Beach House by Jane Green

Another author I love. Must be the weekend for it.

Set in Nantucket, The Beach House, tells the interconnected stories of Nan, who at 65 is considered eccentric by the local residents; her son Michael, a jeweler who’s on the Island to escape his life; Daniel, who is struggling with his secrets; and Daff, a recent divorcee who wants to find her true self.

When they all come to Nan’s rambling house, Windermere, they form a family of friends and as each discovers their own true self.

I enjoyed the characters, the sense of place (now I’d love a summer vacation to Nantucket) and the epilogue, because I enjoy knowing what happens to my characters after the big event of the novel is resolved. I love a good epilogue.

Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult

I love books by Jodi Picoult and I was in a rush to read this because Lifetime is airing a movie based on the book tonight. I checked it out a few weeks ago and honestly, couldn’t get into it at first, but once I pushed past the first 30 passages and got drawn in by the real characters that Ms. Picoult writes, I was hooked and couldn’t put it down.

Tenth Circle is about parenting, marriage, and teen sexuality. Oh and Dante’s Inferno. Daniel is a comic book artist and his wife is a college professor who teaches Dante’s Inferno. Here is the synopsis from jodipicoult.com:

When Daniel Stone was a child, he was the only white boy in a native Eskimo village where his mother taught, and he was teased mercilessly because he was different. He fought back, the baddest of the bad kids: stealing, drinking, robbing and cheating his way out of the Alaskan bush – where he honed his artistic talent, fell in love with a girl and got her pregnant. To become part of a family, he reinvented himself – jettisoning all that anger to become a docile, devoted husband and father. Fifteen years later, when we meet Daniel again, he is a comic book artist. His wife teaches Dante’s Inferno at a local college; his daughter, Trixie, is the light of his life – and a girl who only knows her father as the even-tempered, mild-mannered man he has been her whole life. Until, that is, she is date raped…and Daniel finds himself struggling, again, with a powerlessness and a rage that may not just swallow him whole, but destroy his family and his future.

I appreciate how she’s able to shift viewpoints and yet still remain a sense of action and mystery unfolding. Sometimes to me the shifting viewpoints ruin the story for me or confuse it. Also, she always has a great twist in the novel and when it comes – wow – it always surprises me and I like to be surprised.

The ending didn’t have the complete resolution I was looking for. I’d like to know more how this family fares.