Review: Beach House Summer

Beach House Summer by Sarah Morgan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.7 stars 

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

Joanna Whitman learned of her ex-husband's death while she was eating breakfast. 

Joanna has been divorced for a year when she gets the phone call that her famous chef ex-husband has died in a car accident. After years of him loving the spotlight and Joanna trying to run and hide from the press wanting pictures and comments from her about all the affairs Cliff had, Joanna knows they're still going to show up outside her door. When she sees that he wasn't alone in the car accident, a young pregnant woman was with him, she feels for how that woman's privacy is about to be invaded, especially when Joanna recognizes her. 

Most of all she was scared because she had to figure out life by herself. 

Ashley has run from the only person in her life that knows her, her childhood bestfriend who after their first time going beyond friendship, she runs from. When Joanna, who Ashley has read all about in the press, shows up at her hospital room asking her if she has any place to go, Ashley desperately wants to take the life line Joanna is throwing her. 

How could the memories of her old life possibly be worse than the realities of her current one? 

Joanna hasn't been back home in 20yrs, she never went back after the night she jumped into Cliff's car and they drove off but it's the only place she can think to hide out at that will at least take the press some time to find. Beach House Summer was a story of second chances, mistakes, and giving yourself space to find out who you really are. Joanna leads the story but in almost equal time, we get pov chapters from Ashley and a few from Joanna's childhood bestfriend Mel. Joanna's mother died when she was a baby, so it was just Joanna and her father until she was a preteen when he remarried. Her stepmother didn't like kids and obviously was jealous of Joanna's close relationship with her father. When Joanna's father dies when she's ten, Joanna endures emotional abuse from her stepmother, making her think she's too tough to love and difficult. Joanna has some escape with her bestfriend Mel and Mel's twin brother Nate. When they're sixteen, Joanna and Nate start to date and they seem like soulmates. We never get a pov from Nate but we learn their break-up had to do with too intense emotions for that age and it's obvious that he regrets how everything was handled. This is mainly a women's fiction story with the romance and Nate not really coming into the picture until the late second half and two blink and you miss them sex scenes. 

Trust could be lost, but it could also be won again. 

This had a tempered pace with the reader really getting inside Joanna and Ashley's heads. There was some repetitiveness that slowed the pace down for me, especially in the second half as their thoughts and feelings had already been given to the reader a few times but then we're reading them again as they talk them out with characters in the story. I also thought the chapters at times seemed too long for the type of story this is, more of a beach read, I usually like to come upon stopping points quicker in those. There was plenty to absorb here, Joanna's insecurities because of how she grew-up, how she got emotionally beaten down in her marriage, and her defense mechanism of running and hiding. Ashley being 20yrs younger is more at the beginning of her life and feeling lost because she doesn't know what to do but their connection is felt in how they're both floundering and each gives the other something they're missing, Joanna gives Ashley security and Ashley gives Joanna confidence. Mel comes into the picture when Joanna goes back home and we get her dealing with how to connect to her teenage daughter and her anger and hurt over not understanding why Joanna left and never spoke to her again. There's emotional tangles with Joanna, Ashley, and Cliff and Joanna, Mel, and Nate that needed to be worked through and though this creates that tempered pace I mentioned, I thought it delivered on giving emotional substance for the reader to sink into. 

He cleared his throat, plunged his hands into his pockets and glanced at the shelves. “Do you have any books on second chances?” 

There were some surprise reveals but this was definitely more of life and it's emotions, ups and downs, and the decisions that we make beach read, rather than suspenseful. I think eighty some pages could have been cut to get rid of that repetitiveness that slowed the pace down but if you don't mind spending a fair amount of time in characters heads, then this probably wouldn't bother you. If you're looking for more of a sedate read to get lost in, with it's shifting through life decisions that hit us in our forties and twenties and getting those second chances, with a pinch of romance, Beach Summer House would be a good pick to get lost in.

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