After a childhood as unpredictable as the flip of a coin, Faith Sterling has finally found her comfort zone in the kitchen of an upscale Manhattan restaurant. A workaholic chef, at least there she’s in control. So when her free-spirited and often-gullible mother, Connie, calls to announce that she’s won a bed-and-breakfast on the Jersey Shore, Faith’s patience boils over. Convinced the contest is a scam, she rushes to Wave’s End to stop Connie from trading her steady job for an uncertain future.

When a hurricane ravages the coast, Faith is torn between supporting the shore rescue and bailing out her beleaguered boss. But the storm dredges up deceptions and emotional debris that threaten to destroy the inn’s future and her fragile bonds with her mother.

As the women struggle to salvage both the inn and their relationship, Faith begins to see herself and Connie in a new light—and to realize that some moments are better left to chance.

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About the author, Patricia Perry Donovan

Patricia Perry Donovan is an American journalist who writes about healthcare. Her fiction has appeared at Gravel Literary, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable and in other literary journals. The mother of two grown daughters, she lives at the Jersey shore with her husband.

Her previous novel, Deliver Her, was reprinted last year.

Connect with Patricia

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My Thoughts

I loved Deliver Her when I read it last spring, so when Patricia Perry Donovan emailed me, asking if I wanted to review her newest title, At Wave’s End, this summer, I was happy to do so. Then I found out it was being released two days before my birthday.

Well, Happy Birthday to me, and happy reading to everyone else, because this novel is the perfect way to beat the heat of the dog days of summer. Faith, a professional chef, and Connie, her mother who is always searching for the next, great, money-making opportunity, have the kind of relationship a lot of us do, I think. They love each other fiercely, but Connie thinks her daughter is selling herself short, and Faith worries her mother will be the victim of a scam.

Then Connie arrives with the news that she’s won a bed & breakfast on the Jersey Shore.

As a Jersey girl myself, I’m always excited when people set novels there, because it’s like visiting home again. In this novel, that sense of homecoming is tempered somewhat by Hurricane Nadine – inspired by Hurricane Sandy – which trashes the coastline. Reading it took me back to October, 2012 where I was watching an NJ news station over the internet from my home in Texas, and texting my mother, “I feel like I’m watching my entire childhood being washed away.”

Having been back east fairly recently, and noticed how so many of the shore towns are still rebuilding, five years later, was a visceral experience. So, too, where many of the chapters in this novel.

But Donovan is an excellent storyteller who creates vivid, realistic characters, and even at the most devastating points in the novel there is warmth and humor and the bonds of family and friends.

Don’t think, though, that this novel is all about the wreckage of a major storm. It’s not. That’s just backdrop. It’s really about family and friends, chasing dreams, figuring out what you need vs. what you think you want, and how all those things tied together.

Like Connie, I have been tempted by those “win an inn” contests, but I’ve always managed to resist the urge. Like Faith, I’m sometimes too generous with my friends, to my own detriment. I found both of these women at the center of the story to be completely believable as women, as people.

At 364 pages, At Wave’s End is long enough to tackle everything from the first look at the B&B to the aftermath of the storm, and yet it’s also a fast read, suitable for the last weeks of summer. Dip your toes in the water of this story, let the sun and sand keep you reading. You won’t be sorry.

Goes well with, a classic NJ pork roll sandwich and a glass of iced tea, eaten at a picnic table on the porch.