‘The Beach House: Coming Home’ Should Come With Sunscreen [REVIEW]

A visit to the beach house may hold the key to a woman’s deepest desire. (Photo by Sascha Wenninger, Flickr)

A successful woman with a heartbreaking secret. A loving father who will do anything for his daughter. A sick young girl whose one wish is to meet the woman who gave her away. Three disparate lives come together in Georgia Bockoven’s touching new novel, The Beach House: Coming Home.

William Morrow

At only 15 years of age, Melinda Campbell made the toughest decision of her life: to give her baby up for adoption. Today, she’s a successful career woman constantly on the move. But the child she gave up fourteen years before doggedly haunts her every waking moment.

Jeremy Richmond is the man who adopted Melinda’s daughter. A devoted father, he never thought he’d have to worry about seeing Shiloh’s birth mother again. Then his wife walked out and his child was diagnosed with pediatric lupus and suddenly his entire world turned upside down.

When Shiloh announces that she is tired of fighting her illness and wants to meet her biological mother before she dies, Jeremy panics. Desperate to do anything that will keep his child hanging on, he locates Melinda and arranges for a reunion at the beach house. However, that is easier said than done, and when push comes to shove, Jeremy has second thoughts. Will he be able to give both Melinda and Shiloh a chance to heal?

Bockoven writes the way an artist paints, with broad, colorful brushstrokes that captivate readers’ imaginations and transport us to the shores of California’s Monterey Bay. There, we can almost hear the Pacific lapping at the shore, whispering promises that anything is possible. And that’s what makes this book so delicious. It takes an uncomfortable situation and places it in one of the most relaxing, restorative landscapes we can imagine, and readers are left thinking that there is no place else that they would rather be.

My only criticism for this story is that the premise feels a bit too familiar, and I can’t help but be reminded of Belva Plain’s 1989 novel, Blessings, in which a successful lawyer puts her life on hold to find the child she gave away 19 years before. But the similarities end there, and Bockoven’s story manages to maintain its voice and draws readers in with skill and finesse, so much so that the tone of this novel is oddly reminiscent of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. The flashback scenes between a young Melinda and a boy named Daniel are fraught with emotion, like much of Lee’s story, and thus offer some of the most shining scenes in this entire book: moments that are insightful, literate, and moving.

This is the first time I’ve read Bockoven’s work, but it won’t be the last. There is a reason her publisher asked her to return to writing after she gave it up to pursue photography. Bockoven is talented, and her characters are so realistically drawn we feel as though they are old friends we care deeply about. The Beach House: Coming Home is a novel that should be savored, and, given the opportunity, read under a big umbrella on the beach with a tall glass of cold lemonade. Kick off your flip flops and settle in. Just don’t forget the sunscreen, because you’re going to need it. You’re not going to want to get up until you’ve finished reading every last page.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Georgia Bockoven

Georgia Bockoven is an award-winning author of The Cottage Next Door, Return to the Beach House, Carly’s Gift, Things Remembered, The Year Everything Changed, and numerous other novels. She sold her first novel to Harlequin in 1982

She began writing fiction after a successful career as a freelance journalist and photographer. The mother of two sons and a grandmother of five, she resides in northern California with her husband, John, and two cats.

Visit Georgia at her website, and like her on Facebook.

THE BEACH HOUSE: COMING HOME
By Georgia Bockoven
352 pgs. William Morrow. $15.99

You may purchase The Beach House: Coming Home at one of these fine online retailers: HarperCollins, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

The Beach House: Coming Home has been brought to you by TLC Book Tours.