TLC Book Tours Book Review: Same Beach, Next Year

About Same Beach, Next Year

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (May 16, 2017)

New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank returns to her magical Lowcountry of South Carolina in this bewitching story of marriage, love, family, and friendship that is infused with her warm and engaging earthy humor and generous heart.

One enchanted summer, two couples begin a friendship that will last more than twenty years and transform their lives.

A chance meeting on the Isle of Palms, one of Charleston’s most stunning barrier islands, brings former sweethearts, Adam Stanley and Eve Landers together again. Their respective spouses, Eliza and Carl, fight sparks of jealousy flaring from their imagined rekindling of old flames. As Adam and Eve get caught up on their lives, their partners strike up a deep friendship—and flirt with an unexpected attraction—of their own.

Year after year, Adam, Eliza, Eve, and Carl eagerly await their reunion at Wild Dunes, a condominium complex at the island’s tip end, where they grow closer with each passing day, building a friendship that will withstand financial catastrophe, family tragedy, and devastating heartbreak. The devotion and love they share will help them weather the vagaries of time and enrich their lives as circumstances change, their children grow up and leave home, and their twilight years approach.

Bursting with the intoxicating richness of Dorothea Benton Frank’s beloved Lowcountry—the sultry sunshine, cool ocean breezes, icy cocktails, and starry velvet skies—Same Beach, Next Year is a dazzling celebration of the infrangible power of friendship, the enduring promise of summer, and the indelible bonds of love.

Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Review: Dorothea Benton Frank brought her "A" game with "Same Beach, Next Year." Every summer I look forward to reading her latest book. They go hand and hand with the warm months.

The last few summer reads were what my high school creative writing teacher called potboilers.

"Same Beach, Next Year" has the usual formula of all Dorothea's Lowcountry books; a beautiful home at the beach, a husband that has done his wife wrong, and some quirky characters. Oh and don't forget all the characters are in that upper middle class category, where the wife works for the husband, but not really because she has to.

For some reason I just really fell in love with Eliza, Adam, Eve and Carl. It was very kitschy that Adam and Eve were high school sweethearts that still kind of have feelings for each other.

The way Adam reacted to seeing Eve again was a bit over the top, but without that connection the friendship that grew between the two families wouldn't come to pass and for all of each character's faults and flaws these were two families that really were one.

I loved Eliza more than I have any of Dorothea's heroine's thus far. She was real. She was gutsy. She was a woman I'd want to be. Her reactions to things that happened as the story progressed were very much the way I'd see myself reacting.

I love how she finally started to care about her dreams. Eliza needed to be more than a wife and mother.

The family members in this story are all fabulous. I adored Adam's dad Ted and his lady friend turned wife Clarabeth and then there was Eve's mother. OMG Eve's mother, Cookie, she is just the world's biggest troublemaker. She lives to cause trouble, and you will see her in action so many times in this book. (Cookie seriously needs her own book, so we can see how she got this way)

This is a family saga of the best kind. You have the ups and downs and some serious troubles, but in the end...its all family.

This is one for the keeper shelf.

Rating: 5 flowers

About Dorothea Benton Frank

New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank was born and raised on Sullivans Island, South Carolina. She resides in the New York area with her husband.

Find her on the web at www.dotfrank.com, or like her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

TLC Book Tours Book Review All The Single Ladies

About All The Single Ladies

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (June 9, 2015)

In this fast-paced and evocative novel, beloved New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank again takes us deep into the Lowcountry of South Carolina, where three unsuspecting women are brought together by tragedy and mystery

Lisa St. Clair knows a thing or two about weathering storms. A dedicated nurse with a healthy sense of humor, she single-handedly raised her truculent daughter, Marianne, after her ex walked out on them twenty-four years ago, sending them a lottery ticket once a year as support. One day he reappeared and lured their daughter into a dubious but lucrative venture in Colorado. Now mother and daughter aren't speaking.

So when Kathy Harper, Lisa's favorite patient, loses her battle with cancer, Lisa finds herself drawing closer to Carrie and Suzanne, the devoted friends who were always by Kathy's side. As these three women's lives inevitably connect, they share their concerns about men, getting older and the horrors of maintaining financial stability. Suzanne's ninety-nine-year-old grandmother, a former chanteuse, offers unexpected perspectives on the mores of the day. Carrie's greedy ex-stepchildren are a chorus of cackling crows. And Lisa's mother just can't help herself as she henpecks her to distraction.

Somehow their conversations always return to the enigma of Kathy. Who was she? What did her short life mean?

Lisa, Carrie, and Suzanne power walk the beaches of the Isle of Palms with Pickle, Lisa's adorable Westie. Gradually they uncover the truth of Kathy's life and unfurl plans to secure their own futures, as fate steps in to help them discover that being single doesn't have to mean being alone. Dorothea Benton Frank shows us that friendship is as powerful as the turning tide and that love is about more than just finding the right person. You'll fall under the magical spell of the Lowcountry and of all the single ladies who have a whole lot of living to do.

Purchase Links

Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble

Review: Dorothea Benton Frank is one of those authors that I would call a guilty pleasure if I believed in guilty pleasures.

