Happy reading!
Georgia
Reading Group Discussion Questions
1. What are your impressions of the book’s format? Did you like reading three completely different stories tied together by location and time?
2. Do you think that having each of the stories deal with a different form of life’s transitions works as a theme?
3. Andrew, Grace, and Rebecca are constants at the beach house who are directly tied to two of the three stories. Do you feel that their characters add continuity?
4. The beach house itself assumes the role of another character in the book. Do you get a sense of place when you read the stories, or would you have liked more description?
5. Do you have a favorite story among the three? Why?
6. The first story, about Christopher and his grandmother Alison, explores the impact of tragedy on people’s lives according to their age and circumstance. Whose reaction to the deaths of Dennis and Peter do you feel is the most compelling?
7. How do you imagine the relationship between Christopher and Grace will progress? Do you see Alison and Kyle being an influence in their future?
8. The second story deals with four college friends, all of whose lives, almost twenty years later, are in transition. Are you sympathetic to the idea that Angie, Bridget, Carrie, and Danielle have all been so busy that they have neglected their friendship? Do you agree with the premise that social media can be too superficial to rely on when it comes to maintaining deep bonds or sharing complex emotions?
9. How do you see these life-altering stories progressing? Have you been given enough information about these women as individuals to know whether they will succeed in the new paths they’ve chosen? If not, what do you feel is missing?
10. The third story contains the most dramatic transitions. Do you understand Lindsey’s descent into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and her reluctance to share what is happening to her with Matthew?
11. How do you think the story would have been different had Matthew been the one covering the wars in the Middle East instead of Lindsey?
12. Does the epilogue provide a satisfying conclusion to the kitchen dilemma?
Read on
Have You Read?
More from Georgia Bockoven
For more books by Georgia Bockoven check out:
CARLY’S GIFT
What’s in the past is over and done with . . . or is it?
Sixteen years ago, Carly Hargrove made a decision that would irrevocably alter her life. With little comprehension as to the lifelong consequences of her actions, she traded her own future happiness to protect the man she’d loved since kindergarten, David Montgomery.
With an ocean separating them, Carly has built a life for herself without David. She’s a mother of three, lives in a beautiful house, and is married to a man who comes home every night—even if most of those nights he drinks too much. What more could she want?
Her answer arrives on a cold fall day when David shows up at her door. In town for his father’s funeral, he has come to see Carly one last time, hoping to rid himself of the anger that still consumes him.
Instead, he is drawn into a web of secrets that rekindles the fierce need he once felt to protect Carly. He becomes caught up in her life in a way he never could have imagined—a way that will bind him to her forever.
THINGS REMEMBERED
To face the future, a woman must let go of the past . . .
For Karla Esterbrook, returning to her childhood home in the golden hills of Northern California means only regret and pain. Yet she can’t refuse when her ailing grandmother, Anna, asks for Karla’s help in settling her affairs. After all, Anna raised Karla and her younger sisters after their parents’ deaths twenty years before. But from the beginning, a powerful clash of wills separated Karla and her grandmother, leaving them both bitter and angry.
Little does Karla know that a very determined Anna will do everything in her power to bridge the chasm between them. But can the wounds of the past truly be healed? For Karla, opening her heart could lead to more hurt—or perhaps to reconciliation . . . and a love the likes of which she has never known.
THE YEAR EVERYTHING CHANGED
“As Jessie Patrick Reed’s attorney, I’m writing to you on behalf of your father, Jessie Patrick Reed. I regret to inform you that Mr. Reed is dying. He has expressed a desire to see you. . . .”
Elizabeth, even though sustained by a loving family, has suffered the most from her father’s seeming abandonment and for years has protected herself with a deep-seated anger that she hides from everyone.
Ginger, in love with a married man, is forced to reevaluate every relationship she’s ever had and reaches stunning conclusions that will change her life forever.
Rachel learns of her father’s existence the same day she finds out that her husband of ten years has had an affair. She receives the understanding and support she needs to survive from an unlikely and surprising source.
Christine is a young filmmaker, barely out of college, who now must decide if her few precious memories of a man she believed to be long dead are enough to give him a second chance.
Four sisters who never knew the others existed find strength, love, and answers in the most unexpected places in . . . The Year Everything Changed.
ANOTHER SUMMER
Weaving together love and laughter, heartache and hope, promise and passion, Another Summer returns to the world of The Beach House with new stories entwined in a powerful emotional journey.
A twentieth high school reunion reunites lovers who must learn to trust again. Teenagers from opposite worlds discover that having a chip on your shoulder only makes it harder to get through doors. An ambitious corporate attorney finds herself falling for the man she has vowed to destroy in the courtroom. A young family, reeling from a devastating loss, meets a half-starved stray cat and a mysterious older couple who guide them back to each other.
None of these people will leave the beach house the same as when they arrived. . . .
DISGUISED BLESSING
Silver Linings.
After years of being alone, Catherine Miller thinks that she’s finally found happiness. Engaged to an adoring, successful executive, she lives in a luxurious house, and her beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter, Linda, is on the brink of college and adulthood. Then Catherine’s rose-colored world is shattered. Her daughter is burned terribly in a freak accident, and just when Catherine needs him most, her fiancé abandons her. Now Catherine must call on every ounce of courage and strength she has to help her beloved daughter recover. Fortunately, she receives help from fire captain Rick Sawyer, an expert burn counselor. Ruggedly handsome and appealingly down-to-earth, Rick is like no man Catherine has ever met. But Catherine made the wrong choice before. How can she trust her emotions—especially when it’s not just her heart at stake but her daughter’s life too?
In the tradition of Barbara Delinsky comes this poignant, moving story of the bonds of family, the strength of love, and the courage to dare.
THE BEACH HOUSE
The beach house is a peaceful haven, a place to escape to from everyday problems. Here three families find their feelings intensified and their lives transformed each summer.
When thirty-year-old Julia, mourning the death of her husband, decides to sell the Santa Cruz beach house they owned together, she sets in motion a final summer that changes the lives of all the families who have rented it year after year. Teenage Chris discovers the bittersweet joy of first love. Maggie and Joe, married sixty-five years, courageously face a separation that even their devotion cannot prevent. The married woman Peter yearns for suddenly comes within his reach. And Julia ultimately finds the strength to rebuild her life—something she once thought impossible.
With equal measures of heartbreak and happiness, this unforgettable novel from best-selling author Georgia Bockoven tells of the beauty of life and the power of love and speaks to every woman who has ever clun
g to a child or loved a man.
Books by Georgia Bockoven
Carly’s Gift
Things Remembered
The Year Everything Changed
Another Summer
Disguised Blessing
The Beach House
An Unspoken Promise
Far from Home
Alone in a Crowd
Moments
A Marriage of Convenience
Credits
Cover design by Julia Gang
Cover photograph © by stevecoleimages/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
RETURN TO THE BEACH HOUSE. Copyright © 2014 by Georgia Bockoven. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-219524-1
EPUB Edition May 2014 ISBN 9780062195258
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