Cathy Holton

I’m a sucker for a good friendship book, I especially like groups of 4 or more friends. Beach Trip not only hit that mark, but it is written from multiple perspectives (each character) and from a present timeframe, when the group is mid-40s as well as back when they were in college and had just met.

Beach Trip follows Mel, Sarah, Lola, and Annie, four unlikely friends brought together as college roommates, through the next few decades of their lives. Each of the women has their own secrets kept and needing to confess. The women meet for a long-time coming reunion on a secluded island where Lola has a house, a yacht, and what seems to be all the things a person could ever want. Mel, snarky as ever, has written ten mediocre novels by now, but couldn’t keep a relationship if she were paid. Sarah has family troubles that she has hidden from her friends, and Annie has a secret kept since college. During this week of over-indulgence, confessions come, fences are mended, and hearts are broken.

Beach Trip takes a sudden, unexpected turn at the very end (which I sort of saw coming, but not in the way it played out), and leaves the reader with a lot to think about. But don’t worry, it has a HEA.

This book was published in the early 2000s and when I researched other books by this author, I was saddened to learn she passed away of a terminal illness in 2013. Her family, however, has completed her other unpublished manuscripts. Bravo!

If you like a solid, clean, yet complicated friendship novel, this one is lengthy, but worth the time it takes. Thanks for writing, Beach Trip. Rest in peace, Cathy Holton, I will be reading your other work.… (mere)