Author: Pamela M. Kelley
One summer can change everything.
Brooklyn-based Hannah is a bestselling author struggling to write her second book after personal losses. Her older sister, Sara, still lives in Chatham, Cape Cod, where they grew up, and is married with four children. Once a dedicated librarian, Sara dreams of reviving her love affair with literature, but instead, she is stuck with too many family responsibilities and a fizzling marriage.
When Hannah gets the chance to retreat to her aunt’s oceanfront house in Chatham for the summer, it seems like just the thing to get her creative juices flowing. And she’ll be able to spend more time with Sara, who is eager to find her way back into the workforce, to do something rewarding and book-related. The pair will spend the summer making friends, rekindling romance― especially Spencer, an old acquaintance from high school-turned very hot grump― and opening themselves up to the magic of books and the beach.
The Seaside Sisters is my second novel by Pamela Kelley after enjoying The Bookshop by the Bay. Hannah is a best-selling romance author based in Brooklyn, New York who has hit a case of writer’s block. After losing her mother to cancer, she decided to take a break and go to her hometown of Chatham, Massachusetts on Cape Cod where she would stay with her Aunt Maddie. Her sister, Sara, still lives in Chatham as she dreams of returning to the work world after being a stay-at-home mom with her four children. As for Aunt Maddie, she is separated from her husband and wondering if that’s the right choice for her. While Hannah is the main character of the story, the writing attempts to balance the stories of the three women along with some storylines for the other side characters.
There is a lot of emotion in the story as each character tries to get through their own journey along with grieving the loss of Sara and Hannah’s mom (Maddie’s sister). While there is some focus on the characters, a lot also goes into the setting. The writing goes into a lot of detail to describe the setting. It is easy to picture the environment, from the weather to the shops. For me, I feel it was overkill with the amount of setting descriptions that were included as I could still picture everything even if there was a little less. I think I would have preferred, instead, more words dedicated to the characters and their development. Despite there being a few core characters to track, I feel that there is still a lot that I don’t know about them. Overall, this was not quite as good as Bookshop, but it was still a nice cozy read.
**I give a special thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, St. Martin’s Griffin, for the opportunity to read this entertaining novel. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.**
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