Life's a Beach by Claire Cook

“Life’s a Beach” by Claire Cook (who is also the author of “Must Love Dogs”) is the story of a 41-year old woman, Ginger, who really doesn’t know who she is or what she wants. She is living in a FROG (Finished Room Over Garage) at her parents house. She has a cat named Boyfriend (which I thought was funny at first, but then not so much later as I saw how much of an indicator it was of Ginger’s “issues”). She has a (sort of) real boyfriend, Noah, who seems like a great guy but never calls and basically just pops by randomly throwing pebbles at her window to get her to open the door. Her sister, Geri, is the total opposite of her and has the house, husband, kids, and great job to prove it. Geri is constantly stressing over her upcoming 50^th birthday. Their parents (who have their own “issues”) are trying to sell their house which forces Ginger to think about what she wants to do next. She recently started a sea glass jewelry business (which isn’t exactly booming) but spends most of her time watching her sister’s kids. The journey really starts when a shark movie starts filming in her small beach town and her nephew gets a part in it. It all wraps up pretty neatly with the unexpected 50^th birthday party for her sister.

There is a lot going on in this book, but none of it is really enthralling. It is an okay book with lots of laugh out load moments, but it never really had me on the edge of my seat. I did manage to finish it in about a week, so it wasn’t bad, just sort of a basic fun story. One thing I did pull away from the book was the idea of sand bottles (it was worth reading just for that).

I give it 3 stars out of 5.

Here is a link to the author’s website:

http://www.clairecook.com/

(It looks like she has a new cute book out called “Summer Blowout”)