Author: Virginia Hume
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan Audio
Publication Date: June 8, 2021
Book Description: A sweeping debut novel about the generations of a family that spends summers in a seaside enclave on Maine’s rocky coastline, for fans of Elin Hilderbrand, Beatriz Williams, and Sarah Blake.
1944: Maren Larsen is a blonde beauty from a small Minnesota farming town, determined to do her part to help the war effort––and to see the world beyond her family’s cornfields. As a cadet nurse at Walter Reed Medical Center, she’s swept off her feet by Dr. Oliver Demarest, a handsome Boston Brahmin whose family spends summers in an insular community on the rocky coast of Maine.
1970: As the nation grapples with the ongoing conflict in Vietnam, Oliver and Maren are grappling with their fiercely independent seventeen-year-old daughter, Annie, who has fallen for a young man they don’t approve of. Before the summer is over a terrible tragedy will strike the Demarests––and in the aftermath, Annie vows never to return to Haven Point.
2008: Annie’s daughter, Skye, has arrived in Maine to help scatter her mother’s ashes. Maren knows that her granddaughter inherited Annie’s view of Haven Point: despite the wild beauty and quaint customs, the regattas and clambakes and sing-alongs, she finds the place––and the people––snobbish and petty. But Maren also knows that Annie never told Skye the whole truth about what happened during that fateful summer.
Over seven decades of a changing America, through wars and storms, betrayals and reconciliations, Virginia Hume’s Haven Point explores what it means to belong to a place, and to a family, which holds as tightly to its traditions as it does its secrets.
Rating: 4 Stars
Review: A multigenerational story told by the Demarest women of Haven Point. There is personally nothing I love more than big family dramas, and this book hits all the high points.
Maren meets Oliver during WWII while working at Walter Reed Hospital. They fall madly in love and get married. Oliver’s family home is in Haven Point, Maine. When Oliver brings Maren back there, she realizes there is an assortment of family problems, plus that town is not supportive of “outsiders”.
Oliver and Maren spend their summers there, raising their three children, Billy, Annie and Charlie. Annie eventually succumbing to the same issues as Oliver’s Mother.
Skye is introduced as Annie’s daughter. Annie had Skye by herself. She is the apple of Maren’s eye and helps Skye when Annie continually falls back to her old ways.
The story takes place over multiple timelines and culminates to a most satisfying ending. There are a lot of dark secrets, that the author expertly peels away the layers of each one. If you like family dramas, put this one high on you TBR list.
Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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