Thank you, Netgalley, for the ARC.

I am beginning to love the small town romance trope. It just has this cozy feeling! You just want to sit on a couch, wrapped in a blanket. One of the best feelings in the world.

The FMC returns to her hometown to help her parents with selling the house. Once there, she reconnects with her childhood best friend, a handsome handyman.

The opinions and parts of the FMC's diary in every chapter are so fun to read. So well-thought! I am also a fan of the new friendships in this book. The romance could be better. I did not really feel that spark between the main characters at times.

Overall, this was a great, cute read.

I want to start off by saying this book, Summer in a Bottle, is a cute second-chance romance with a fun concept.
When Delilah Dune left Echo Cove, she thought she'd be getting away from her small, simple town and starting life anew in a big city. She had huge dreams for herself, however, years later, she finds herself lost and questioning herself and her life choices. She heads back to Echo Cove to help her parents sell their house and, in the midst, figure out her next move. However, when she arrives, she quickly notices that events of her last year at Echo Cove are replaying themselves. From being struck by lightning to her father getting sick after eating eel, Delilah is more than certain these cannot be simple coincidences. Delilah is convinced that life is trying to teach her something.
This is a cute read, with the cutest romance between two childhood best friends. It's a story of finding oneself and finding true love along the way. It really focused on not trying too hard and everything being right in front of you, which I loved. What I did not love, however, was how remedial the entire story was. I get that the events were repeating, so it would make sense for the author to work off that idea, but did the same details need to be brought up several times per chapter? Or did Lyla need to question the exact same thing (her feelings for her best friend) as often as she did? Or did every incident need to go back to Lyla's ex? The repetition just seemed overwhelming and brought a damper on the book a bit, however, it was still sweet.
Thank you NetGalley, Kensington Publishing, and Annie Rains for this ARC!

This was an interesting book about Lyla returning to her childhood home in Echo Grove. Her parents needed her to help get their house ready to sell by cleaning out her bedroom so they could travel. I liked that Lyla learned a lot about herself after digging up her time capsule bottle she buried during her senior year of high school. She made new friends, reconnected with old classmates, including her best friend Travis whom she had ghosted. He is now a handyman who comes to her rescue many times in the book. He might even have to rescue and fix her heart. She also faced her fears while finding herself and tackling her high school bucket list that was in the time capsule bottle. I received an advance copy of this book and I willingly chose to write an honest review.

A second chances romance. A sweet story that will have the main characters reconnect as they get past their hurt and damaged friendship. I liked it was told from dual POV. It’s an entertaining and sweet read.

This entertaining novel has some deep truths in it and I really enjoyed the way the author brought them to the forefront as she weaved the tale of Lyla and her life. Lyla, dumped by her boyfriend, returns to Echo Cove, North Carolina, a small town that she gladly fled when she graduated from high school. She had great plans to be an author and she has kind of met that goal by becoming an opinion columnist who is well-known for her columns. Once she is back in Echo Cove, with the task of helping her parents sell their home there, Lyla is confronted with her past and her present dilemmas and has to decide what she will do about her future. I thoroughly enjoyed the light-hearted banter between Lyla and her friend Amanda and Lyla’s gung-ho attempt to win over Bernadette as a friend. The friendship between Travis and Lyla was realistically portrayed as was their gradual realization about their romantic feelings for each other, even if they didn’t want to pursue those feelings. I loved Lyla’s compassionate nature and how she reached out to Amanda when she knew she was hurting from all of her losses. Bernadette was feisty and reluctant to accept friendship, but her fun-loving and warm heart won me over. All of the characters were relatable, so much so that I just wanted to go into the pages of the book and tell them what they needed to do. The novel’s plot is fast-paced and engaging, with some complex elements woven into the simple tale of a girl who just wants to escape from her small town and never look back. The author masterfully creates a story around the central characters of Lyla and Travis and even includes snippets of Lyla’s opinions, some of which are humorous and others that are thought-provoking. I especially enjoyed the magical element that was included with the fireflies, noting that Lyla needed those little guys to point the way for her. What a clever way to get Lyla to pay attention and what a great reminder of the fun I had with those little bugs in my childhood! I loved everything about this book and even ordered my own copy so that I have one to keep and re-visit Lyla’s story.
Disclaimer: I voluntarily received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review and all opinions expressed are my own.

