That Night at the Beach

By: Kate Hewitt

Narrated by: Amelia Sciandra, Tara Ward

As mothers, we never dare to delve into our worst-nightmare scenarios. "What if..." we might murmur to each other, and then shake our heads, telling ourselves it’ll never happen to us if we’re just good enough mothers. Yet here we are. And the steady beep of the heart monitor is the only evidence the child in front of us is alive....

It’s Labor Day weekend, so of course we went to the beach. Like we do every year. For a barbecue picnic with my best friend, Rose. It’s the perfect tradition—drinks, games, burgers, music, laughter. Together with our husbands, my two teenage sons, and her two daughters, we all arrived as the sun was still shimmering over the water, the whole evening ahead of us.

But nothing goes to plan. Old secrets emerge, tempers flare. And so we parents decide to leave the beach, telling the teenagers to enjoy themselves, reassuring them someone will be back to collect them in an hour or two.

But when I return a little while later, I know something is really wrong. Our teens are slurring their words, stumbling to the car. It’s clear they have been drinking, and I’m shocked. I never expected our kids to behave this way. I’m bracing myself to have firm words with them in the morning, but the next day my concerns fade to nothing when 17-year-old Bella claims my son Finn assaulted her.

Finn insists he would never do that. And I so want to believe him. Because I brought my son up right. Because a mother would know, wouldn’t she?

What I don’t know is that the answer to what happened that night on the beach may be a matter of life and death for one of our beloved children....

An absolutely heartbreaking story about friendship, parenting, and betrayal. Perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult, Jojo Moyes, and Susan Lewis.

©2023 Kate Hewitt (P)2023 Bookouture, an imprint of Storyfire Ltd.

Heartbreaking

This story of friendship, marriage, parenting dilemnas in today's fast-paced social media driven culture: what it is and what it's not, and what it should be will cause one to give pause and make you grateful for the small and or seemingly big problems in your own life. We as humans falter, we judge others as worse than ourselves, and with the current cancel culture, we seek to cancel out people we see as having less value without thought of the impact of our actions, our words, and our dreadful deeds. We must teach this generation about respect and demonstrate how it is done. It starts with us, Something has gott o change. Let this novel prompt us to prevent the things that happened in this story.

This book was aggravating.

Not one person likable enough to root for in the entire story. Then they just wrap it all up in a nice little bow at the end. The narrators weren't very likable either. One is very monotone, and the other pronounces certain words in a weird way, which was annoying.

Overall a very good listen

I almost didn't download the book based on the sample of Cara's neurotic sounding voice but am glad I did. The story of the families' friendships was nicely complex and not too obvious. One thing that was irksome about the performance was the very weird nonstandard pronunciations of words--drama, brochure and quite a few more. I'm not sure if it was pretentious or just odd but each time it took me out of the story in irritation. It made me wish I'd read the book instead. Great story.

Boring

I read this author’s books and was surprised how pointless this book is, it’s so repetitive & keep harping on the same narrative over & over, the narrator’s monotone voice doesn’t help any.