Exclusive Interview
‘These Summer Storms’ Author Sarah MacLean Talks Adaptation Hopes, Sequel Possibility & More
Sarah MacLean’s These Summer Storms took the summer by storm. The beloved historical romance author entered a new chapter with her first contemporary novel, a family drama centered on the complicated (and ultra wealthy) Storms, who find themselves embroiled in an inheritance battle after the death of patriarch Franklin Storm.
While the Storms fight for Franklin’s billions, they must contend with long-held secrets, waves of grief, and decades of dysfunction coming to a head. Naturally, there’s a romance involved between the exiled Alice Storm and her father’s right-hand man, Jack Dean.
MacLean spoke with Swooon about her newest hit, those Succession feels, if she’ll write a sequel, and the possibility of an adaptation. (We’re just putting it out there: We need to see these Storms in a TV series faster than Elisabeth says “celebration” instead of “funeral.”) Plus, make sure to enter our giveaway below to get your hands on this summer’s hottest read.
These Summer Storms gives off serious Succession vibes. Did the show influence you at all?
MacLean: That’s a great question. I had not watched Succession at the time when I had first started the book, and then I did watch Succession somewhere during the pandemic. Succession is so brilliant. The writing is so brilliant. One of the things that I love so much about Succession is this idea of how we are somehow compelled to come back every week despite loathing those characters. There is nothing redeemable about any of them. And so, yeah, Succession is the right comp, in a certain sense, but I think it’s Succession meets the kind of family from Knives Out a little bit meets the family from The Family Stone. I mean, I really love families. In fact, there’s a great line in the Wes Anderson movie, The Darjeeling Limited. It’s Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody, and they’re on a train across India for whatever reasons, and they’re brothers who don’t get along. And there’s this moment where one kind of leans over the top bunk and looks down into the second bunk and says, “Do you think we would be friends if we weren’t siblings, if we weren’t brothers?” And the answer is no. And it’s such a powerful moment. I remember seeing that in a movie theater and being like, that’s what it feels like sometimes when you have siblings, so that has sat in my head for a long time, just that one back and forth. It’s funny how everything conspires to inspire you.
The book is a romance, but it’s also a love story about a dysfunctional family. Alice did the right thing and exposed her father’s company, which ultimately led to her being exiled from the family. After his death, she has to contend with all those complicated feelings about her love for him and her family. You say it really well in the book how the Storms have to unlearn all the ways they’d been taught to think about love.
MacLean: Obviously, I knew right away that I wasn’t writing the same thing I always write. I got kind of three-quarters of the way through the book, and I called my agent and said, “I have a problem. I don’t think I’m writing a romance novel.” And she was like, “None of us think you’re writing a romance novel, Sarah.” So, I was like, wait a second, if I’m not writing a romance novel, what am I writing? What is the story that I’m telling? Ultimately, it’s about a dysfunctional family, and it’s about this inheritance game, and it has this very clear plot, and there is romance in it. I think it really is a book about love in lots of different ways. Obviously, I make my money writing about love and have built a career writing about love, but in this book, I was able to explore love in a lot of different ways.
Since you realized you weren’t writing a romance novel, was Jack always intended to be a love interest?
MacLean: Yes. With a Sarah MacLean novel, the promise I make to my reader is there’s going to be a handsome man, and he will be laid low by love. That will happen. He will make sacrifices for love, so Jack and Alice always made sense to me. But what was interesting was that I knew from the beginning I was writing a story about this family. But the best way I can explain it is when you’ve done leg day every day for 15 years, and then you finally sit down, you go to the gym, and you try arm day, you’re like, wait a second, this is completely different.
What was the most difficult relationship to write?
