I love this book as a summer read, and not because it's titled The Beach House or it is a stereotypical fluffy "beach read" (it's not). I love it for summer because Jane Green so vividly describes the beautiful scenery, boarding house, and beaches of Nantucket has put it high on my "must visit" vacation destinations.
Perhaps because I would like to one day own a B&B (imagine the fodder for book and character ideas!), this book (and last week's read, This Must Be the Place) are both centered on a boarding house that rents out rooms, allowing for a multitude of characters to interact without the pesky familial ties. There is something more intense and sometimes more interesting about studying a group of unrelated people thrust together under one roof than observing a traditional family.
The owner's name is Nan, a vibrant, vivacious ungrandmotherly woman of 65 who skinny dips in her neighbor's pools when they are out of town and picks another's flowers or fruit as she pleases. She is happy and carefree, albeit lonely until she faces financial struggles (aren't we all?!) and decides to generate incoming by turning her grand old house on the beach into a boarding house.
She is the kind of women that I want to be at that age: wise, tons of fun, still enjoying her cocktails, and completely wide-open to new experiences and new people. Heck, she is the kind of woman I want to be now. Her "seize-the-day" outlook and "c'est la vie" (such is life) laid-back attitude prevents her from giving a hoot what anyone else thinks about her.
The lessons taught by this pseudo-family abound, including loss, betrayal, love, and probably most importantly, identity. Each of the characters has to come to terms and eventually embrace who they are and their pasts in order to strive confidently into the arms of their future.
They each offer their own sort of guidance by example and encourage readers to open your hearts to every single person you encounter despite if you think they are just too different from you. This group overcame age, sexuality, gender, and the ghosts of their pasts to form unlikely friendships that turned into lifelines.
I highly recommend this book as it is probably my favorite that I have read by Green so far, yet I also thoroughly enjoyed Second Chance, Babyville, Mr. Maybe, Bookends, and Jemima J. Still on my to-read list by Green are Straight Talk, To Have and To Hold, The Other Woman, Swapping Lives, Dune Road, and Promises to Keep.
If you read, please come back and comment! I would love to hear your thoughts on any and all book reviews and am always looking for book recommendations/new books to review!