Thursday, March 5, 2009

The Beach House by Sally John


This is the first book in The Beach House Series. On her 40th birthday, Joe decides to call her three friends from school, Molly, Andi, and Char, and invite them to stay with her at a beach house for a week. This will be the first time in 12 years. These ladies' lives have all changed and their trying to decide where to go from here.
Jo is single, an ob-gyn and a recovering alcolholic. She is grieving the 16 year old patient who died while under care due to complications of abortion (which she did not perform). She also grieves for her own child she lost due to miscarriage.
Molly has 4 children and is trying to rekindle the love with her husband. When they first arrive at the beach house, she is very worried about calling home and making sure her family is doing ok. But, as time goes on, this becomes less and less of a worry for her. While at the beach house, Molly finds out she is pregnant with her 5th child. She is NOT happy about this, her husband, however, is.
Andi is realizing that she's really not her husband's doormat to walk all over. She arrives at the beach house afraid of everything, but soon braves the ocean and finds that she loves Boogie Boarding. She also decides to give him an ultimatum of leaving the girlfriend and seeing a marriage counselor, or ending their marriage. Unfortunately, he chooses the second. Andi moves into a condo with her two sons, and continues her work as a reflexologist.
Char has two teenage children, and seems to be drifting apart from her husband as well. She also enjoys nightly flirty phone chats with the single guy, Todd, who lives next door to her and her family. On her birthday, Todd surprises her by showing up in San Diego. They spend the day together, and that night he tells her that he's in love with her and wants to sleep with her. This makes Char very uncomfortable, and she immediately calls her husband, Cam, and tells him what has been going on. Cam hightails it out to San Diego and they have the talk they've needed to have for a long time. Cam assures her that he really does love her, he just may not always do a great job of showing it. He also expresses his desires to open a restaurant.
My thoughts:
I had been wanting to read this book for awhile, after hearing so much about it from the ladies in my Christian book group. I finally grabbed it from the library. When I first started reading it, I wasn't too sure if I would actually like it, because of the age difference between myself and them, and thinking I might not be able to relate to what they are dealing with, since I am not yet married and have no children. For some reason, I see Char as the strongest person out of this group. And sometimes Molly as well. Andi and Jo seem to be a little more timid and reserved, perhaps weaker. But as I got further and further in this book, I realized they all have strong points and weak points. I think Andi had the biggest growth of them all, by moving on her own. I was glad to see Cam and Char work out their issues. It was also interesting to see their relationships with each other and how they interacted with each other. At times, I felt that Jo could not relate to the other three because she was not married and had no children, but then other times it felt like Char was the outside because she came along after the other 3 had known each other. Molly, at times, seemed to get to people with her devotion to God. In the beginning, Andi let alot of things keep her experiencing life. But they all overcame these things.
I finished this book on March 5, 2009.

1 comment:

Cecelia Dowdy said...

I believe Trish Perry wrote one of the books in this series. It's great. You should check it out. I loved it. Also, I have give away Christian titles on my blog every month, plus I'm a Christian fiction author. Here's the link to the current giveaway and to my website:
http://ceceliadowdy.blogspot.com/2009/03/march-book-giveaway.html

www.ceceliadowdy.com