Georgia Bockoven | Bibliotica

About the book, The Beach House: Coming Home

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (May 16, 2017)

Bestselling author Georgia Bockoven is at her powerful and emotional peak in this novel perfect for fans of Nancy Thayer and Elin Hilderbrand.

Unlock the door to the beach house…a place where life slows down, people come together, and love is the strongest force of all.

After you’ve given your baby to strangers, what do you say when someone asks if you have children?

Fourteen years ago, Melinda Campbell was fifteen and a half, pregnant and terrified. Desperate to protect her baby from a malicious grandfather and needed at home to take care of her own critically ill father, Melinda makes the most generous, heart-wrenching choice of all: adoption. Now she’s living the successful life her father struggled to give her, but missing her daughter with a longing that shadows every joy.

Jeremy Richmond knows the beach house the way a painter knows his canvas, intimately and focused on detail. His life revolves around his adopted daughter, Shiloh, the girl who’s owned his heart from the moment he first held her as an infant. They were a picture-perfect family until Shiloh was diagnosed with pediatric lupus and Jeremy’s wife walked away.

When Shiloh tells her father she’s tired of fighting her illness and wants to meet her biological mother before it’s too late, Jeremy agrees to find a woman he has no desire to meet.

From the moment Melinda and Jeremy come face-to-face, they realize their worlds will never be the same. Will the beach house that has harbored troubled hearts for decades prove to be the balm they need to heal…?

Buy, read, and discuss The Beach House: Coming Home:

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About the author, Georgia Bockoven

Georgia Bockoven is an award-winning author who began writing fiction after a successful career as a freelance journalist and photographer. Her books have sold more than three million copies worldwide. The mother of two, she resides in Northern California with her husband, John.

Connect with Georgia:

Website | Facebook

My Thoughts

I fell in love with Georgia Bockoven’s Beach House series years ago when I picked up the first one on the “new paperback” table at Barnes and Noble. All these years – and books – later, I’m still hooked on this fictional house in Santa Cruz, CA, and the stories that live and breathe within its walls.

In this story, we meet Melinda who gave up her baby for adoption when she was a young girl, and Jeremy, that baby’s adopted father, as well as Shiloh (formerly Danielle) the baby – now thirteen – in question. It’s the kind of story I expect will resonate with any child who is adopted, or has adopted siblings.

But it’s also a story that can be enjoyed by anyone.

Bockoven’s characters are richly drawn, with flaws that make them seem like real people, and detailed backstories that provide as much subtext as text. She depicts human emotion with great insight, and she’s particularly adept at inserting moments of levity – sometimes laughter through tears, sometimes just laughter – exactly when they’re needed.

It would be easy to dismiss The Beach House: Coming Home as a ‘beach read,’ because of it’s title and setting. Truly, there’s nothing wrong with turning toward lighter fare during the summer, but that generalization would do this book a disservice, because it’s a wonderful family drama, replete with lush details and full of supporting characters (Cheryl from the cottage next door, for one) that sing off the page.

Goes well with mango-peach iced tea and steamed artichokes with garlic and butter.

Tour Stops

Tuesday, May 16th: A Chick Who Reads

Tuesday, May 16th: The Book Bag

Wednesday, May 17th: Time 2 Read

Thursday, May 18th: Into the Hall of Books

Friday, May 19th: Bibliotica

Monday, May 22nd: Diary of a Stay at Home Mom

Tuesday, May 23rd: Back Porchervations

Wednesday, May 24th: Jathan & Heather

Thursday, May 25th: Library of Clean Reads

Monday, May 29th: Kritters Ramblings

Tuesday, May 30th: Dreams, Etc.

Wednesday, May 31st: alyssarossblog

Thursday, June 1st: Tina Says…

About the book Return to the Beach House

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Original edition (May 13, 2014)

Over the course of one year, in a charming cottage by the sea, eight people will discover love and remembrance, reconciliation and reunion, beginnings and endings in this unforgettable sequel to Georgia Bockoven’s The Beach House and Another Summer.

Alison arrives at the beach house in June to spend a month with her restless grandson before he leaves for his first year of college. More than a decade earlier, Alison lost her beloved husband, and has faced life alone ever since. Now she discovers a new life and a possible new love.

August brings together four college friends facing a milestone. During summer’s final days, they share laughter, tears, and love—revealing long-held secrets and creating new and even more powerful bonds.

World-class wildlife photographer Matthew and award-winning war photographer Lindsey arrive at the beach house in January, each harboring the very real fear that it will mark the end of their decade-long love affair. Alone in the house’s warm peace, they are forced to truly look at who they are and what they want, discovering surprising truths that will change their lives forever.

Buy, read, discuss

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Add to Goodreads

About the author, Georgia Bockoven

My Thoughts

I’d read the original The Beach House a couple of summers ago, and I love beach novels, so when I was offered the chance to read and review the latest installment in Georgia Bockoven’s collection, I didn’t just jump at the chance, I swan dove. Or maybe cannonballed. Whatever.

Having spent a significant chunk of my life living in San Francisco and San Jose, I feel a special kinship with Return to the Beach House. I’ve always wanted to rent one of those houses in Santa Cruz or Capitola or anywhere else along the Northern California coast for the summer, or February, or pretty much ever. If I were rich, I’d buy one, and live there full time.

But that’s about me, and not the novel.

Here’s what I love about this book: it’s a novel, but it’s also an anthology, because while everything is tied together by this wonderful house – so much so that the house itself really becomes a character, it’s also separate stories. Alison and her grandson Christopher are one story. The four “alphabet girl” friends are another.

The glimpses into the life of Julia, who owns the house, make lovely bookends, and further serve to tie everything together, and the stories are always related by theme, but if reading a traditional novel is too much for you in this 140-character world, this book will be palatable because of the way it’s crafted.

Conversely, if you’re not a fan of novellas or short stories, you needn’t worry, because there is enough continuity, enough of a through-theme, to keep everything feeling relevant and related.

Bockoven’s characters, especially the women, are vibrant, realistically portrayed people, and her sense of place is equally vivid. I could smell the salt, hear the surf, and feel the coarse, damp, Pacific coast sand under my toes.

Read this book, if you love great characters, and a story that’s light enough for summer without being at all frothy or fluffy. Read this book, if you want a summer beach read that is deeply satisfying. But definitely read this book.

Goes well with fresh fish from Phil’s Fish Market in Moss Landing, pasta, and San Francisco sourdough, with any local microbrew beer, or a California wine. (Fetzer “Sundial” Chardonnay is my fave.)