Beach Trip

By: Cathy Holton

Narrated by: Linda Stephens

In Cathy Holton’s winning novels, the popular author sketches insightful portraits of women even as she displays a rare talent for balancing humor and heartache. Beach Trip finds four middle-aged friends convening at a beautifully appointed beach house - and reexamining their lives.

©2009 Cathy Holton (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

“Break out the tissues, sunblock, and margarita mix as four friends reunite after twenty-three years for a beach party in Holton’s feast of Southern friendship.” ( Publishers Weekly)

Recording detracts from book!

The space between chapters and sections was so long I thought the book turned off everytime! It is distracting.

The narrator is tough to believe and you often hear mouth sounds.

I liked the story but not the recording. Poor performance!

Bad language and unnecessary use of profanity

I cannot abide that kind of language in literature. I believe it takes away from what is otherwise both good story telling and writing.

Great story of friendship and struggles

Loved the story. I did not like the narrator for this story because it made some of the characters sound and come across as much older than they were. That distracted me a lot.

I’m a sucker for a good friendship book

I especially like groups of 4 or more friends. Beach Trip not only hit that mark, but it is written from multiple perspectives (each character) and from a present timeframe, when the group is mid-40s as well as back when they were in college and had just met.

Beach Trip follows Mel, Sarah, Lola, and Annie, four unlikely friends brought together as college roommates, through the next few decades of their lives. Each of the women has their own secrets kept and needing to confess. The women meet for a long-time coming reunion on a secluded island where Lola has a house, a yacht, and what seems to be all the things a person could ever want. Mel, snarky as ever, has written ten mediocre novels by now, but couldn’t keep a relationship if she were paid. Sarah has family troubles that she has hidden from her friends, and Annie has a secret kept since college. During this week of over-indulgence, confessions come, fences are mended, and hearts are broken.

Beach Trip takes a sudden, unexpected turn at the very end (which I sort of saw coming, but not in the way it played out), and leaves the reader with a lot to think about. But don’t worry, it has a HEA.

This book was published in the early 2000s and when I researched other books by this author, I was saddened to learn she passed away of a terminal illness in 2013. Her family, however, has completed her other unpublished manuscripts. Bravo!

If you like a solid, clean, yet complicated friendship novel, this one is lengthy, but worth the time it takes. Thanks for writing, Beach Trip. Rest in peace, Cathy Holton, I will be reading your other work.

the narrator reading was not a good choice

The narrator did not do a good job with inflections at the right timing, and her overall reading ability was more than a bit frustrating at times when I knew it was to be read/taken in a different tone or manner.
Good story line though, so I forced myself to listen to the bad reader.