Montauk by Nicola Harrison

Description

An epic and cinematic novel by debut author Nicola Harrison, Montauk captures the glamour and extravagance of a summer by the sea with the story of a woman torn between the life she chose and the life she desires.

Montauk, Long Island, 1938.

For three months, this humble fishing village will serve as the playground for New York City’s wealthy elite. Beatrice Bordeaux was looking forward to a summer of reigniting the passion between her and her husband, Harry. Instead, tasked with furthering his investment interest in Montauk as a resort destination, she learns she’ll be spending twelve weeks sequestered with the high society wives at The Montauk Manor—a two-hundred room seaside hotel—while Harry pursues other interests in the city.
College educated, but raised a modest country girl in Pennsylvania, Bea has never felt fully comfortable among these privileged women, whose days are devoted not to their children but to leisure activities and charities that seemingly benefit no one but themselves. She longs to be a mother herself, as well as a loving wife, but after five years of marriage she remains childless while Harry is increasingly remote and distracted. Despite lavish parties at the Manor and the Yacht Club, Bea is lost and lonely and befriends the manor’s laundress whose work ethic and family life stir memories of who she once was.
As she drifts further from the society women and their preoccupations and closer toward Montauk’s natural beauty and community spirit, Bea finds herself drawn to a man nothing like her husband –stoic, plain spoken and enigmatic. Inspiring a strength and courage she had almost forgotten, his presence forces her to face a haunting tragedy of her past and question her future.
Desperate to embrace moments of happiness, no matter how fleeting, she soon discovers that such moments may be all she has, when fates conspire to tear her world apart…

There are two sides to Montauk, and the author portrays them in mesmerizing detail. There are the humble hard working families who struggle to make ends meet all year long, and the wealthy summer tourists who come to while away the summer days in The Montauk Manor, a swanky upscale seaside hotel. Most people will see one side or the other, but Beatrice Bordeax will see both. Never quite fitting in with the other wives and their trivial interests Bea finds herself befriending the laundry lady as her lonely days drag on. Her summer at the hotel was meant to rekindle her marriage, but with her husband away on "business" more days than not she begins to accompany Elizabeth the laundry lady into the village and discovers she feels more at home there than with the snobs at the hotel. It is through Elizabeth that she meets a man who seems oddly familiar and begins to imagine a more fulfilling life for herself. I could almost smell the salt air and feel the breeze off the ocean as I was swept into the story.
5 out of 5 stars
I received an advance copy for review.

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Mine by Courtney Cole

Tessa was prepared for the hurricane. Lindsey was the storm she didn’t see coming.

When Tessa Taylor unlocked her husband Ethan’s iPad to discover nude photos from a twenty-six-year-old bombshell named Lindsey, her seemingly perfect life came to a screeching halt.

With a hurricane barreling toward Florida and Ethan stuck on a business trip, Tessa finds herself imprisoned in her own home with a choice to make: Does she ride out the storm until she can confront Ethan in person, or does she take matters into her own hands?

Increasingly restless and desperate for revenge, Tessa resolves to act. And when she lures Lindsey over a few hours later, there’s no turning back.

What ensues is a battle of wills between two well-matched opponents, blinded by love for the same man but driven by demons of their own. Like storm-ravaged Florida, neither woman will be the same when the skies clear.

OH MY GOODNESS!
Tessa arrives home alone just as the hurricane hits. Her oldest child is off at school and the younger kids are safe with the grandparents. She's rushed home to spend the weekend with her husband who blows her off at the last second, allegedly for work. She believes him as she has always believed in him, because if you can't trust your own husband who can you trust? Then she sees the messages. Dozens of them, from the woman he's been having an affair with. She is crushed. She wants answers, and she wants to confront him, but he's not there and the cell service is dying from storm damage. Suddenly she knows just what to do, she'll get her answers from the mistress instead.
My thoughts are all over the place. I just finished this book and now see why the cover is so very perfect. I tore through this novel as quick as the hurricane force winds that descended on Tessa's life.
This is a powerful story, rich with betrayal and steeped in rage, or maybe the rage is my own, I can't even tell anymore if I am feeling my own emotions or those of Tessa. You will want to hug your husband after reading this, if he is trustworthy. You may want to smack him if he isn't. Either way you will feel something. This is not the kind of book that you can just put down and go about your day. You wont forget this one so easily.
5 out of 5 stars
I received an advance copy for review.


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About the author
Courtney Cole is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist who would eat mythology for breakfast if she could.