I wanted to love this one. That cover was so engaging. And the blurb promised me Rebecca Serle and Josie Silver vibes. I was underwhelmed. 🍾

The premise was so intriguing, but I did not feel it delivered.

(view spoiler)

I loved the small town setting of Echo Cove, but too many things just didn't add up. Sorry to say it is my least favorite title by Annie Rains. Thank you to Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars. What a cute story! A woman returns to her hometown to get her parents' house ready to go on the market. One of the first things she does is dig up a time capsule she buried years ago that reminds her of things done and those left unfinished. She encounters many people from her past, and she goes about making new connections with them. She makes contact with Travis, her old best friend, a woman who wasn't her friend at all, and a woman she had humiliated in high school.

Lyla is a great character. Hers is a story of friendship, making ammends, believing in yourself, and trusting your heart. There's a little magic/fantasy thrown in when Lyla discovers that past events seem to be recurring in her current life. Is she destined to leave Travis and break his heart again?

I really did enjoy this. It was more women's fiction with romantic undertones. The secondary characters were great. I would love to be friends with them!

Thanks to Kensington and NetGalley for the e-book. All thoughts are my own.

2/5 stars

This book started off promising. I liked the characters, it was lighthearted; it drew me in. Halfway through, I was counting down the pages til I was done. It got so repetitive, so predictable, and in all honestly, just ridiculous. There are only so many times that a character can be told something or wonder something themselves before the reader starts to scream at them that it’s just too obvious for this to be possible. In this case, after both main characters admit that they like each other currently as well as liking each other in the past, and having all surrounding characters mention it, it’s ridiculous for the main character to still be unsure. I get that the author wants to draw us in with their love story, but they drew it out way too long. It was too much, and I hated this book by the end. Also, what was with the magical elements? They were sprinkled in randomly, and they didn’t add anything to the story.

Oftentimes, a book will just hit me with exactly what I needed at the moment! This was one of those books for me. A feel-good, light read, this was a fun and entertaining story about Lyla and her return to her small hometown. Facing several obstacles, she ends up finding exactly what she was searching for when she left the small town years ago.

It was cute?! I usually do love a small town story with a nice friendship but I kept thinking the main character was early twenties not thirty 😂 ~but who am I to judge~

Lyla gets a second chance when she returns to her small home town and opens the time capsule she stowed away all those years ago. And it's not just a second chance with Travis, it's with her whole life and life choices. Her Groundhog Day experience shows her what she's denied herself. This is a sweet easy read with good spirits and a big heart. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Fine storytelling.

In Summer in a Bottle Lyla returns to her home town to take care of the selling of her parents' house. Also she is just out of a relationship gone bad. Then the last summer she was in small town Echo Cove seems to be repeating. Odd!

She is an opinion writer for a newspaper but she is becoming more out of sync with it and really would like to be a writer. When she digs up a list of things she and Travis were going to do there are some things unchecked. Should she and Travis who has returned finish ticking off the list?

Lyla has thought leaving town was the way to go. Why get stuck in a backwater place, why develop further in a relationship at eighteen? She is sure she has the right of it. However when she returns to Echo Cove she begins to see differently.

I liked how some relationships were mended and the reasons for the break were clarified. I liked that Lyla begins to see things more clearly as Ground hog Day plays out for her. Travis had a lot of patience but even he can only take so much. It was good to see Lyla finally face her fears and see where happiness lay.

I had expected to like this a lot more but I found the pace slow and I didn't eagerly turn to pick it up each time. It sort of dragged for me.

If you like small town life, a little magical realism, a character who realises that finding yourself might not need to include leaving town, and a closed door romance then this book will be for you.

I did enjoy Annie Rains The Finders Keepers Library so I will read another book by this author at some point.

I like Annie Rain's writing. I know the towns will usually be small, the characters will have some depth and if there is a romance the door will stay closed. I have enjoyed several of her books previously. This one is general (women’s) fiction with a slice of romance.

Lyla Dune returns to her small hometown of Echo Cove to prepare her parents house for sale. She has broken up with fiancé and her job as an opinion columnist is being threatened. Since it is shared in the blurb, she decides to dig up a time capsule filled the summer before she went to college. It brings back memories and includes a bucket list of things she was going to do before leaving town. In a twist, this isn’t a Groundhog Day story. She isn’t relieving the same day but instead she is seeing some of the things that happened in that summer happening again to her.

