What do you do when you've finished ugly-crying in the school pickup line and your seven-year-old asks why your mascara is running? You lie. You say allergies. And then you sit in that car for an extra five minutes because David Baldacci just wrecked you and you need a moment.
Look, I picked up One Summer because I needed something different from my usual romance comfort reads, and someone in my mom group mentioned it was a Hallmark movie now. That's basically a seal of approval for "will make you feel things but won't traumatize you forever." And they were right. Mostly.
The Gut-Punch You See Coming (But Still Lands)
Here's the setup: Jack is dying. Terminal. It's almost Christmas. He's got a wife he adores and three kids he's trying to say goodbye to. Already reaching for tissues, right? But then—and I'm not spoiling anything because this happens early—his wife Lizzie dies in a car accident. While he's still dying. The kids get scattered to different relatives across the country.
I mean. COME ON.
But here's where Baldacci does something unexpected. Jack doesn't die. He starts recovering. And the rest of the book is about him pulling his broken family back together at Lizzie's childhood beach house in South Carolina. It's about grief and healing and learning how to be a parent when you're barely holding yourself together.
Is it subtle? No. Is it a little heavy-handed with the emotions? Absolutely. But honestly? Sometimes you don't need subtle. Sometimes you need a book that says "here's a family that's been through hell, and here's how they find their way back to each other." That's exactly what this is.
McLarty and Cassidy Earn Their Tissues
Okay, so the dual narration thing can be hit or miss. I've listened to audiobooks where the narrator switches feel jarring—like someone's changing the radio station mid-song. But McLarty and Cassidy? They figured it out. The handoffs between them feel natural, like the story is being passed gently instead of yanked.
McLarty handles Jack's perspective with this warmth that doesn't tip into saccharine. When Jack is struggling—with his health, with his grief, with figuring out how to reconnect with kids who've been through trauma—you feel it. Cassidy brought that same emotional precision to Before I Go To Sleep, another story where vulnerability could easily become overwrought but never does. She brings something softer to the other perspectives here, especially with the children's storylines.
Some reviewers mentioned they preferred their own imagined voices, and I get that. Reading versus listening is a different experience. But for me, listening during nap time (when Sophie actually cooperated) and during my sacred car-sitting sessions, the narration added something. It made the emotional moments land harder. Maybe too hard, if we're being honest about that pickup line incident.
Not Your Typical Baldacci (And That's Okay)
If you're coming to this expecting a thriller—someone mentioned they were disappointed it wasn't more action-packed—you're going to be confused. This isn't Absolute Power. There's no conspiracy, no chase scenes, no twisty plot reveals. It's a family drama. A tearjerker. The kind of book where the tension comes from "will this dad figure out how to help his grieving daughter" rather than "will the assassin find them first." If you're craving that classic Baldacci thriller energy though, End Game delivers exactly that—conspiracy, action, the whole package.
For me, that was actually refreshing. I don't always have the mental bandwidth for complicated plots. This one I could follow even after being interrupted forty-seven times (Lucas needed a snack, Sophie needed a diaper change, Emma needed help with homework, the dog needed... honestly I don't even remember anymore).
The beach setting helps too. There's something about an oceanfront summer house that just feels like healing, you know? Baldacci uses that setting to give the family space to breathe, to slowly rebuild. It's predictable in the best way—you know they're going to be okay, and watching them get there is the point.
Who Needs This Book (And Who Should Skip It)
This is for the mom who needs a good cry but also needs hope at the end. It's for anyone who's dealt with loss and wants to see a family come out the other side. It's for people who don't mind a little sentimentality with their fiction.
Skip it if you need fast pacing or if overt emotion makes you roll your eyes. And definitely skip if you're in a fragile emotional state—the early chapters dealing with terminal illness and sudden death hit hard. Content warning: have tissues ready.
Worth the Mascara Damage
At eight hours, it's the perfect length. I finished it in about a week and a half of stolen listening moments. The ending gave me exactly what I needed: hope, closure, and the satisfaction of seeing a family heal.
Made me cry at school pickup. Worth it though.
