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 Her family, however, has completed her other unpublished manuscripts.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. ( )

Surprising ending to what started out as the usual "four friends reunite after many years" book. Recommended. ( )

gave this book 65 pages, didn't like it,didn't finish it. ( )

This is definitely a beach read in every way except for the fact that it is over 400 pages long. It is the story of 4 women who were college roommates more than 20 years ago and reunite to spend a week together in one woman's beach home. Everyone of them has had their trial and tribulations in the intervening years--of course--but despite the fact that they are supposedly still close enough that they want to spend a week together, they are not in the least forthcoming in sharing these things with each other. There are too many references to current popular things (music in particular) which begins to make it feel like the writer is working to hard to prove a point. The problem with this is that some of the things she uses to try to set the story in the early 1980's are just not accurate. Just me--I know--I was in college in the late 1970's/early 1980's. There are some surprises toward the end; I'm just not sure that you'll care enough about the ladies to care about the surprises. ( )

This is definitely a beach read in every way except for the fact that it is over 400 pages long. It is the story of 4 women who were college roommates more than 20 years ago and reunite to spend a week together in one woman's beach home. Everyone of them has had their trial and tribulations in the intervening years--of course--but despite the fact that they are supposedly still close enough that they want to spend a week together, they are not in the least forthcoming in sharing these things with each other. There are too many references to current popular things (music in particular) which begins to make it feel like the writer is working to hard to prove a point. The problem with this is that some of the things she uses to try to set the story in the early 1980's are just not accurate. Just me--I know--I was in college in the late 1970's/early 1980's. There are some surprises toward the end; I'm just not sure that you'll care enough about the ladies to care about the surprises. ( )