The Beach House by Jane Green

The Beach House
by Jane Green
Pub. Date: June 2008
Genre: Fiction
352pp

Synopsis from BN.com:
Nan Powell is a free-spirited, sixty-five-year-old widow who's not above skinny-dipping in her neighbors' pools when they're away and who dearly loves her Nantucket home. But when she discovers that the money she thought would last forever is dwindling, she realizes she must make drastic changes to save her beloved house. So Nan takes out an ad: Rooms to rent for the summer in a beautiful old Nantucket home with water views and direct access to the beach.

Slowly people start moving in to the house, filling it with noise, laughter, and with tears. As the house comes alive again, Nan finds her family and friends expanding. Her son comes home for the summer, and then an unexpected visitor turns all their lives upside down. As she did so masterfully in her New York Times bestseller Second Chance, Jane Green once again proves herself one of the preeminent writers of contemporary women's fiction.

Why I Picked It:
I can't remember why this one made it onto my request list from the library. It was a nice surprise when the library called to tell me it was available, and reading the synopsis, I think I chose it for my summer easy breezy reading. It's very exciting to find and try out all these new-to-me authors. I can't figure out what happened to make me put aside reading for enjoyment for so many years!?

My Review:
I plowed through this page turner in 4 nights, and found it sooooooo much better than Beginner's Greek. Jane Green creates flawed characters that I cared about from page 1. Intertwining the fractured lives of the characters as they all make their way to spend the summer at financially troubled Nan's house in Nantucket. Once there, through her eccentric compassion and warmth, Nan helps them sort out their problems while they help her retain the life and house that she's known for the past 40 years.

Everyone has times where they just need to get away and regroup. This book made me yearn to run off to a beach on the east coast to breathe for a while. Not because I have any big life drama going on; my life is much the opposite. In movies and in other books I've read, there is a magic implied to the east coast beach communities. A sense of privilege, importance, and peace. So now I want to plan a vacation.

Back to the book. Does it feel a little orchestrated? Sure. Did everything magically resolve itself by the end? Of course. But it's summer reading. I didn't want any thought-provoking life lessons here.

Jane Green lends an understanding and sympathetic insight to each character, and an easy skill for moving the storyline and characters along. This was a very quick, easy, enjoyable read that I highly recommend.