MacLean: Elisabeth was really difficult. I think Elisabeth is really difficult for lots of reasons. I mean, I have a mother. I am a mother. I knew how the specter of Franklin would impact children. I could see what that would look like. And then, I was saying this to my husband a couple of days ago, in the early, early days of the book I thought, well, maybe the parents are divorced and there’s a young second wife. And then I thought, no, I want them to have been a team. But what does it mean to be a team in with Franklin Storm? What does it mean to be both harmed by him and to have to stand next to him every day? I don’t think Franklin was a vicious or violent person. I think he just was a narcissist and a tremendously successful person, and that was that. She was really tough. The relationship with all the children and her was tough, especially because they all had to feel a little different. It would have been very easy to make her into a kind of evil mother figure, but I wanted her to feel sympathetic in some way, and that’s very hard. She does some terrible things.
Did you ever have a different ending in mind?
MacLean: There were three possible endings. By the time I got there, I was like, well, it could go one way. They’re sort of obvious to read. The obvious thing is they all win, and they get their money. They lose, and they don’t get anything. And then the sort of middle way, the twisty surprise way, which is they do win, but they don’t get what they think they were going to get. I think I probably wrote all of them in some way and then netted them out. I wanted it to feel like it was all tied up at the end, which was a lot of work, honestly. I was very lucky. I spoke to a woman who is an expert in mega family trusts, like billion-dollar family trusts. She was so helpful. I’d be like, “What if we did it this way?” And she’d say, “I’ve never seen a rich person choose to divest all their income, but it could happen.” That’s why Jack is from Delaware. There are all these moments, if you know about family trusts, where I’ve laid out the breadcrumbs for you to be like, okay, that would work, you know?
Have you considered a sequel at all?
MacLean: That is a question that I’ve been asked a lot, especially because of the way I write. I write in series, and I do think it could be very cool to know that now you have these poor little rich kids who have to figure out their lives. There is something interesting about that. It’s not for me. I think the story is done. But, yeah, I think I can absolutely see how it would be interesting to watch Sam have to learn how to wash a dish.
Have there been discussions about a film or TV adaptation?
MacLean: I mean, in my house with my husband and kid. But no network or studio. Listen, tell your friends. You want a second book? Get a second season.
Have you thought about certain actors who could play the characters in an adaptation? I’m working on my dream cast…
MacLean: Let me just pitch you why I think it would make a good TV show. It would be really fun because, generationally, it would hit. You could bring great people back. People who you were like, “We haven’t seen her in a while,” and now that she’s 40 or so, she could come in and play Greta. For me, I have always had a vision in my head for Robin Wright as Elisabeth.
You have to have thought about somebody for Jack…
MacLean: Honestly, I haven’t. But I will tell you that I did go to see the new Superman, and I was like, this is a handsome young man [David Corenswet].
Is there a particular scene in the book that stands out to you the most?
MacLean: There are a couple of scenes, actually. When I look back on the writing of this book, I think a lot about all the scenes where they are all together, where the siblings are all together, and there are a couple I really love. There is the funeral scene where they’re all standing up on the hill by the wall watching the kind of celebration play out in front of them. In the book, it’s about a third of the length as it was when I wrote it because we had to tighten it, tighten it, tighten it for pacing. But like, just spending time with the kids and seeing them negotiate with each other over the course of the book was really fun. I’m very proud of that scene at the end, during the storm, when they play cards, and all the secrets start to unravel.
Are you working on a new book? Are you going back to historical romance?
MacLean: Next year, I have a historical coming. Next year, the paperback version of These Summer Storms will come in the summer, and then I have a historical coming in the fall. That is what I’m working on. It’s the last book in my current historical series, and then I’m just starting to fuss with the next contemporary, which will also be set in Rhode Island. It will be part of the universe, so presumably, the heroine will carry a Storm telephone, but it is not [These Summer] Storms related. It’s just set in Rhode Island, same time period, same location, really not a private island, like on the coast. It’s a little bit of a thriller and a little bit of a mystery, and also a big family secrets book. This is what I like to explore. A woman loses both her parents and then discovers that they had some pretty significant secrets that are now coming home to roost.
