Title:   The Bookstore on the Beach
Author:  Brenda Novak
Genre:  Women’s fiction
Rating:  3.5 out of 5

How do you start a new chapter when you haven’t closed the book on the last one?

Eighteen months ago, Autumn Divac’s husband went missing. Her desperate search has yielded no answers—she still has no idea where he went or why. After being happily married for twenty years, she can’t imagine moving forward without him, but for the sake of their two teenage children, she has to try.

Autumn takes her kids home for the summer to the charming beachside town where she was raised. She seeks comfort by working alongside her mother and aunt at their quaint bookshop, only to learn that her daughter is facing a life change neither of them saw coming and her mother has been hiding a terrible secret for years. And when she runs into Quinn Vanderbilt—the boy who stole her heart in high school—old feelings start to bubble up again. Is she free to love him, or should she hold out hope for her husband’s return? She can only trust her heart…and hope it won’t lead her astray.

I think there was a little too much going on here to give any one thing the benefit of full development:  the missing husband, the new love interest, the mystery of Autumn’s father, what’s going on with her mother, the multiple issues with her daughter…In the end, it just came across as rather crowded and chaotic, and I couldn’t enjoy any one thing fully. Solid writing, and I loved the setting, but this ended up being just a so-so read for me.

Brenda Novak is a bestselling author. Bookstore on the Beach is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Harlequin/MIRA in exchange for an honest review.)

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