Review: A Beach Wish, by Shelley Noble

About the book, A Beach Wish

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (June 25, 2019)

New York Times bestselling author Shelley Noble returns to the beach in her latest summer read about the family we create and the wishes we make that can shape us.

Zoe Bascombe has never said no to her family. When she blew her Juilliard audition, she caved to their wishes and went to business school. But when her mother dies and leaves instructions for Zoe to spread her ashes at a place called Wind Chime Beach, she defies her brothers and starts out for a New England town none of them has ever heard of and discovers a side of her garden club mother that her wildest dreams hadn’t imagined.

Zoe has another family.

Her first instinct is to run home. Instead she is caught in the middle of her feuding new relatives. With one family fighting among themselves and the other not speaking to her, Zoe must somehow find a way to bridge her new life with her old.

For the first time in her life, Zoe must make a stand for her family—both of them. If only she can only figure out how.

Her answer lies at Wind Chime Beach where for generations people have come to add their chimes to the ones already left among the trees. And when the wind blows and the air fills with music, their secrets, dreams, and hopes are sent into the world. There’s a message for Zoe here—if she has the courage to open her heart.

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About the author, Shelley Noble

Shelley Noble is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Whisper Beachand Beach Colors. Other titles include Stargazey Point, Breakwater Bay, and Forever Beach—a story of foster adoption in New Jersey—and four spin-off novellas. A former professional dancer and choreographer, she lives on the Jersey shore and loves to discover new beaches and indulge her passion for lighthouses and vintage carousels. Shelley is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Women’s Fiction Writers Association.

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My Thoughts

Shelley Noble has, over the years, become one of my go-to authors of beach books. I don’t mean this in a frivolous way, because she doesn’t write throw-away novels. Rather she’s a master of compelling family dramas that take place at or near beaches. This summer’s offering, A Beach Wish, is no exception. It’s a family drama that looks at the themes of blood family vs. chosen family, of nature vs. nurture, and of following your own dreams vs. staying on the path others choose for you.

Like many of Noble’s other works, this novel is centered around a beach, in this case Wind Chime Beach, that becomes its own character in the story. As much place as symbol, the beach is both a refuge and a place where one goes to confront one’s truth. It takes a lot to talent to endow a stretch of sand and water with that much presence and character, but it’s one of the ways the author really excels.

Speaking of characters, the people we meet in this novel read like real people. Quirky and flawed, sometimes even downright prickly, they are a group – an extended family, really – of individuals who are each well-rounded and dimensional. Lee, the musician who shares his secrets through his songs, Hannah, the would-be matriarch who is controlling but well-meaning, David, the photographer who buries his heart, Floret and Henry, keepers of the history, Noelle, Mel, and Eli, the younger generation, Eve, the innkeeper who is so much more, and Zoe, who is the POV character we first meet… all could easily populate the streets of any beach town we might visit. And their stories, if somewhat heightened because they’re in a novel, are still fairly plausible.

In A Beach Wish, Shelly Nobel has done once more what she has done before: crafted a warm and satisfying story that lets us look at yet another permutation of family, and come away wishing, just a little, that we were part of it.

Goes well with homemade cookies and iced tea.