The Woman on the Beach (Roberts)-BoT-Family Drama-Available Now

I have made my thoughts on “family drama” novels pretty clear over time. There is so much going on in the world that it is sometimes difficult to get involved with anything too emotional because then reading doesn’t feel like an escape.

Fortunately, this book had a bit of psych thriller to it (at least, that’s how I took it) which made it an intriguing, yet somewhat frustrating, read.

I had a feeling about the “twist” early on so that wasn’t exactly an “Oh my goodness!” moment for me, but I don’t think it needed to be. The incident on the beach that sets everything in motion was well-done. I liked how even though it involved two people, it actually impacted many more lives.

I don’t want to give anything away by talking about the plot, but the author does a masterful job of keeping the reader as off-balance as the characters. I often felt a lot like Liv, unsure of what the truth was and whose story I could trust.

I also felt that the author gave enough background and family connections to make even the simplest decision become complicated. It was easy to imagine how each relationship was formed and how that impacted the decisions made by the characters.

It’s pretty safe to say that I loved this book for about three-quarters of it. But there was a point where I thought that it seemed as if the author either got tired of writing or figured that it had gone too long and needed to end it.

I say that because the last quarter of the book didn’t feel like it belonged with the rest. The author had done a great job with questioning the motivations and stories of the characters and then all of a sudden, things were just…solved.

In my mind, I visualize most of the story as a mish-mashed bunch of squiggles and crossed lines and then the end is just a straight line coming out of the chaos.

I kept thinking that the writer was going to drop another twist and say that something the characters believed to be true was not true, but then find out that someone was lying. But that didn’t happen.

I think I felt this way because the author had done such a great job of laying out all of the hints throughout that it felt like there should have been more return on them. It all wrapped up a little too neatly.

However, in hindsight, the characters’ motivations did make sense. And it ended up being a lesson for the characters (and the reader) that what you think was happening could in fact be something completely different, even if all signs point to the former.

And that nobody ever really knows what is going on in other people’s lives, no matter how close you are to someone.

Even though I was a bit disappointed in the wrap-up, that may very well be personal taste. I certainly enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it to others.

Author Bio:

Julia was born in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, and began her career as a professional singer/dancer. This enabled her to travel the world in her late teens storing up experiences she has since included in her writing.

Following roles as a hostess on The Price is Right and a member of the Beadle’s About ‘hit squad’ in the 1980s, she became a TV Presenter and filmed features for Sky Sports before launching the QVC shopping channel in 1993 where she still presents today. Having always wanted to write, she penned her first book, a memoir sold on QVC, in 2013 and has since written seven full length novels, two novellas and several short stories.