Can't Wait Wednesday: When You Loved Me

Can't Wait Wednesday is hosted by Wishful Endings and helps us spotlight upcoming releases we're eagerly anticipating.   

 

When You Loved Me by Beatriz Williams

Pub. Date: June 23, 2026

 

 

 

Goodreads says, "Local history insists that a legendary pirate buried his treasure somewhere beneath Windward, the decayed Cooper estate on Winthrop Island, but Lucy Cooper never trusted the fable that broke her family apart. When a widowed Lucy returns with her young daughter to grieve her estranged father, she discovers the property’s buried under a mountain of debt, and Ben Ressler has just turned up on her doorstep.

Thirteen summers ago, a teenaged Lucy never meant to fall in love with Ben, a Dartmouth football star vacationing next door at the Peabody estate, and the object of an all-consuming crush by Laura Peabody, Lucy’s best friend. Those two weeks with Ben were the best and worst of Lucy’s life, dooming her friendship with Laura. Now Ben’s returned to live quietly in the Peabodys’ caretaker lodge, after a fatal accident ended his dazzling NFL career. He’s also the last person who saw Lucy’s father alive.

As Lucy reconstructs her father’s troubling final days, she uncovers his research on the frozen winter of 1717, when a desperately wounded pirate sought refuge on Winthrop Island with an enigmatic healer. To Lucy, this history points the way to a different kind of how to forgive yourself for the mistakes of the past and earn a second chance at love. But just as Lucy’s long-buried emotions sear to the surface, a shocking turn of events reveals that someone else on the island will do whatever it takes to claim the fabled plunder.

A timeless story of love and atonement, When You Loved Me maps both a centuries-old treasure hunt and the intimate territory of the human heart, weaving together past and present as only Beatriz Williams can."

 

I will read anything Beatriz Williams writes. Her "historical" beach reads are some of my favorites and I can't wait to read this one. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and if you are a fan of Beatriz Williams.