It’s one thing to admire billionaires like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk from afar. It’s another entirely to grow up as the child of a tech icon, burdened by legacy and the fear that your personal choices could rattle stock markets — at least, that’s the world Sarah MacLean explores in her newest novel, These Summer Storms.
Alice Storm’s life is instantly engrossing. Raised amid New York City’s elite, she spent childhood summers flying by helicopter to Storm Manor in Rhode Island, surrounded by a domineering father and an emotionally distant, cocktail-sipping mother — think Jessica Walter in Archer or Arrested Development. But Alice has been estranged from the Storm dynasty for five years, having carved out a life of her own on her own terms. That independence is challenged when Franklin Storm, the tech tycoon and family patriarch, dies — pulling her back to the family’s remote, tempestuous island for what may be one final reckoning.
