Summer by Edith Wharton

I don’t know when the bodice ripping romance novel came into favor but in 1918 Edith Wharton, considered by some to be American’s greatest female novelist, wrote Summer, a novel about the sexual awakening of a village girl in New England. There’s lots of steamy sex (implied but not described) with a more explicit detailing of the aftermath. Summer was recommended to me by Professor Armbruster of Boston who included Edith Wharton in her thesis. She also recommended The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells. So far, she is two for two.  Read the entire review here.