Happy St. Patrick's Day! Make sure to wear green today so you do not get pinched! There are some fabulous new books coming out this month. They include: The Darkness We Hide by Debra Webb, The Sisters Grimm by Menna van Praag, The Sunday Potluck Club by Melissa Storm, Berried in the Past by Peg Cochran, and Light Shines at Promise Lodge by Charlotte Hubbard. One Perfect Summer by Brenda Novak releases on April 7 and Sunrise on Half Moon Bay by Robyn Carr comes out April 14. The Sea Glass Cottage by RaeAnne Thayne is out today (ebook, hardcover, audio cd and audiobook).
About the Book
The life Olivia Harper always dreamed of isn’t so dreamy these days.
The 16-hour work days are unfulfilling and so are things with her on-again,
off-again boyfriend. But when she hears that her estranged mother, Juliet, has
been seriously injured in a car accident, Liv has no choice but to pack up her
life and head home to beautiful Cape Sanctuary on the Northern California
coast.
It’s just for a few months—that’s what Liv keeps telling herself. But the closer she gets to Cape Sanctuary, the painful memories start flooding back: Natalie, her vibrant, passionate older sister who downward-spiraled into addiction. The fights with her mother who enabled her sister at every turn. The overdose that took Natalie, leaving her now-teenaged daughter, Caitlin, an orphan.
As Liv tries to balance her own needs with those of her injured mother and an obstinate, resentful fifteen-year-old, it becomes clear that all three Harper women have been keeping heartbreaking secrets from one another. And as those secrets are revealed, Liv, Juliet, and Caitlin will see that it’s never too late—or too early—to heal family wounds and find forgiveness.
It’s just for a few months—that’s what Liv keeps telling herself. But the closer she gets to Cape Sanctuary, the painful memories start flooding back: Natalie, her vibrant, passionate older sister who downward-spiraled into addiction. The fights with her mother who enabled her sister at every turn. The overdose that took Natalie, leaving her now-teenaged daughter, Caitlin, an orphan.
As Liv tries to balance her own needs with those of her injured mother and an obstinate, resentful fifteen-year-old, it becomes clear that all three Harper women have been keeping heartbreaking secrets from one another. And as those secrets are revealed, Liv, Juliet, and Caitlin will see that it’s never too late—or too early—to heal family wounds and find forgiveness.
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne finds inspiration
in the beautiful northern Utah mountains where she lives with her family. Her
books have won numerous honors, including six RITA Award nominations from
Romance Writers of America and Career Achievement and Romance Pioneer awards
from RT Book Reviews. She loves to hear from readers and can be reached through
her website at www.raeannethayne.com. You can connect with the author on Twitter (@RaeAnneThayne), Facebook (AuthorRaeAnneThayne), Instagram (@RaeAnneThayne) and Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/116118.RaeAnne_Thayne).
Q and A with RaeAnne Thayne
What made you write this story?
That’s a very
long “story behind the story”! My husband of 34 years was adopted at birth to a
wonderful loving family and never knew anything about his birth parents. He was
never really interested, though I always wondered. He took a DNA test a few
years ago before going in for a major surgery, just out of curiosity so our
kids could know something about his ethnic heritage, and was astonished a few
months later when results from Ancestry.com came in linking him to several
close relatives on his maternal side. He wasn’t going to do anything about it
but through a very strange sequence of events, he eventually connected with
three half-brothers, an aunt and several uncles (including one who has been our
neighbor and friend for more than twenty years without either us knowing the
connection!). Unfortunately, my husband’s birth mother died several years ago so
he never had the chance to meet her but my husband now has a wonderful
relationship with his brothers, who have embraced and welcomed him. I have
heard of these kind of stories before and after living through the amazing results
from a simple DNA test, I wanted to write about someone trying to trace her
father. That’s one of the underlying subplots to THE SEA GLASS COTTAGE.
Is The Sea Glass Cottage based on a real place?
