Summer on Highland Beach

April 15, 2024
In Summer on Sag Harbor (2023), Olivia Jones was gobsmacked to learn who her real father was, and she's spending the summer on Highland Beach, outside of Annapolis, to get to know him better. Olivia wants to lay low--CJ, her father, is the mayor, and, besides, she doesn't want strangers in her personal life--but that's impossible in the tight-knit beach enclave. An anonymous Facebook post outs Olivia, so she hightails it to Sag Harbor and the comfort of her boyfriend, Garrett, and his sweet daughter, Zora. But Garrett accuses her of running away and holding back, two things preventing their relationship from progressing. Chagrined, Olivia heads back to Highland Beach, where her paternal grandmother, obsessed with the good name of a family that can be traced back to Frederick Douglass, has plans for her. Hostin has penned another deliciously soapy beach read about elite Black beach communities that, with a mystery surrounding the death of CJ's sister years ago, touches on themes of mental health, family history, and the sometimes-stifling reality of small-town living. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The View cohost Hostin's previous Summer Beach novels have been best-sellers, and readers have been waiting for the continuation of Olivia's story.

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June 1, 2024
An elite Black community in coastal Maryland learns that the mayor has a "secret love child." Having set her previous Summer Beach books in the enclaves of Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, and Sag Harbor, New York, The View host Hostin closes up shop in Highland Beach, a resort community founded in the late 19th century by Frederick Douglass' son. According to its website, it is "residential only, does not offer opportunities for tourism and cannot accommodate visits from the general public." Hostin definitely conveys that attitude as her character Olivia Jones pays a hesitant first visit to the snooty town, whose mayor is her long-estranged father, Charles "CJ" Jones, whose reelection will be compromised by her arrival. (Olivia's complicated backstory is explained hastily and will remain opaque to those who haven't read the first two books.) She is also meeting for the first time her evil grandmother, Christine Douglass-Jones (that Douglass), a woman who sees the death of two of her three children as more a reputation problem than a cause for mourning. Don't feel sorry for me, she tells an old enemy, "I have money, class, and I've traveled to places you've only dreamed of." Maybe this is meant to be a laugh line, but some of the wooden dialogue, the tabloid-type gossip about Frederick Douglass, and the oddly placed, uninspiring descriptions of people's attire are not. In one laugh-out-loud moment, a deus ex machinacharacter storms into a town meeting "wearing an ankle-length persimmon dress." No designer or anything! As in previous books, characters rely on therapy to deal with their messy lives and romances (Olivia has managed to screw up a good thing she had going in Sag Harbor). The wisdom of Olivia's therapist, Dr. LaGrange, saves the day: "Life is a journey. You hit a milestone and then you move on to your next goal. The work never really ends. Nor should it." This beach trilogy, however, should. Lacks the zest of the earlier books and doubles down on the weak writing.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.