Her books are either really good or really not so good.

All The Single Ladies (Yeah, now I have the Beyonce song stuck in my head) is one of those really good ones.

It deviates from her normal style. Lisa is not married to a rich guy who cheats on her and wants a divorce. No, she's a nurse at a personal care home, and one of her patients dies and she befriends that patients friends.

Something about the story reminded me of Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral. Maybe because  a lot of the subject matter was a bit of a downer,but there was a lot of humor in this story as well.

I loved Kathy's friends Carrie and Suzanne and Suzanne's grandmother Miss Trudie. Lisa and her new friends work to solve a mystery involving, Kathy's belongings. I loved how their friendship evolved as they all found their own relationships.

I also was totally amused by the sticky situation Lisa had with her daughter Marianne, who has a rather dubious business in Colorado involving pot.

There are some spots that make me go hmmm. I couldn't quite understand how a nurse couldn't find full time work, and how she was so totally irresponsible regarding Miss Trudie's health. I found that totally unbelievable, especially when she starts taking a lot of falls.

This was the best book I've read in ages by Dorothea Benton Frank, even though there are some questionable things going on with Lisa.  A must read for your summer reading pile!

Rating: 5 flowers

About Dorothea Benton Frank

New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank was born and raised on Sullivans Island, South Carolina. She divides her time between the New York area and the Lowcountry.

Find her on the web at www.dotfrank.com, or like her on Facebook or Twitter.

TLC Book Tours Book Review: The Hurricane Sisters

About The Hurricane Sisters

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (April 7, 2015)

Hurricane season begins early and rumbles all summer long, well into September. Often people's lives reflect the weather and The Hurricane Sisters is just such a story.

Once again Dorothea Benton Frank takes us deep into the heart of her magical South Carolina Lowcountry on a tumultuous journey filled with longings, disappointments, and, finally, a road toward happiness that is hard earned. There we meet three generations of women buried in secrets. The determined matriarch, Maisie Pringle, at eighty, is a force to be reckoned with because she will have the final word on everything, especially when she's dead wrong. Her daughter, Liz, is caught up in the classic maelstrom of being middle-age and in an emotionally demanding career that will eventually open all their eyes to a terrible truth. And Liz's beautiful twenty-something daughter, Ashley, whose dreamy ambitions of her unlikely future keeps them all at odds.

Luckily for Ashley, her wonderful older brother, Ivy, is her fierce champion but he can only do so much from San Francisco where he resides with his partner. And Mary Beth, her dearest friend, tries to have her back but even she can't talk headstrong Ashley out of a relationship with an ambitious politician who seems slightly too old for her.

Actually, Ashley and Mary Beth have yet to launch themselves into solvency. Their prospects seem bleak. So while they wait for the world to discover them and deliver them from a ramen-based existence, they placate themselves with a hare-brained scheme to make money but one that threatens to land them in huge trouble with the authorities.

So where is Clayton, Liz's husband? He seems more distracted than usual. Ashley desperately needs her father's love and attention but what kind of a parent can he be to Ashley with one foot in Manhattan and the other one planted in indiscretion? And Liz, who's an expert in the field of troubled domestic life, refuses to acknowledge Ashley's precarious situation. Who's in charge of this family? The wake-up call is about to arrive.

The Lowcountry has endured its share of war and bloodshed like the rest of the South, but this storm season we watch Maisie, Liz, Ashley, and Mary Beth deal with challenges that demand they face the truth about themselves. After a terrible confrontation they are forced to rise to forgiveness, but can they establish a new order for the future of them all?

Frank, with her hallmark scintillating wit and crisp insight, captures how a complex family of disparate characters and their close friends can overcome anything through the power of love and reconciliation. This is the often hilarious, sometimes sobering, but always entertaining story of how these unforgettable women became The Hurricane Sisters.

Purchase Links

Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble

Review: Dorothea Benton Frank is one of my favorite authors, and one that can't rightly explain to anyone the why of it. I find many of her novels to follow a formula, yet I gobble them up like a good bag of potato chips.

I love the Lowcountry setting. It always makes me wish that I were there.

There's always some huge drama in Frank's books and this one is no different. She's tackling date rape/domestic abuse here, and there's ALWAYS a cheating husband. What bugged me about this one is that Liz is really a doormat.

I preferred when her heroines were stronger, though I'll give her credit for writing characters that are absolute jerks. Ashley's senator boyfriend, gave the word jerk a new meaning. However when it comes to being a ditsy broad, Ashley took the cake. She claimed Jackie Kennedy was her idol, well, even Jackie had a backbone when it came to JFK's roving eye.

Even when she finally wises up she still wants to emulate someone other than herself. Yes, the character is 23, but it bugged me that she wanted to be like someone from the past, rather than herself.

Maisie was the only character I really liked and when you have a novel that revolves around three women, it makes the reading a bit hard. And even Maisie isn't perfect. I can't imagine a mother pushing a daughter to stay with a man that cheated like Clayton did. In my eyes, cheating is an unforgivable sin.

