This author is new to me and the title is what drew me to take it from my sister's bookshelf when I was visiting her at the beginning of this quarantine. The cover art definitely doesn't match the plot at all, other than the main setting is at a beach house near Ogunquit.
STORY SUMMARY
The Kelleher family has had a beach house and cottage for many years. They love heading to Maine (most of them live in MA) where the children run around, play on the beach, dip their toes in the frigid ocean waters, and eat lobster and corn on the cob. Fireworks on the 4th of July in Ogunquit right on the beach is a tradition and now even the grandchildren look forward to it.
Three generations of women have arrived at the family beach house (the matriarch, Alice, has her own beautiful house right next to the little cottage that her husband, Daniel, now deceased, had built for her shortly after they were married). Alice has 3 children: Patrick ( the youngest and married to Ann Marie, a perfectionist stay at home mom whose own children are now grown and having children); Kathleen (the oldest who lives in California running a worm farm with her partner Arlo), and Clare (married, a lawyer. and mom to son Ryan who is gay). Kathleen's only child, Maggie, now 32 yrs old, is newly pregnant, single, and lives in NYC. The father of the baby is not around and she is learning to deal with that. Alice, whose Catholic faith is her foundation in all things, is dwelling on the past and on a certain tragedy that occurred and that most of the family doesn't know about. Yet she has shared this perceived sin with Father Connor Donnelly to whom she has gifted the beach property to in the event of her death. None of her children know yet that she has changed her will. Until Father Donnelly lets it slip one day!
What happens when 3 generations of women come together for a week?
What secrets are exposed?
And will Alice ever feel forgiven for the long ago mistake?
MY THOUGHTS
This book was pretty good. I had never heard of the author and because we've often vacationed in Maine, I thought it would be fun to read.
The character development is superb as is the setting description. You can almost smell the salty fishy ocean and see the bright lobster pots bobbing up and down.
All of the women in the book have flaws....and all of them have many strengths.
The themes throughout the story are: mother-daughter relationships; alcohol addiction and recovery; single parenthood; dysfunctional families; the Catholic faith and all its man-made rules; forgiveness; learning to let go; materialism.
The characters are mostly believable and it was easy for me to discover who was my favorite and who was my least favorite.
The whole underlying theme is that love really can redeem the most argumentative and dysfunctional families.
In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 17 and older (due to some mature content).
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this an 8.
1 comment:
Sounds interesting. One of my pet peeves is when a book cover does not match a story well because sometimes it's the cover that draws me to the book in the first place.
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