Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Sunshine Beach - Review, Excerpt and Author Q & A

Idgie Says:
What I enjoy most about this series from Wendy is that the women are not all gorgeous 20 somethings with hot bodies.  These women have done some living and they aren't through yet.   

The 51 year old who is not that confident about her body is dating a rock star - yes, he's aging too, but he's a rock star!  Another one is dating the studly detective that was tracking her as a suspect a few books back, neither one on the young side of 40.  These are "women of  a certain age" that can still sizzle.  

 Three women, along with a daughter (who is also mother to a hot movie star's baby) are trying to keep their lives together through complete loss of funds, then a recoup, then a loss of a tv show, etc. etc.  This series of books have always contained a mystery that must be solved and this one is no exception. 

 I do recommend that this series be read in order.  If you start with the most current novel, you may enjoy the story but you will find yourself lost in spots without the backstory.



 Click HERE for an excerpt.
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Readers first met Maddie, Avery and Nicole in Wendy Wax's
 Ten Beach Road, heralded as "one of six books that belong in your beach bag" by USA Today. Victims of a Ponzi scheme, the three were deeded Bella Flora, a crumbling historic home on Florida's Pass-a-Grille Beach, in lieu of their vanished life savings.

At the time, all the reluctant DIYers dared hope was that renovating and selling it would make them solvent. Little did they know they would end up starring in their own reality show, Do Over, strapping on their tool belts again in Wax's Ocean Beach and The House on Mermaid Point and, now, fighting for their show and their integrity, in the long-awaited SUNSHINE BEACH, a Berkley Trade Paperback Original on sale June 21st.

There have been big life changes, including losses, for the characters Wax has created, but they've remained together---friends, family, extended family, barely tolerated colleagues and all. They're still taking life one renovation at a time, but in SUNSHINE BEACH there's a big difference. They've broken with the network, which insisted on compromise after compromise, and are risking everything to secure their next project and the future of Do Over.
 This time around,they find their next renovation pretty much right where they started, barely a mile from Bella Flora. It's Maddie's daughter Kyra who stumbles across the Sunshine Hotel, a once glorious mid-century beachfront
property left to languish at the mercy of the elements. The opportunity to renovate it is too good to pass up and, they figure, what could go wrong? Well, it turns out, pretty much everything.

Maddie's romance with rock legend "Will the Wild" Hightower gets complicated. Nikki's reluctance to commit to the man who loves her may be the biggest mistake of her life. Kyra's son Dustin's world famous actor father keeps popping up and between him, Hightower and the Do Over cast, paparazzi abound, adding their own layer of chaos. Even the hotel seems to be against them when their remodeling uncovers a 60-year-old unsolved murder that brings construction to a halt, threatening the future of the show and reopening wounds that never fully healed.

As always, Wendy brings her distinctive blend of insight, humor and sense of place to the world and people she has created in this story of friendship, family, self-discovery and strength in the face of adversity.