Let me start this post out on a different note. There are places in all of our lives that hold a special meaning…York, Maine is one of those places to me. This little yellow house used to be in my family and we would spend family vacations here each summer. The Empty Beach takes place in this lovely beach community.
When I read this, floods of memories came back of the York I would visit every summer (not so much now, living on the West Coast and all). The descriptions of these locations were spot on so even if you have never visited York, you could still image it!
This story is about Josh and his summer in his beach town. Warning: this book does hold a lot of strong language, however, this book is also absolutely hysterical. Josh ends up managing a local restaurant and falls for one of the wait staff, Elise, but to be fair, he met her BEFORE she started working there.
Josh is a character all in himself. If he likes a girl, he goes on the overkill…flowers, mixtapes, and overly babbles. His friends try to give him guidance, but when one is hooking up with someone new every night and the others in relationships, it leaves little room for trusting romantic advice. The silver lining is that his friends are ridiculously hysterical. It made me wish I grew up in York and spent entire summers here.
We go through this whole book wondering if Josh and Elise will ever be a real thing…the suspense there will kill you. He walks her to her car every night and they even go out on a few wewon’tcallthemdates dates. My heart was pulled out of my chest at the ending and my fist was shaking. Whether it was shaking at Josh or Elise, well, you’ll have to pick this book up yourself and read it to find out!
The story doesn’t stop here though…The Empty Beach is book one in a trilogy. Don’t worry…Jody Clark isn’t a jerk and doesn’t leave us hanging by a thread for the next installment. In fact, you could essentially read each book as a standalone and be ok, you would just miss some minor back stories, almost like inside jokes, that don’t affect the story at all. If you want the ENTIRE story, start here. Is there love for Josh in the cards? We have 3 books to figure it all out!
Solid 4 star read. Yeah, I might be partial because of my connection to York, however, it still could have sucked and it didn’t. This is the perfect time of year to read about the mis-adventures of Josh and his friends…it will have you yearning to be on the beach! I don’t read much from indie authors, but trust me when I say this is worth the read! I’m practically standing on my room shouting to everyone to read this series! Stayed tuned for my review of book two, Between Hello and Goodbye!
Title: The Empty Beach
Author: Jody Clark
Publisher: Vacationland Books (self-published)
Release Date: June 10, 2017
Find it here on Goodreads and Amazon
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