She loves giving advice, loving on her kids, red lipstick and blonde hair dye.

Courtney was born and raised in rural Kansas, but has since migrated south. She now lives in Florida and writes beneath palm trees.

Learn more about Courtney and her books at www.courtneycolewrites.com

Find her on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/#!/courtneyc...

Tinfoil Butterfly by Rachel Eve Moulton

The Shining meets About a Boy in this electrifying debut about a troubled young woman and a lonely boy facing their demons in the frozen Black Hills.

Emma is hitchhiking across the United States, trying to outrun a violent, tragic past, when she meets Lowell, the hot-but-dumb driver she hopes will take her as far as the Badlands. But Lowell is not as harmless as he seems, and a vicious scuffle leaves Emma bloody and stranded in an abandoned town in the Black Hills with an out-of-gas van, a loaded gun, and a snowstorm on the way.

The town is eerily quiet and Emma takes shelter in a diner, where she stumbles across Earl, a strange little boy in a tinfoil mask who steals her gun before begging her to help him get rid of "George." As she is pulled deeper into Earl's bizarre, menacing world, the horrors of Emma's past creep closer, and she realizes she can't run forever.

Tinfoil Butterfly is a seductively scary, chilling exploration of evil--how it sneaks in under your skin, flaring up when you least expect it, how it throttles you and won't let go. The beauty of Rachel Eve Moulton's ferocious, harrowing, and surprisingly moving debut is that it teaches us that love can do that, too.


This was an intriguing novel that was not exactly what I was expecting from the description, but by the time I realized that, the story had already sucked me in and I had to find out more about Emma and why she seemed to be on her own with a horrid scar on her stomach from pulling out her own stitches. It's not clear at first why Emma so desperately wants to get to the Badlands or what it has to do with her past, but she is obviously willing to risk her life to make it there. When she ends up having to run from the man who promised to take her there, she finds herself in a deserted ghost town where she meets a troubled child with a past even more tragic than her own. With a blizzard on the way and a deranged man after her, Emma's desire to live awakens in ways she never thought possible.
4 out of 5 stars
I received an advance copy for review.
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Never Cry Again by Jim Cole

 

Drew is conceived in abuse, born into neglect, and raised in hatred. The story tells how the rural boy survives a life of extreme poverty, living in the poorest part of a southern Arkansas town and whose prostitute mother entertains numerous 'uncles'. When one of those uncles becomes abusive toward Drew, and then later attempts male rape, which was encouraged by his mother. Drew has no other choice. He must leave home.

The ten-year old boy climbs into a rail boxcar, and the train takes him away not only from the abuse but also from his friends, carrying him to an unknown future. Just as things seem their worst, Drew, realizing that his childhood is now over, vows that he will never cry again, but instead face life on his own terms.

Praised by one critic as Huckleberry Finn meets Forrest Gump, Drew's adventures on the way to responsible and compassionate manhood, set against the backdrop of America's Great Depression and the following turbulent years of World War II, are a story that is relevant to the upheavals and turbulence in society today.  

 

Some women are not cut out to be mothers. Drew's mom Edith  is one of them. Edith was only 13 the first time her father raped her and it wasn't much longer until the day she decided to go for a walk and never return. Having no place to stay and no way to earn money she ends up in a hotel with a married man. When he tells her that he is going back to his wife she is once again on her own. Edith ends up giving birth in a brothel and becomes a prostitute. She seems to enjoy this lifestyle as there is no shortage of other prostitutes to take care of her son, who she wants nothing to do with. This becomes a problem as Drew grows up and begins attending church, the only white boy in the all black congregation. The brothel owner feels she is already at risk having a child on the premises but the Klan may make trouble as well so Edith is sold off to one of her customers and she is not happy that she is expected to take her son with her and be a mother to him. By this point Edith is already a raging alcoholic with no maternal skills and Drew must basically fend for himself. He follows in his mother's footsteps of becoming a runaway after an attempted rape and is homeless and alone at 10 years old. Drew meets a multitude of people in his travels, some good and others who mean him harm though he never seems to give up hope of living a decent life.

This is usually my favorite time period for historical fiction and while I understand that racial tensions ran hot in the south it still seemed a bit heavier on the N word than was required and the (phonetically correct?) spellings of the way black people are portrayed as pronouncing certain words seemed over done and unnecessary. I'm not as in love with this book as I'd hoped to be.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

 

I received an complimentary copy for review.