Cape Sanctuary
is kind of an amalgamation of some of my favorite spots along the Pacific
coast, a mix of Carmel, California and Cannon Beach, Oregon. It’s loosely based
near Trinidad, California. I only wish it really existed!
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| One of the storybook cottages in Carmel, California |
Do you have a place to go to in order to clear you head like Olivia did in The Sea Glass Cottage?
I don’t live by
the ocean, unfortunately, but I do live in the mountains of Utah. Ten minutes
from my home, I can be in a gorgeous wilderness area where I can walk and think
and meditate. We are heading into the most beautiful time of year here, where
the mountains turn green with new growth and wildflowers begin to pop out. I
can’t wait!
What theme or message do you hope readers take away from The Sea Glass Cottage?
Like all my books, the core story is
that we’re all here to learn how to take care of each other. All my books have
the underlying theme that our lives become better and more fulfilling when we
reach out to help and lift someone else. The world can sometimes feel ugly and
angry. I feel like there’s an increasing need for us all to focus on trying a
little harder to be kind. Life is filled with pain and trials but it can also
be beautiful and joyful at the same time.
What do you like best about this book?
I love the peace and healing that came to the characters
from being honest with their loved ones and opening their hearts to second
chances.
Any new books or projects on the horizon?
Yes! Always J The last book in my Haven Point series,
SUMMER AT LAKE HAVEN, comes out June 23. This is Samantha Fremont’s book, for
those who have read others in the series. It also includes a surprise novella.
Next up will be a standalone Christmas book in an all-new community, Silver
Bells, Colorado. CHRISTMAS AT HOLIDAY HOUSE (release date is October 6) will be out in late September. And
I recently spent three days at a California beach house with writer friends
plotting my next hardcover and can’t wait to start writing it! THE PATH TO
SUNSHINE COVE (tentative title!) will also be set in Cape Sanctuary and will be
out April 2021.
My Thoughts
The Sea Glass Cottage by RaeAnne Thayne has Olivia Harper returning Cape Sanctuary after her mother falls from a
ladder and sustaining serious injuries. Juliet
Harper likes to be independent, but her surgery will have her out of commission
for a couple of months. Plus, Juliet
will need assistance raising her fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Caitlin and
running the family business, Harper Hill Home & Garden. Juliet is hoping to repair the deep void
between herself and Olivia during this time.
The three Harper ladies are each keeping secrets from each other. This could be the chance for them to mend
rifts, tell truths and become closer as a family. The Sea Glass Cottage involves three
generations of Harper ladies: Juliet,
Olivia and Caitlin. I thought the story
was well-written with developed characters.
The book had a good flow which I appreciated. The story alternates point-of-view between
Juliet, Olivia, Caitlin and Cooper Vance.
I thought The Sea Glass Cottage was a multifaceted novel. The various storylines all work together for
one compelling story. Olivia has many
fears that keep her from achieving her dreams or having a fulfilling
relationship. Juliet is hiding a secret
from her family and her best friend, Henry Cragun. Caitlin’s mother died when she was a
child. She never told anyone the identity
of her father. Caitlin comes up with a
plan to find out the identity of her biological father. There is much more which I want you to
discover for yourself. I loved the
beautiful descriptions of the Sea Glass Cottage and the sea. There are secrets revealed throughout the
book which I liked. I was very happy
there was an epilogue which nicely wrapped up the book. The Sea Glass Cottage is a complex, moving
story about family, secrets, healing, forgiveness, friendship, honesty and
love.
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| Cute cottage by sea in Carmel, California (Originally a doll shop) |
Excerpt
Olivia shoved her hands
into her pockets against the damp Seattle afternoon. Nothing would take the
chill from her bones, though. She knew that. Even five days of sick leave,
huddling in her bed and mindlessly bingeing on cooking shows hadn’t done
anything but make her crave cake.
