The Sunset Sisters by Cecilia Lyra **Book Review** @bookouture

Hello my book friends!

Excited to share with you today this fun beach read with a splash of Mystery. Sun, sand, and secrets!🏖

My Thoughts

Sun, sand, and secrets. Cecilia Lyra has written a fun beach read with a splash of Mystery. Cassie and Julie are half-sisters sharing the same father. The sisters spent the summers of their childhood on the beach with their beloved grandmother. But then something happens to tear these two sisters apart. It is 15 years later and Cassie and Julie have not seen one another since the fateful event. At the reading of their grandmother’s will they find out that in order for them to inherit her lovely Beachhouse they must spend the summer together in the house. The sisters are quick to agree to the terms, but will they be able to heal the wound between them?

This was a heartwarming story with some unseen twists and secrets. I always love reading books about sisters specially because I don’t have one myself, it is a relationship that intrigues me. Cassie and Julie were quite different from one another and I have to admit that I favored Julie for most of the book. Julie was kind and caring almost to the point of her own detriment. Cassie on the other hand was strong, blunct and a bit prickly. I really loved how the story between the sisters unfolded throughout the book, it was perfectly paste. I was seriously so invested in the story, because I cared so much about these characters. I also really love the little fairytale element added in, gave the story even more sparkle.

This book in emojis 🏖 👭 🐚 ✨ ☀️

*** Big thank you to Bookouture for my gifted copy of this book. All opinions are my own. ***

About the Book

Two sisters. A surprising inheritance. A summer that changes everything.

As children, half-sisters Cassie and Julie were nearly inseparable, bonded through happy, lazy summers playing barefoot in the surf and sleeping out on the porch of their grandmother’s Hamptons beach house. Though from wildly different backgrounds, each magical summer the girls were as close as only best friends, accomplices, sisters can be. But they haven’t spoken in nearly fifteen years—not since the funeral of Cassie’s mother—and now there is only resentment and painful memories between them.

Successful and self-contained, Cassie is shocked to learn the requirements of their Nana’s will—that she and Julie spend one final summer together in the Hamptons house in order to inherit. Cassie agrees reluctantly, she needs an excuse to leave Boston and give the growing rumors about her personal life a chance to die down.

And for Julie, who is discovering too late the cracks in her marriage, it is the chance to repair at least one damaged relationship. But for the two sisters to regain what they had, they will have to finally confront what happened the night Cassie lost her mother. With their Nana’s wisdom guiding the way, could this summer bring painful discoveries, and a new direction, for both sisters?

An emotional and riveting novel full of family drama and dark secrets. Perfect for fans of Elin Hilderbrand, Emily Giffin and Jennifer Weiner.  

About the Author

Cecilia is an author with a reading addiction — a serious one. She is a lover of wine and all things chocolate, and the proud mother of Babaganoush, an English Bulldog. She is also a recovering lawyer, but asks that you do not hold that against her. 

https://twitter.com/ceciliaclyra

Buy Links:

Amazon: https://bit.ly/37A7d2m

Apple: https://apple.co/3bs9hKH

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3eF13AX

Google: https://bit.ly/37A7ylE

Have a lovely day! XOXO Berit 🐚

Tea by the Sea by Donna Hemans **Book Review**

Happy Sunday afternoon all!

Excited to share with you today my review for this touching and heart wrenching story about a mothers love and determination.

My Thoughts

A tender, thoughtful, and powerful story about a mothers love. Donna Heman’s evocative storytelling completely drew me into this mother’s journey. Plum was a 17-year-old girl living in Jamaica away from her parents when she begins a relationship with an older man. When Plum finds herself pregnant she thinks this man is going to take care of her and her baby. But the man has other plans he kidnapps the baby from the hospital and Plum goes home to Brooklyn heartbroken and alone. Over the years Plum thinks of her baby often wondering how her life is and hiring private investigators to find her. Then one day Plum spots a picture of the man in the newspaper and heads back to Jamaica to find her daughter. What follows is a tender and emotional story about the strength of a mothers love and the power of her determination. Plum is living every mothers nightmare and there were moments in the story I just had to put the book down because I was just so devastated for her. This is a book that really made me think about why bad things happen to good people? Plum had such a big heart and that made this story so much harder. However I’d like to emphasize this is really a story of love and hope above all. And even though there are some emotional moments it really was a beautiful story about the power of motherhood.

