This is something between Moriarty’s Big Little Lies waltzes with Kimberly Belle’s Dear Wife and salutes to Flynn’s Gone Girl and Elin Hilderbrand’s beach town stories. It is a little big long story with multi POVS and I actually enjoy Rebecca’s facing the trauma and Sherri’s running away from the trauma stories more than Rebecca’s daughter Alexa’s problematic future thoughts, dealing with death of her dad and her unexpected Youtube channel success. And obsessively controlling freak squat parts made me laugh hard and also terrified the hell of me! Yeap, they were meaner than my neighbors.
So this is 3.5 wavy sea, breezing wind, small town gossips and beware of the mommy squat stars rounded up to 4!
Sherri Griffin and her eleven year daughter Katie moves to a new beach town of Newburyport, Massachusetts after a devastating divorce. She is adamant to build a new life but we sense that she’s hiding so many things about her past live, disguising herself in cheaper clothes, barely making her ends meet and we realize her ex was really wealthy so why she is afraid of her own shadow and why she scares to leave her daughter alone?
And Rebecca tries to build a new life after her husband’s unexpected death, estranging herself from OCD momma club a.k.a deadly squat (It sounds like a great Quentin Tarantino movie!), living a secret relationship.
So Rebecca befriends Sherri and their secretive lives built by not so white lies fit with each other. Then Alexa involves into their equation by accepting babysitting job to take good care of Katie. She also deals with her inner evils: has problematic relationships with her besties and boyfriend, is attracted by charming Cam, hides her California plans from her mother. But when she finds Katie’s secret diary, the balances between two widowed families naturally change.
And there are also so many untold secrets, schemes, gossips and scandals are piling up around the dirty rotten scoundrel momma squat (fourth remake of same movie without Anne Hathaway!) As they start to reveal I clapped and jumped on my couch with pleasure. It was better than any Bachelor episode.
Overall: It should be classified as women’s fiction more than thriller or mystery. It was a fun, riveting beach reading but please gather your wits and don’t punch the sands in anger and be careful not to get burned because even though it’s really long reading, it still captivates your attention from the beginning.
Oh let’s not forget to clap the talented illustrator of this fantastic book cover!
Special thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for sharing this intriguing ARC with me in exchange my honest review.