Review of The Beach Trees by Karen White

The Beach Trees

Karen White

Penguin Group

432 pages

ISBN 13: 9780451233073

 Julie Holt knows better than most that “death and loss plague you”, she’s had a lot in her life and now as she starts on this new and frightening adventure she feels it all again. Being named as guardian to her friend’s small son after her death leaves more questions than answers for Julie so she loads herself and her small ward and goes to the other thing left to her by her friend, a home in Biloxi Mississippi named River Song. When she arrives it’s to see only empty landscape where once a house stood and so she takes her next step in this journey to the family that her friend left behind. Maybe she’ll find answers, maybe she’ll find solutions or maybe she’ll just find more questions.

Reading a novel by Karen White always reminds me of salt sea breezes, sitting on a swing on a wide wrap around porch and sipping sweet tea and I always have one handy to read during my long Midwest winters while ice pelts the windows and the furnace works overtime to heat my home. This novel is no different only that I read it during the humid late spring instead.

 Set in the aftermath of the storm known as Katrina, Ms. White gives us in this incredible read a story line that will appeal to the mystery lover, the romance lover, the family drama lover and the literary fiction lover all in one with a tale that will entertain and educate us as she takes us deftly on her twists and turns and knots our emotions as she spins her tale. She gives us her narrative with a bit of southern hospitality mixed with New England stubbornness and an all American apple pie goodness. Her characters will endear themselves to us and by making them so believably real she also makes them temporary friends as each person she creates becomes someone we must know better and we do. She will also give us a hint of a romance to come and explore love stories gone by and the secrets, tragedies and milestones they’ve endured.

So come with me on this sentimental journey, learn to love again, learn to hope again and learn to live again with her incredible story and the people who tell it. This is your first must read of the summer, a perfect beach read, a vacation staple and a friend you’ll look for again at another point down your road.

Buy the book here visit the author’s website here