About the Book

TEA BY THE SEA is a literary novel, a story of a family uniting and unraveling told seamlessly and with smart, clear prose.  From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, TEA BY THE SEA traces Plum Valentine’s circuitous route to find her daughter and the child’s father, who walked out of a hospital with the day-old baby girl without explanation. Seventeen years later, weary of her unfruitful search, Plum sees an article in a community newspaper with a photo of the man for whom she has spent half her life searching. He has become an Episcopal priest. Her plan: confront him and walk away with the daughter he took from her. Instead, Plum finds herself locked in his church with her daughter and by the time it’s all over, Plum is the one in the back seat of a police car facing charges. TEA BY THE SEA is a poignant, multilayer story, that is beautifully written and touches on so many important and relevant issues including immigration, family secrets, mother-daughter relationships, parental kidnapping , betrayal and motherhood.

Have a beautiful day! XOXO Berit 💕

Someone Else’s Daughter by Jennifer Harvey **Book Review** @bookouture

Happy Sunday all!

This was a well done compelling debut! If you are a thriller lover this is a good one.

My Thoughts

Clever and addictive. Jennifer Harvey’s debut is compelling and compulsive. Isa’s parents are having marital problems so instead of joining her own family on vacation she heads to Montauk with her BFF Katie‘s family. Should be the perfect summer, sunny days on the beach with your best friend. But Isa and Katie’s friendship is far from perfect and the girls have some issues and secrets between them. Louise (Katie‘s mother) can sense somethings not right, but she doesn’t know how to approach the situation. The book starts off with the discovery of Isa’s body, and then pulls back to the events leading up to the tragedy. Told in the alternating perspectives of Katie and her mom Louise you get a interesting glimpse into the events of the summer. Katie is a sweet concerned friend and my heart really went out to her throughout this entire book. Isa was not very likable and definitely was not necessarily always a good friend to Katie. But I did think there was a lot of authenticity to how this teenage friendship was portrayed in the book. Louise was very relatable. Being the parent of teenagers is complicated, you want to give them enough room to make choices and yet you want them to make the right choices. Even though I didn’t always necessarily agree with Louises parenting choices I understood where she was coming from. This book completely sucked me in to the story. I really wanted to know what had happened to Isa. The characters were all so real and that made some of the events in the book even more disturbing. A riveting debut looking forward to what’s next from Miss Harvey.

*** Big thank you to Bookouture for my gifted copy of this book. All opinions are my own. ***

About the Book

They’d left their daughter with us, their only child, and we hadn’t protected her. That was all they would see when they looked at us—that we had failed them.

 

I count down the days until we can leave the city behind and return to the beach house. Where James and Katie can roam free over the dunes, like they did as children, and Peter will swap his 6 a.m.starts for the stacks of fluffy pancakes he lovingly serves up for our family breakfasts. These sun-drenched, golden days, just the four of us, are what I hold on to all year long.

 

But this summer Katie’s best friend will be coming with us. I tell myself the girls will have fun together, pushing aside the doubts I have about this uninvited guest. Isa. With her corn-silk hair and luminous skin, who manages to overshadow my daughter at every turn. Who has been dumped on us by her own parents, too caught up in their petty dramas to see what is right in front of them.

 

Because I can see it. There is something dangerous about Isa. Something more than a carefree girl, testing boundaries as she approaches adulthood. She threatens to cast storm clouds across my beach house days. I feel as powerless to stop her as I would in the face of a hurricane.

 

By the end of the summer, Isa will be dead. And I will have to face her mother. I don’t know if I will be able to find the words. How can I begin to explain that she never really knew her daughter at all?

 

A gripping story of the darkness than lurks beneath the surface of the most picture-perfect lives and the lengths we will go to protect the ones we love. Fans of Big Little Lies, Kerry Fisher and Diane Chamberlain will be held totally in thrall by this emotional, twisty read.

 

About the Author

 Jennifer Harvey is a Scottish writer now living in The Netherlands.

She is the author of three novels.

Someone Else’s Daughter will be published on June 18th 2020 with Bookouture.

Two more titles will follow in October 2020 and May 2021.

Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines in the US and the UK, such as Bare Fiction, Litro Online, Carve Magazine, Folio, and The Lonely Crowd.

She has been shortlisted for various short story prizes including the Bristol Prize, the University of Sunderland Short Story Award and the Bridport Prize. Her radio dramas have won prizes and commendations from the BBC World Service. She has been longlisted twice for the Bath Novel Award.

 

Author Social Media Links: 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JenAnneHarvey1  (@JenAnneHarvey1) 

Website: http://www.jenharvey.net/