She couldn’t hide away
in her apartment forever. Eventually she was going to have to reenter life and
go back to work, which was why she stood outside this coffee shop in a typical
spring drizzle with her heart pounding and her stomach in knots.
This was stupid. The
odds of anything like that happening to her again were ridiculously small. She
couldn’t let one man battling mental illness and drug abuse control the rest of
her life. She could do this. She reached out to pull
the door open, but before she could make contact with the metal handle, her
cell phone chimed from her pocket.
She knew instantly from
the ringtone it was her best friend from high school, who still lived in Cape
Sanctuary with her three children. Talking to Melody was
more important than testing her resolve by going into the Kozy Kitchen right
now, she told herself. She answered the call, already heading back across the
street to her own apartment.
“Mel,” she answered,
her voice slightly breathless from the adrenaline still pumping through her and
from the stairs she was racing up two at a time. “I’m so glad you called.” Glad didn’t come close to
covering the extent of her relief. She really hadn’t wanted to go into that
coffee shop. Not yet. Why should she make herself? She had coffee at home and
could have groceries delivered when she needed them.
“You know why I’m
calling, then?” Melody asked, a strange note in her voice. “I know it’s amazing to
hear from you. You’ve been on my mind.” She was not only a
coward but a lousy friend. She hadn’t checked in with Melody in a few weeks,
despite knowing her friend was going through a life upheaval far worse than
witnessing an attack on someone else.
As she unlocked her
apartment, the cutest rescue dog in the world, a tiny, fluffy cross between a
Chihuahua and a miniature poodle, gyrated with joy at the sight of her. Yet another reason she
didn’t have to leave. If she needed love and attention, she only had to call
her dog and Otis would come running.
She scooped him up and
let him lick her face, already feeling some of her anxiety calm. “I was thinking how
great it would be if you and the boys could come up and stay with me for a few
days when school gets out for the summer,” she said now to Melody. “We could
take the boys to the Space Needle, maybe hop the ferry up to the San Juans and
go whale watching. They would love it. What do you think?”
The words seemed to be
spilling out of her, too fast. She was babbling, a weird combination of relief
that she hadn’t had to face that coffee shop and guilt that she had been
wrapped up so tightly with her own life that she hadn’t reached out to a friend
in need.
“My apartment isn’t
very big,” she went on without waiting for an answer. “But I have an extra
bedroom and can pick up some air beds for the boys. They’ve got some really
comfortable ones these days. I’ve got a friend who says she stayed on one at
her sister’s house in Tacoma and slept better than she does on her regular
mattress. I’ve still got my car, though I hardly drive it in the city, and the
boys would love to meet Otis. Maybe we could even drive to Olympic National
Park, if you wanted.”
“Liv. Stop.” Melody cut
her off. “Though that all sounds amazing and I’m sure the boys would love it,
we can talk about that later. You have no idea why I called, do you?”
“I… Why did you call?” Melody was silent for a
few seconds. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” she finally said. The breath ran out of
Olivia like somebody had popped one of those air mattresses with a bread knife. “Oh no. Is it one of
your boys?” Oh please, she prayed. Don’t let it be one of the boys.
Melody had been through
enough over the past three months, since her jerkhole husband ran off with one
of his high school students. “No, honey. It’s not my
family. It’s yours.” Her words seemed to
come from far away and it took a long time for them to pierce through. No. Impossible. Fear rushed back in,
swamping her like a fast-moving tide. She sank blindly onto the sofa. “Is it Caitlin?”
“It’s not your niece.
Stop throwing out guesses and just let me tell you. It’s your mom. Before you
freak out, let me just say, first of all, she’s okay, from what I understand. I
don’t have all the details but I do know she’s in the hospital, but she’s okay.
It could have been much worse.”
Her mom. Olivia tried
to picture Juliet lying in a hospital bed and couldn’t quite do it. Juliet
Harper didn’t have time to be in a hospital bed. She was always hurrying
somewhere, either next door to Sea Glass Cottage to the garden center the
Harper family had run in Cape Sanctuary for generations or down the hill to
town to help a friend or to one of Caitlin’s school events.
