That is perfectly stunning in its awfulness.  It is so awful you cannot abandon the book.  Much as you would like to, the angry reader in you continues on.  Why?  It’s simple really. It is because you are wishing death on the characters.  After all, they have eaten away a portion of your life with their whining so doesn’t death seem like a perfectly reasonable trade off?   


Beach Trip
by Cathy Holton is the newest addition to novels of this type.  It centers around four self absorbed fortyish women who re-unite at the beach house of oneof them to relive and revive their college friendships.   They are all successful in their own rights and yet, the need to constantly complain is ever present.  One of the main characters is so vague and child like that you want to slap her.  What sort of woman gets lost while she is shopping?  In her own hometown?  And no, there is no Alzheimer’s going on here.  But there is a lot of self medication.

By the end of this book you think that you are going to get what you want; character revenge, but it won’t even let you have that satisfaction. 
Want something good to read that won’t make you as angry as this made me? Ask us at the Desk!  We are always ready with a suggestion.  We make the mistakes so you don’t have to.
 
 

Comments

Welcome (and necessary) advice

I am so grateful to RA for steering me clear countless times from books that blunder and/or bore. You always point me in the right direction!

What to read guidance.

Assuming that the library has "Beach Trip" and other books of it's ilk in it's collection, why are library funds wasted on such drivel? Aren't there advance industry reviews available before committing to purchase?

Book review for Beach Trip

Hi Tuck, sometimes you can't tell how good a book will be from the review. And one person's trash is another person's treasure. The review below is an "advance industry review" from Publishers Weekly. Beach Trip Cathy Holton. Ballantine, $25 (448p) ISBN 978-0-345-50599-6 Break out the tissues, sunblock and margarita mix as four old friends reunite after 23 years for a beach party in Holton’s feast of Southern friendship (after The Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes). Mel, Sara, Annie and Lola head out to Wild Dunes, a beachfront palace owned by Lola’s super-rich husband on exclusive Whale Head Island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Spacy Lola is miserably married and leans heavily on medication to deal with her husband’s manipulations. Obsessive-compulsive Annie still broods over a college fling with a married professor even though she’s got a great husband. Social worker Sara still envies glamorous Mel, a witty crime novelist (I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead is her latest) living in New York who’s unlucky in marriage. At 45, each stands at a familiar crossroads covered by many novels of the midlife-empowerment genre, but Holton refreshes the action with winning humor, especially with Mel, whose take-no-prisoners attitude inspires everyone to embrace their present and let the past go.