Lyla calls for a handyman and it turns out to be Travis, her one time best friend. He helped her write the original bucket list and is willing to help her check off the remaining items. The story is sweet but with some cute moments. And I loved the idea of the bucket list. But this felt a little young for me as I was reading it. I think because her emotions and feelings are from her high school days and her desire to leave the town behind. She has a lot of fears and I was genuinely surprised that she hasn’t sought out help for them. There are opinion comments throughout the book as well that brings a folksiness to the story. And I didn’t get the romance interest at all other than they were long time friends.

It is still a very cute story but I didn’t invest emotionally like I have with other books from the author.

Summer in a Bottle
Annie Rains

Lyla - opinion writer
Travis - handyman
Allison - friend
Bernadette - friend - coffee Cafe owner

Lyla goes home to get the house ready to see so her parents can travel. Her parents has Allison check on her. Echo Cove where she grown up and she didn't think anyone from high school still lived there. She took her bike out and she get a flat tire and Travis her best friend from high school stops and helps her get home. Travis and Lyla start talking when she need a handyman to fix a few things around the house so it can be sold. First was a water leak. Then he came to get her ready for the next person to look at it. That buyer was afraid hurricane Bill would damage the house. In the meantime she did her opinion spot in the newspaper. And hangout with Travis and Allison.
Travis came to board the house up before the storm. Travis and Lyla hangout and continue getting feeling for eachother.
She hangs out with Allison goes to the bar and Travis shows up there.
Travis didn't like one of the opinion peices in her article got mad.
Annie did a fantastic job with description of the story. She matched characters up very well.
Annie knock this one out of the field and I just couldn't put it down.

aww this was a sweet and heartfelt book. it had a dash of magic and was a little bit deeper than your average. but it was feel good all the same. id happily take this on holiday this time of year. or as the sun starts to shine take it to a corner somewhere. it feels like just the right time to get cozy with a book that is light but not too light, that is romantic but not too much squish and is full of things many of us can actually relate to.
Annie makes you picture every scene with such vividness. you can see the interactions and feel the connections. all the emotions feel really relatable to how wed all feel if we were going through similar things.
lyla heads home to help her parents sort out some things in the home. whilst there she takes out her old time capsule. it doesnt escape her how important the things inside feel. how much she thought she would have once leaving home. the job, the man and yet now she doesnt have any of it. infact it so far away from what she ran away to succeed in that its quite a sucker punch. inside is also a diary from high school. before everything went so wrong. before she decided not to be brave and tell her best friend how she feels. before she left to become a high flying writer. and before none of those things ended up coming true.
the trouble is these things now seem to be mirroring and happening the same as back then. in that last summer before she left. everything is the same, so might she have the chance to change things. to make things finally ok. to make herself finally ok?
i found her relationship with Travis so sweet to read. he was her best friend but so much more than that. and looks like he felt exactly the same.
this story is so gorgeous. it felt like it hit my heart and held it there with all the emotions that wrapped round that,

There's something about that bottle!🤔

4-4.5🌟 stars
More about the bottle later. Overall Annie Rains' Summer in a Bottle was a page-turner that left me happy and hopeful.

Set in North Carolina, Lyla's trip back to her hometown, high school memories and a neglected former best friend ended up inspiring, heartwarming and a totally satisfying self discovery romance. Finishing the epilogue, I was inspired to think of Dorothy Gale and how her adventures away from her Kansas farm and family, no matter how colorful and exciting, could not beat the life and love she and Toto had back home.

Lyla left her hometown and dropped all contact except with her parents to go to college and live her dreams as a successful writer. A decade on and her success as a nationally-recognized columnist has not made her happy. Though her trip home is in aid of her parents, it lets loose her memories and regrets and the frightening prospect that she must face the fears she left behind or risk rack and ruin like she experienced in her last year at home repeating.

The time capsule bottle she digs up and opens brings some magic realism with it and has her wanting to remedy loose ends, particularly with Travis, the fellow she had left behind. Within weeks of returning home she's finding solid friendship and conflicted romance.

While I loved the plot and the easy writing style, there were a few inconsistencies and the glaring question: since when does a bottle have a flap? How did she cram those keepsakes in its neck and remove them so easily? Catchy title, but the idea of a bottle rather than a box time capsule just had me baffled.

High marks for the feels the story evokes nonetheless.

Thanks to Kensington Books and NetGalley for sharing a complimentary advance copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest opinion.

