The Guest Book
AUTHOR: Mary Beth Whalen
PUBLICATION DATE: 07/03/12
ORDER LINKS: Amazon | B&N
BOOK SYNOPSIS:
When Macy Dillon was five years old her father encouraged her to draw a picture in the guestbook of a Carolina beach house. The next year, Macy returned to discover a drawing by an unidentified little boy on the facing page. Over the next eleven years the children continue to exchange drawings … until tragedy ends visits to the beach house altogether. During her final trip to Sunset, Macy asks her anonymous friend to draw her one last picture and tells him where to hide the guest book in hopes that one day she will return to find it—and him. Twenty-five years after that first picture, Macy is back at Sunset Beach—this time toting a broken family and a hurting heart. One night, alone by the ocean, Macy asks God to help her find the boy she never forgot, the one whose beautiful pictures touched something deep inside of her. Will she ever find him? And if she does, will the guestbook unite them or merely be the relic of a lost childhood?
REVIEW:
I really enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. It does fall under Christian romance so there is quite a bit about God and returning to Him after a time when Macy let herself stop believing.
This is a very melancholy book. The character is still in, I think, a depression from the last few years of her life. Her father passed away and she got pregnant by a boyfriend who then ran off and she has raised her daughter on her own. Macy’s brother Max is going through a depression as well but has turned to drinking and maybe even her mother is too since she has kept a shrine to her late husband for 10 years. Most of the book is spent with Macy looking back at her father and the time they spent at the beach when she was young. And while she wonders who the artist is that has left her the pictures for years the story feels more like a homage to the father she misses. I wonder if the author recently lost someone herself to feel this melancholy and put it in writing. But what is interesting is the book is not a downer. The memories that Macy has are good memories, most of the time, so you do not feel like she has been in a deep depression just a functioning one.
I do not want to give the wrong impression. This is a REALLY good book but it is not all love and sex. It feels more like what a real person goes through after a rough time. Wanting to come around and change her life. All the characters are very interesting in the book from Brenda (mom), the neighbor (Buzz), the three men who enter her life and especially Max her brother. I really enjoyed the playfulness of Max especially when he is around Emma (Macy’s daughter). The author really writes Emma’s part well. Emma is supposed to be 5 years old and she acts it. So many times authors put in a child about this age and the child either speaks like a 2 year old or like a 10 year old. You really feel that the author has had these conversations with a 5 year old and wrote them down.
While, like I said, there is quite a bit of God and religion in the book (including a handsome pastor) it is not shoved down your throat. This is a wonderful Christian story of a woman who is ready to turn her life around and is just trying to figure it out and hoping to get led in the direction she is supposed to go. I do, however, wish we had an epilogue to this book (you will understand when you read it).
NOTE: After reading the extra note about the sculpture used in the story I went all through the internet looking for a picture. Even going to the website of the city it is located in and when one was not there I actually sent them an email telling them that they needed one because the book was coming out. I finally found it on a Pinterest site made up by the author. http://pinterest.com/marybeth6/the-guest-book-a-novel/
4 Hearts
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