SUNSET BEACH by Mary Kay Andrews
You always know it is summer when the new Mary Kay Andrews’ novel hits the bookstores. So her latest, SUNSET BEACH, is on the shelves and it’s summertime, summertime. You might ask why is it that Andrews’ books get to decide when it is officially summer reading time. The answer is her books have that beachy feel to them. You want to listen to the water lap the shore as you move through romance, drama and comedy all in one book. SUNSET BEACH fills that prescription nicely.
Drue Campbell is a thirty-ish single woman who has bummed up her knee kitesailing, and has lost her familial roots through the death of her mother. When she also loses her job she knows it is time for a change, and that change involves moving back to her hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida. This is where her estranged father lives and operates his law practice. He offers Drue a job and she accepts though it is hard for her to face her new stepmother Wendy who used to be Drue’s best friend.
One good thing that happens is Drue has inherited her grandparents’ home on Sunset Beach. So she now finds herself with a job she doesn’t love and a house in heavy need of repair. But things brighten up when she meets two of her co-workers, Jonah and Ben. They at least help make the job tolerable.
Thia is the fairly light-hearted aspect of Andrews’ story. It is also where most of the humor occurs as well as the potential romance. The drama comes in Drue’s discovering a police file in her grandparents’ attic which concerns the disappearance of a woman in 1976. She vanished without a trace. Drue is drawn to the case and develops information that indicates maybe her father Brice knew this woman at the very least.
Drue is also drawn to a case her father definitely handled and it concerned the death of a young woman at a local motel. The woman’s mother is not pleased with the low settlement Brice secured, and wants the case reopened. Drue sees her point and wants to get this woman and her granddaughter more money. To do so she will have to do some private investigating and her father is adamant that she not get involved.
As you can see there is a lot going on in the pages of SUNSET BEACH and the deeper into the book you get the more fascinating the plot and characters become. Drue becomes a somewhat Nancy Drue as she puts her life on the line to help those she thinks have been mistreated.
Nobody writes stories of this type better than Andrews. For the most part the plot rides atop the waves but now and again it sinks into the murky depths of the water. There is more to Drue than meets the eye upon first glance, and people who enter into her orbit may not be as good or as bad as they first appear. This mystique is what really hooks readers on the story.
So rest assured summer’s here and the beach is calling. Let yourself go and take SUNSET BEACH with you . It will guarantee you reading entertainment while the sun’s rays pour down.
SUNSET BEACH is published by St Martin’s Press. It contains 448 pages and sells for $28.99.
Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com