Review shared on 4/20/25 on Waterstones, Goodreads and Bookbub, and with Barnes & Noble and BAM. To be shared with kobo and Google Play upon publication.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216972008-summer-in-a-bottle" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Summer in a Bottle" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1722310197l/216972008._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216972008-summer-in-a-bottle">Summer in a Bottle</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13911602.Annie_Rains">Annie Rains</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7401290752">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!<br />----------<br />In this tender, uplifting novel for fans of Josie Silver and Rebecca Serle, a young woman returns to her North Carolina hometown hoping to make new memories, but finds history repeating itself—literally . . .<br /><br />Dumped by her fiancé, opinion columnist Lyla Dune returns to small-town Echo Cove to heal, and to help her parents prep their house for sale. When she decides to open a time capsule she buried in high school, past memories lead her to a diary filled with memorable moments from the last summer she spent at home, right before college. Some of the events feel like they happened yesterday. That’s normal. Not so normal is that they actually start happening all over again . . .<br /><br />Lyla gets a flat tire in the same spot and is saved by the same person. The same movie is playing at the theater. Her house has the same leak it once had. As her current summer increasingly mirrors that last one, Lyla worries it will end just as disastrously: with a category 3 hurricane—and with losing Travis, the best friend she was always secretly in love with. If only she hadn’t been too scared to admit it.<br /><br />She revisits other fears too, like the fear of rejection that led her to abandon her passion for fiction writing. And when she reconnects with Travis, Lyla becomes certain that unless she does what her younger self was unable to do, she’ll suffer the same regrets. But if this time around she can gather her courage, maybe the life that was falling apart when she arrived will fall back together—even better than before.<br />----------<br />Annie Rains is always good for an enjoyable story that offers plenty of romance but much more than that, and her newest offering is no different. Lyla finds herself back home, a little bit down on her luck and at loose ends, and she isn't sure how she will be received. She has burned some bridges, and she is feeling some trepidation about reconnecting with the people of her past. And then she finds herself experiencing some major déjà vu.<br /><br />This is a fun book, with a little bit of magic thrown in. There are some more serious plot points (CW: child loss), but for the most part, I found it be very uplifting. The central romance plot is satisfying, and even more satisfying for me was the strong theme of second chances and women's friendships. As we head into summer, this book is the perfect read for anyone who has ever wondered what would happen if you had the chance to go back and right old wrongs or redo some things from your past, as well as anyone who is looking for a warm, feel-good story complete with more than one HEA. <br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1002344-mary">View all my reviews</a>

Lyla returns to her hometown to help her parents get her childhood home ready for sale while they embark on their dream of traveling the world. She’s been dumped by her fiancé and is in danger of losing her job. What more can happen? She finds a time capsule she buried and the diary she kept when she was in high school. As she reads the diary, she finds that a series of events seem to be happening that mirror events that happened during her last summer at home before leaving for college.

She ends up reconnecting with Travis, her childhood best friend who she secretly loved but feared telling him. He’s happy to see her, yet not happy because of the way things ended between them. She also connects with former classmates and strikes up new friendships. The more time she spends with Travis, the more they determine that they need to finish the bucket list they started when in high school. Travis reveals he loved her, too, but Lyla doesn’t know how they could have a future together because their lives are on different paths.

I loved this story!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I wasn't a fan of this book, I thought it was not very unique or interesting. I liked the friendships and some of the side characters, but overall felt like it was missing something. As I gave it a low rating, I will not be posting a social media review.

3.5 stars

I have recently discovered Annie Raines, she is a refreshing, clean author.

Summer in a Bottle is a perfect summer, beach read, which is exactly what I did on a recent vacation. The story started out at a great momentum with Lyla returning home to help her parents pack up their house to sell. It is here that Lyla reflects on her past, especially as she digs up her time capsule from 10 years previous. It was a fun read as she returns to a town and friends she quite suddenly abandoned. As things start to happen that reflect her last summer home, it opens up old wounds.

Summer in a Bottle is a story of friendship, lost loves and discovering oneself. It started out great, petered out a bit in the middle with an ending that picked up the pace. There was one trope that I’m not a fan of so that didn’t help, I won’t specify which one as it will definitely be a spoiler.

All in all this was a great beach read and an author that I will be reading more of.

My thanks to Kensington Books for a digital arc in exchange for a honest review