Beach Reads
I am so excited to bring you this issue’s Beach Reads. It seems that every one of my favorite authors has a book coming out this summer. From Nashville to Nantucket and down to South Carolina, things are heating up all over the country! These are the titles that you absolutely must throw in your beach bag this season. Happy reading!
“Beach House Reunion” by Mary Alice Monroe
Mary Alice Monroe has captured our hearts with her best-selling “Beach House” series. The Rutledge family has always been at the center and we have been able to follow it through decades of family struggles and triumphs. In “Beach House Reunion,” Cara Rutledge returns to the family home on the Isle of Palms. While it’s nice to be home, painful memories come to the surface, weighing Cara down again. Her niece, Linnea, is a recent college graduate with no plans for her life. She decides to move to the beach house as well, but for her the experience is completely different. Linnea is free on the island. She learns to surf, joins the turtle team and falls in love. Together, both women find a way to use their love of family and each other to break away from old family patterns and start new lives, but it isn’t easy.
“The Perfect Couple” by Elin Hilderbrand
Nantucket. A wedding. A murdered bride. All of these things add up to create an awesome book to read on the beach. When the bride-to-be is found dead just hours before her wedding ceremony, it seems that everyone on the island is a suspect. While the chief investigates everyone from the maid of honor to the best man and even the groom’s mother, the one thing he discovers for sure is that no couple, or family, is perfect. Elin Hinderbrand brings us another novel that you won’t be able to put down!
“The Husband Hour” by Jamie Brenner
Lauren Adelman married her high school sweetheart, Rory Kincaid, right out of college. All of the pieces are falling into place for them to have a bright future and wonderful marriage until Rory, a player in the National Hockey League, decides to enlist in the Army. No one is more shocked than Lauren. When Rory dies in combat, Lauren is left completely devastated. She heads to her family’s beach home for some peace but, with her mother and sister under the same roof, there is no peace to be found. Matt Brio is making a documentary about Rory and persuades Lauren to sit down with him to talk. That one interview changes the course of the rest of her life as Lauren begins to make peace with the past and finally look forward to the future.
“The High Tide Club” by Mary Kay Andrews
Attorney Brooke Trappnell is perplexed, yet completely intrigued, when the 99-year-old heiress, Josephine Bettendorf Warrick, summons her to her deteriorating pink mansion that sits on the edge of the ocean. Brooke soon finds out that Josephine wants her to help fulfill the dying woman’s last wishes. First, she hires her to help protect her island from everyone she thinks will ultimately ruin it. Second, she needs help making amends with the heirs of the women who used to be her closest friends. Millie, Ruth, Varina and Josephine were members of the High Tide Club, named for their skinny-dipping adventures. Brooke sets out to unite this group of women who are all connected yet have never met, and in the process reignites a scandal that could either make someone richer than they had ever dreamed or throw them right into the hands of a murderer.
“By Invitation Only” by Dorothea Benton Frank
“By Invitation Only” takes us into two totally different worlds, when Fred Stiftel becomes engaged to Shelby Cambria. Fred is the son of hard-working Southern peach farmers in South Carolina, while Shelby is the daughter of two wealthy and prominent Chicago businesspeople. Fred’s mother, Diane, throws the first engagement party, a barbecue where Shelby’s parents are introduced to the charms of the Lowcountry including lightning bugs and moonshine. Back in Chicago, the bride’s parents throw a second party, leading Diane to wonder if the first one wasn’t good enough, and do Shelby’s parents question if Fred is good enough? While Shelby’s mother hopes her friends don’t think her daughter is marrying beneath her, Diane is worried she is going to lose her son forever. Two very different worlds collide where everyone has something to learn and something to hide.
“All We Ever Wanted” by Emily Giffin
Sometimes caught between marriage and motherhood, you lose yourself. Nina Browning married a wealthy man from Nashville, and their son was just accepted into Princeton. Life should be good and Nina should be happy, but she can’t help but wonder if she has forgotten the small-town girl she once was. Tom Volpe is a single father, working his fingers to the bone trying to raise his daughter, Lyla, right. Things are finally looking up when she is accepted into Nashville’s most prestigious private school. As hard as she tries, Lyla doesn’t always fit in. It just takes one drunken night, one picture, to send the community into an uproar where everyone is taking sides and assigning blame. Tom, Nina and Lyla are caught in the middle and find themselves questioning their relationships and choices in life. At the end of the day, what matters most?
