult son. His name was Jeffrey,

      21 min read

    • Article

      Parakeet

      May 29, 2020

      Parakeet
      11 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      Famous People

      Mar 1, 2022

      Famous People
      15 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Life Without Summer

    3.5/5

    49 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Life Without Summer is a haunting portrait of two women whose lives converge unexpectedly when the answers one needs turn out to be the other's only chance for peace. Looking forward to reading more from this author!!
    • 5/5
      Just plain great! I read Sea Escape and liked it so much that I wondered what else Griffin had written and here was her debut novel and what a way to begin! In some ways you feel as though you know what's coming but it's an amazing puzzle she has put together in this book. I wish I still had it to read and am looking forward to more from her!
    • 5/5
      This is a debut novel? Wow, I am so impressed! This book is written with the depth and feeling of a seasoned novelist. The main character Tessa's grief over the death of her daughter envelopes the reader from the first couple of pages. I could feel her moving through the stages of grief, however resistant and unwilling she was to move at all. The parallel storyline of Tessa's therapist Celia and her broken family was equally interesting and broke up the sadness in the novel. Without the alternating between the two storylines, the book may have become too depressing. Although I saw the ending a mile away, I still could not put this book down! The characters were so likable and the stories so intertwined that it really made for a thoughtful and beautiful book.
    • 5/5
      It’s a true-like book telling the story of two women. A story that could happen in any neighbourhood. I felt as if I understood what the characters were about. The characters were not over exaggerated or It’s It's a true-like book telling the story of two women. Thier lives, their family, their struggles their loss and their choices. A story that could happen in any neighbourhood. I felt I understood the characters. The characters were not over exaggerated or phoney. There were times in the book that I could relate with the character.The story kept me engaged. Just like in life, there were parts that I predicted, but the way that it was read it still held my attention. It was smooth reading and hard to set aside. A simple, pleasant read yet enticing story.Loved it.
    • 2/5
      corny and sentimental but pretty well-written.
    • 4/5
      Tessa Gray has just lost her four-year-old daughter, Abby; killed by a hit-and-run driver. Tessa is grieving and angry and is determined to find that driver. Her loved ones convince her to go into therapy, and that begins the parallel story of Tessa's therapist, Celia. The book alternates between the two women and their lives as mothers and wives. Eventually, their lives intersect beyond the confines of Celia's office in a horrific way. I didn't always like the adults in this book and the decisions they made, but the author created very real characters with honest responses and emotions. An intense but good read.
    • 3/5
      Life Without Summer is the story of Tessa, who is struggling to cope after the loss of her four-year-old daughter after a hit-and-run accident. It weaves in viewpoints of other characters, most notably her therapist Celia, and as the story evolves the characters’ lives become more intertwined. There is an element of mystery to the story, as one of Tessa’s coping mechanisms is to take active part in the investigation of the hit-and-run.This book is very well done. It’s a wonderful mix of emotional impact and twisty plot, similar to a Jodi Picoult novel. The characters are very relatable – especially Tessa and her husband, who deal with their grief in different ways. The plot advanced at just the right rate – a little slow at the beginning to let us get connected to Tessa, and then building up steam. I’d recommend this to readers who are looking for something between light “chick lit” reading and deeper “book club” literature.
    • 5/5
      Life Without Summer is the debut novel written by Lynne Griffin. Tessa is a young woman whose life stops when her daughter is killed by a hit and run driver. Tessa isolates in Abby’s room, sleeps in her bed and slowly unravels as she tries to comprehend a life without her only child.Celia is Tessa’s therapist. While working with Tessa, Celia realizes her new marriage may not be as stable as she thinks and learns her son is battling his own problems. Meanwhile, her alcoholic ex-husband is still present in her life and her feelings towards him further complicates things.Life Without Summer is written in journal entries. The narration alternates between Tessa and Celia. The reader is privy to each woman’s struggle and pain as she tries to heal and move forward. I highly recommend this book.