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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhether you\u2019re heading to one of the recently re-opened beaches or passing the time at home, Kristy Woodson Harvey offers a new book likely to enhance your leisure time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harvey, a graduate of the UNC Chapel Hill journalism school, has been making quite a name for herself as a fiction writer over the last five or so years. She\u2019s published two previous stand-alone novels and the Peachtree Bluff trilogy, all well received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though Harvey lives in Beaufort along what\u2019s become known as North Carolina\u2019s Crystal Coast, and readers who know that area will find that Peachtree Bluff seems mighty familiar, the series is officially set on Georgia\u2019s coast. (Harvey said in an interview when the series debuted that someone at the publishing house thought there were too many novels set on North Carolina\u2019s coast.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But this new, stand-alone novel comes unapologetically home to the shores of North Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As with her other books, those who like to slot books into genres will call this one something like Dixie Chick Lit. It\u2019s definitely a contemporary Southern novel, and because it\u2019s mostly about the lives and concerns of women, most of its readers will be women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But don\u2019t let any of that make you think this is a shallow, clich\u00e9d or overly trendy book. Far from it. Once again, Harvey has pulled off the impressive feat of writing a novel that\u2019s highly entertaining, fairly light reading, but also well written. Her books have complex, well-developed characters who often defy stereotypes. They take on serious issues a lot of women face, and they offer uplifting messages without seeming preachy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harvey is adept at using multiple points of view. This time, there are two primary characters whose very different lives intersect more or less by chance. Gray Howard is a well-to-do entrepreneur who built her own company and seems to lead the perfect life. She has her business, a husband and a darling son, and she gets to spend every summer at her beach house and the club at Cape Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only this summer, she\u2019s dealing with the recent death of her mother, her sister\u2019s marriage to someone who seems a lot like a cult leader, and her husband\u2019s decision to leave her in favor of the young executive assistant Gray had hired to help him with his job in her company. Oh, and her husband wants to share custody of their son and take half the business she built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diana Harrington, meanwhile, lives a life that could hardly be more different. She\u2019s dealt with one disappointment after another. Having just left the latest in a series of no-good boyfriends, she\u2019s reduced to living in her beat-up car. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Gray learns she inadvertently contributed to Diana\u2019s getting fired from her job, she invites Diana to come to work for her and live in the guesthouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An unlikely friendship develops, one that turns out to be good for both of them as they work their way through changes in their lives and their attitudes. We follow their halting attempts to figure things out, reinvent their lives and learn from their mistakes, and we see how their unlikely friendship helps them both. There are wisdom and insight here, wrapped in a story that\u2019s fun to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve followed Kristy Woodson Harvey’s writing career from the beginning, and I’ve enjoyed every step of the journey. Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson FEELS LIKE FALLING. By Kristy Woodson Harvey. Gallery Books, Simon & Schuster. 384 pages. $16.99, paperback. Whether you\u2019re heading to one of the recently re-opened beaches or passing the time at home, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[426,4,1],"tags":[1151,1150,88],"class_list":["post-2651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-fiction","category-southern-fiction","category-uncategorized","tag-beach-read","tag-kristy-woodson-harvey","tag-southern-fiction-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2655,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651\/revisions\/2655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}