Beach Vibes

An emotionally thought-provoking novel about two entangled couples who face a betrayal that tests their love and loyalty.

Susan Mallery takes a surprisingly deep dive into the complicated dynamics of family and friendship in her emotionally resonant novel, Beach Vibes.
 
Two sets of adult siblings--two women and their two brothers--anchor the story, which centers on Beth Nield, a recently divorced, 38-year-old who owns and operates Surf Sandwiches, an eatery in Malibu, Calif.
 
Workaholic Beth now lives with her 67-year-old, widowed Aunt Agatha who took in Beth and Rick, her younger brother by three years, when they were just children. Protective, self-sacrificing Beth always looked out for Rick—proudly rooting on her smart, good-looking, charmingly single brother, who is now a “big-shot surgeon.” When Beth starts to volunteer at a local food bank, she meets Jana Mead, a hard-working medical billing clerk who dreams of becoming a nurse. Jana is a single mother to a precocious four-year-old and lives with her widowed brother, Teddy, and his four children. As Beth and Jana strike up a friendship, Beth realizes that Jana is actually dating her brother, Rick. The lives of these four people intersect and overlap, and Beth starts a romance with Teddy. Problems arise, however, when a betrayal amidst the quartet raises questions surrounding love and loyalty, while also testing the bonds of family and friendship.

A welcome wave of thought-provoking dilemmas washes over what initially appears a breezy beach read. First-rate storyteller Mallery (One Big Happy Family) intimately plumbs the depths of perception and self-discovery.

Beach Vibes by Susan Mallery

Canary Street Press, $30.00 hardcover, 9781335402530, 384 pages

Publication Date: March 18, 2025

Learn more about Susan Mallery HERE

 

 

 

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center

A thoroughly researched, eye-opening study of the deep value platonic friendships can hold in enriching and empowering personal lives.  

In her first book, The Other Significant Others, Rhaina Cohen, an NPR editor and producer, presents an eye-opening exploration into the many ways friendship, in various forms, can enrich and empower lives for the better. 

In 2022, Cohen attended six weddings in six months. Amidst these pandemic-deferred nuptial celebrations, where couples vowed to spend the rest of their lives together as a “we,” Cohen began to question societal expectations of love and its meaning. Was sex the essential component of a truly committed relationship? Was a person’s life somehow incomplete without a long-term romantic partner? Cohen, married, had always felt that friendships “electrified” her life. Thus, she began to examine the “we” of friendship: what draws people together on a purely platonic plane? What made some friendships endure despite the parties not formally professing a long-term commitment to each other?

 

Cohen presents stories from her own life--along with other historical and contemporary case studies--that deconstruct diverse friendships of all stripes. These include people of varying ages, races, genders, marital states, sexual orientations, and religions. She delves into co-parenting friends; shared homeowners; friends who serve as executors of estates; and even those who act as primary caregivers, helping to shoulder the demands and burdens imposed by illness and debilitating medical treatments.

 

Cohen’s well-researched, appealingly structured narrative stretches modern assumptions of love, making the case that a life bonded by friendship can hold limitless potential for a more fulfilling, deeply meaningful existence.

 

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center by Rhaina Cohen

St. Martin’s Press (Macmillan), $29.00 hardcover, 9781250280916, 320 pages

Publishing Date: February 13, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (February 23, 2024), link HERE 

28 Summers

Star-crossed soulmates rekindle their romance, love and perpetual loyalty one weekend every year--for 28 years.

Elin Hilderbrand tugs on readers' heartstrings with great aplomb. In 28 Summers, she begins at the end of a long-term, unconventional romance and weaves the captivating story of star-crossed lovers through 28 years of history. 

The 1978 movie Same Time, Next Year--an American romantic-comedy-drama--serves as inspiration to the structure of the story and to main characters Mallory Blessing and Jake McCloud, who are fans of the film. Mallory and Jake developed an easy, flirtatious camaraderie over the phone while Jake and Cooper, Mallory's brother, roomed together at college. The two meet face-to-face only in 1993, while in their 20s--after Mallory inherits a Nantucket beach house from her aunt. Mallory plays host to soon-to-be-married Cooper and his friends, who gather on the island for his bachelor party on Labor Day weekend. The gathering goes bust on many levels, but Mallory and Jake forge an intimate bond--a soulmate connection--amid the mayhem and vow that every year, on Labor Day weekend, they should meet up again, just like in the iconic film.

For the next 28 years, the couple fulfills their pact, having contact with each other for only one weekend annually, where they secretly rekindle their romance and share the travails of their private lives--the challenges and sacrifices of dating and marriage to other people, parenthood and career pursuits. Careful plotting binds this deeply moving, powerful story. Hilderbrand (Summer of 69; The Perfect Couple) successfully entwines a host of surprising twists where multi-faceted characters become ensnared in thought-provoking romantic dilemmas.

28 Summers: A Novel by Elin Hilderbrand
Little, Brown and Company, $28.00 Hardcover, 9780316420044, 432 pages
Publication Date: June 16, 2020
To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (June 19, 2020), link HERE