June Baby

By Shannon Garvey
** Publication Date 12 May 2026 **
​4 stars




I’ve always held fantasies of running away to a summer island. Lounging on the beach reading. Working odd jobs to get by. Living in a small cottage. Or the mountains. It’s always had this idyllic ring to it. Reality is never quite as nice (unless you have a pile of cash stashed in a shoebox!)


Maggie and Joel were blessed with one child, Ruth. Ruth was an average child, with a gift for writing. And then her mom got sick. Nothing a child ever wants to hear. Cancer. Ruth mostly took care of Maggie at this time, even though Ruth was still just a teenager. When the end comes for Maggie, Ruth is bereft. She doesn’t want to go to her job. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone. She just wants to wallow in her sadness.


So Joel sends her off to live with a friend of Maggie’s. Off to Block Island where Diana lives and works in the summertime. When Ruth shows up, broken, on Diana’s doorstep, Diana can do nothing else but take her in. 


Over five summers Diana nurtures Ruth’s creative side. Teaching her to take photographs. Buying her journals to keep up her writing. Including Ruth as though she were Diana’s own daughter. Every summer Diana’s nephew Charlie comes to the island for a vacation. The two young people bond and share and develop a relationship somewhere between siblings and lovers. 


After five years, Ruth heads out on her own, working on the island in the summers, and in Maine in the winters. Rarely stopping at her home to see her father. Burying the pain and guilt down as deep as she can. Then she gets a call from Charlie that Diana is in the hospital dying. Now Ruth is completely broken. 


Back to the island she goes, but what is her place there now without Diana? She never did take Diana’s well meaning advice or connections seriously about moving on with her life. Now what. Ruth has this sumner to try to figure it out. 


I’m sure there are so many women who identify with Ruth’s inability to figure out what to do next after a tragedy strikes. Those fears in the back of your mind that you’re not worthy, or talented, or capable. Easier to just slog along the way you are than take a risk at a future. 


I loved this book. So very much. There aren’t pretty little packages tied up with bows at the end. But there is some closure and hopefuiness.


Definitely read this one.