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Beach Read

 It's mid-July, when the brain turns to mush, like melted ice cream. If you're looking for a beach read, may I recommend "Winter Street," by Elin Hilderbrand?


Everyone already loves Hilderbrand, and she was recently the subject of a glowing NYT profile. She writes soap operas set on the island of Nantucket.

In "Winter Street," Kelley, a middle-aged innkeeper, walks in on his young wife while she is tonguing the local Santa Claus. How can Kelley stay afloat when his marriage is sailing off, far, far away, toward rocky shoals? Meanwhile, his daughter, Ava, can't free herself from the bewitching Nathaniel, even though we all know He's Just Not That Into Her. And a family connection, Patrick, uses insider info to invest in a drug that may combat leukemia--and when the feds come knocking, we begin to think we may soon be reading about a case of suicide.

Yet elsewhere, in Afghanistan, Kelley's son Bart fights for his life. And Kelley's *first* wife, Margaret, struggles to balance her dating efforts with her burgeoning career as America's next Katie Couric.

In still another corner, young Kevin longs to be a faithful baby-daddy to a French chef, Isabelle, but Kevin can't quite give away his heart--because he has trust issues. In his twenties, he was badly-mistreated by the local gamine-seductress, Norah Vale.

I think Elin Hilderbrand's great idea is to jump from character to character to character. Not that this is earth-shattering. But I love that, the moment I want to hear more about Kevin, I'm thrown back into Patrick's drama, or Ava's fight with her father, and so on.

Also, the novel has images of Nantucket in winter, and lengthy discussions about Christmas carols. ("Silent Night" beats "Jingle Bells," clearly. And "Angels We Have Heard...." trumps "Silver Bells." These are important facts.)

If I haven't sold this book to you yet, I'm not sure what more I can say.
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