TLC Book Review: The Cottage On Glass Beach

Author: Heather Barbieri
Title: The Cottage At Glass Beach
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publish Date: May 7, 2013
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: TLC Book Tours & the publisher

Book Blurb:  Married to the youngest attorney general in Massachusetts state history, Nora Cunningham is a picture-perfect political wife and a doting mother. But her carefully constructed life falls to pieces when she, along with the rest of the world, learns of the infidelity of her husband, Malcolm.

Humiliated and hounded by the press, Nora packs up her daughters--Annie, seven; and Ella, twelve--and takes refuge on Burke's Island, a craggy spit of land off the coast of Maine. Settled by Irish immigrants, the island is a place where superstition and magic are carried on the ocean winds, and wishes and dreams wash ashore with the changing tides.

Nora spent her first five years on the island but has not been back to the remote community for decades--not since that long ago summer when her mother disappeared at sea. One night while sitting alone on Glass Beach below the cottage where she spent her childhood, Nora succumbs to grief, her tears flowing into the ocean. Days later she finds an enigmatic fisherman named Owen Kavanagh shipwrecked on the rocks nearby. Is he, as her aunt's friend Polly suggests, a selkie--a mythical being of island legend--summoned by her heartbreak, or simply someone who, like Nora, is trying to find his way in the wake of his own personal struggles?

Just as she begins to regain her balance, her daughters embark on a reckless odyssey of their own--a journey that will force Nora to find the courage to chart her own course and finally face the truth about her marriage, her mother, and her long-buried past.

Review: This lovely book makes you want to sit on the sand or a beach chair or on the rocks and listen to the sea as you read the story.

Well, that's how it worked for me.

Heather Barbieri has created a picturesque town on an island, population about 201.

The perfect spot to get away and hide, and that's exactly what Nora Cunningham needs to do, after her Attorney General hubby has an affair.

Right from the start I hated Malcolm and as the story went on, I hated him even more.

Nora's daughters were really typical kids, though I wished many times that Nora would sit down and fill their minds with what an idiot their dad was. Ella was super bossy and mostly just a brat. By the end of the book, I was ready to ship her back to Boston and let her father deal with her. She was old enough to know that what was happening between her parents was something that might not be fixable.

There is one heartbreaking plot twist towards the end that really broke my heart.

I loved the touch of magic and mythology sounding the island and selkies. It was definitely different and the story wasn't what I expected it to be at

This has to be the best beach read for the summer and probably the most unique.

Rating: 4 flowers