And while the whole underlying theme of this book was domestic violence, how everything tied together and even how it affected Ashley, it was too watered down to make an impact.

So, yeah, this wasn't my favorite of Frank's books, but it won't stop me from waiting for the next.

Rating: 3 flowers

About Dorothea Benton Frank

New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank was born and raised on Sullivans Island, South Carolina. She is the author of many New York Times bestselling novels, including Lowcountry Summer and Return to Sullivans Island. She resides in the New York area with her husband. Find her on the web at www.dotfrank.com, and connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

Book Review: Sullivan's Island

Author: Dorothea Benton Frank
Title: Sullivan's Island
Publisher: Penguin
Publish Date: Jan 1, 1999
Buy: Amazon
Book Blurb: Set in the steamy, stormy landscape of South Carolina, Sullivan's Island marks the debut of an exquisitely talented writer--and tells the unforgettable story of one woman's courageous journey toward truth. Born and raised on idyllic Sullivan's Island, Susan Hayes navigated through her turbulent childhood with humor, spunk, and characteristic Southern sass. But years later, she is a conflicted woman with an unfaithful husband, a sometimes resentful teenage daughter, and a heart that aches with painful, poignant memories. And as Susan faces her uncertain future, she realizes she must go back to her past. To the beachfront house where her sister welcomes her with open arms. To a place haunted by long-held secrets and devastating betrayals. To the only place she can truly call home...

Review: I've read one other book by Dorothea Benton Frank, and I really enjoyed it. I picked up Sullivan's Island at the YMCA lending library and I felt like I was reading the same book, or at least a variation on that book.

Strong middle aged female gets dumped by her husband of many years for a sweet young thing. There's a lot of rehashing of the past, which is the only thing that made the book worth reading. The 1960's south always makes for good reading. I adored Livvie and the fact that Susan's family, or rather her mom and dad weren't bigots and actually built a special bathroom for her, rather than making her use an outhouse was great. (If you read The Help or saw the movie, this will make a lot more sense)

Most of the book that takes place in the present, details Susan coming into her own, and coping with her divorce from Tom. And seriously, why does this woman give her cheating men cancer, and make them absolute twits too?

There were several times when I was reading about Tom and his sweet young thang, Karen, that I wanted to fling the book at a wall.

Not only that, I found myself wondering where in the hideeheck, the twins were during Christmas 1999, when all the Hamilton clan returned home. Maggie, Susan, Henry and Timmy were there, but what about the twins? WTF!

Overall, I enjoyed the book, even though it frustrated the hell out of me and the paranormal ending, which was sweet, also didn't fit with the rest of the story.

Rating: 3 flowers

TLC Book Tours Book Review: The Last Original Wife

Author: The Last Original Wife
Title: Dorothea Benton Frank
Publisher: Willliam Morrow
Publish Date: April 1, 2014
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: TLC Book Tour
Book Blurb: 
Experience the sultry Southern atmosphere of Atlanta and the magic of the Carolina Lowcountry in this funny and poignant tale of one audacious woman's quest to find the love she deserves

Leslie Anne Greene Carter is The Last Original Wife among her husband Wesley's wildly successful Atlanta social set. But if losing her friends to tanned and toned young Barbie brides isn't painful enough, a series of setbacks shake Les's world and push her to the edge. She's had enough of playing the good wife to a husband who thinks he's doing her a favor by keeping her around. She's going to take some time for herself—in the familiar comforts and stunning beauty of Charleston, her beloved hometown. And she's going to reclaim the carefree girl who spent lazy summers with her first love on Sullivans Island. Daring to listen to her inner voice, she will realize what she wants . . . and find the life of which she's always dreamed.

The Last Original Wife is an intoxicating tale of family, friendship, self-discovery, and love that is as salty as a Lowcountry breeze and as invigorating as a dip in Carolina waters on a sizzling summer day.

Review: The Last Original Wife is one of those books that you enjoy, but you aren't quite sure why you enjoy it. It is a light, fluffy beach read.

Leslie is the last of the "first wives" of all her husband's friends who have moved on to younger women, that she calls Barbies.

They are well to do but their marriage in shambles.

Leslie is more likable, but Wes is just a jerk, plain and simple. You couldn't like him at all. It would have been nice if he had at least one trait that would have justified her staying married to him all those years. And while we're talking about characters you have to hate, OMG their children are spoiled grown up brats!

So yeah, Les is a bit of a doormat, who finally tries to find her wings.

You get this story through flashbacks and through the present.

Could I relate to the characters?

No way. It would be nice if I had a husband that was a lawyer and could make gourmet dinners, drive a Benz, or take off for Charleston to visit family at the drop of a hat. I wish I could relate.

Did I like the book?

Yes, actually I did, because it wasn't about pretty big boobed young things that find their prince charming. It is about a women finding herself and finding love along the way.  Oh, and the Barbies did provide for some chuckles, especially at Molly's wedding.

I only wish, in the course of the journey, Wes could have changed a bit. Their children, Charlotte and Bertie did, and at the beginning of the story, you really had to think these two couldn't be redeemed.

Pop this book in your beach bag. It is definitely worth the read.

Rating: 4 flowers