“What happened?” “She had a bad fall and
suffered a concussion and I think some broken bones.”
Olivia’s stomach
twisted. A concussion. Broken bones. Oh man. “Fell where? Off one of the cliffs
near the garden center?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t
know all the details yet. This just happened this morning and it’s still early
for the gossip to make all the rounds around town. I assumed you already knew.
That Caitlin or someone would have called you. I was only checking in to see
how I can help.”
This morning. She
glanced at her watch. Her mother had been in an accident hours earlier and
Olivia was just finding out about it now, in late afternoon. Someone should have
told her—if not Juliet herself, then, as Melody said, at least Caitlin.
Given their recent
history, it wasn’t particularly surprising that her niece, raised by Olivia’s
mother since she was a baby, hadn’t bothered to call. Olivia wasn’t Caitlin’s
favorite person right now. These days, during Olivia’s regular video chats with
her mother, Caitlin never popped in to say hi anymore. At fifteen, Caitlin was
abrasive and moody and didn’t seem to like Olivia much, for reasons she didn’t
quite understand.
“I’m sure someone tried
to reach me but my phone has been having trouble,” she lied. Her phone never
had trouble. She made sure it was always in working order, since so much of her
freelance business depended on her clients being able to reach her and on her
being able to Tweet or post something on the fly.
“I’m glad I checked in,
then.” “Same here. Thank you.” Several bones broken
and a long recovery. Oh dear. That would be tough on Juliet, especially this time
of year when the garden center always saw peak business. “Thank you for telling
me. Is she in the hospital there in Cape Sanctuary or was she taken to one of
the bigger cities?”
“I’m not sure. I can
call around for you, if you want.” “I’ll find out. You
have enough to worry about.” “Keep me posted. I’m
worried about her. She’s a pretty great lady, that mom of yours.” Olivia shifted,
uncomfortable as she always was when others spoke about her mother to her.
Everyone loved her, with good reason. Juliet was warm, gracious, kind to just
about everyone in their beachside community of Cape Sanctuary.
Which made Olivia’s own
awkward, tangled relationship with her mother even harder to comprehend. “Will you be able to
come home for a few days?” Home. How could she go
home when she couldn’t even walk into the coffee shop across the street? “I don’t know. I’ll
have to see what’s going on there.”
How could she possibly
travel all the way to Northern California? A complicated mix of emotions
seemed to lodge like a tangled ball of yarn in her chest whenever she thought
about her hometown, which she loved and hated in equal measures. The town held so much
guilt and pain and sorrow. Her father was buried there and so was her sister.
Each room in Sea Glass Cottage stirred like the swirl of dust motes with memories
of happier times.
Olivia hadn’t been back
in more than a year. She kept meaning to make a trip but something else always
seemed to come up. She usually went for the holidays at least, but the previous
year she’d backed out of even that after work obligations kept her in Seattle
until Christmas Eve and a storm had made last-minute travel difficult. She had
spent the holiday with friends instead of with her mother and Caitlin and had
felt guilty that she had enjoyed it much more than the previous few when she
had gone home.
She couldn’t avoid it now,
though. A trip back to Cape Sanctuary was long overdue, especially if her
mother needed her.
Are you ready to read The Sea Glass Cottage? The Sea Glass Cottage is available from Amazon*, Harlequin, Indiebound, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Target, Walmart, GooglePlay, iBooks and Kobo. Thank you for stopping by today. Tomorrow I will be sharing my review of The Forgotten Murder by Jude Deveraux. It is the third book in A Medlar Mystery series. I hope you have a special day. By the way. . .What is the spookiest kind of author? A ghostwriter! Take care of yourself, stay safe, and Happy Reading!
Kris
The Avid Reader
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post contains affiliate links.
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