REVIEW: The Beach House by Jenny Hale

The Beach House by Jenny Hale finds Melanie Simpson buying a crumbling beach house in Rosemary Bay to renovate and turn into a B&B, per the instructions in her grandmother’s will. She finds a contractor, Josh Claiborne, who reluctantly agrees to do an initial assessment of the house after losing a bet but insists he cannot work on it because he’s leaving town for a job in New York. He also doesn’t want to work on it because his grandmother had long disliked the previous owner, so his family wanted nothing to do with the property.

As they work together, they discover a stack of letters that the home’s previous owner, a recluse named Alfred, wrote to the love of his life. What they discover may not just tear their budding relationship apart, but their families as well.

This book was previously published in 2021. As I haven’t read the previously released version, I cannot advise you on how this has changed, if it has changed at all, from the original publication.

I’m on the fence about this one. I really enjoyed the aspect of the story about the letters, and found I was more interested in that than the romance between Melanie and Josh. I found myself feeling bad for both Alfred and his love, as they both lost out on so much.

What brought the story down for me were Melanie and Josh. At first Josh comes across as pretty rude. I understood he had other things to do rather than help Melanie, but he could have been nicer about it, especially after everyone in town kept saying what a great guy he was. Melanie was worse though. She’s portrayed as a woman who can’t really handle anything on her own, other than taking care of her grandmother when she was dying. It’s her sister who has to approach Josh to ask for help. When Josh informs her that a hurricane is approaching, she begs him to help because she has no idea what to do. She seems to rely on other people a lot, especially Josh and her sister. She gets a little better further into the book, but it was to overcome her initial neediness.

As for the romance between Melanie and Josh, it felt underdeveloped and unbelievable. Josh spent so much time keeping Melanie at arm’s length, then suddenly he was in love with her? There were some other aspects of the book that were unbelievable as well, such as a four-year-old paddling his own paddle boat, but I could overlook some of them as they weren’t overly important to the story. It was hard to overlook it when it came to the romance though.

This author seems to be hit or miss with me and, unfortunately, this one was a miss. Between the main characters, and the way some things were just glossed over or easily explained, and the unbelievability of the romance, this book just didn’t work for me. The only reason I rated it as high as I did was because I really enjoyed the parts of the story that dealt with the letters.

Book Info:

Publication: April 25, 2023 | Forever |

When her gram passes away, Melanie Simpson feels utterly lost. But her grandmother’s will gives her a an inheritance to buy a crumbling house in Rosemary Bay. Returning to the village where she’d spent summers with gram and walking the beach where they’d had so many fun-filled days brings Melanie comfort as well as hope.

On her first night in her new hometown, Melanie meets local contractor and landowner Josh Claiborne, whose eyes match the dazzling sea. Melanie plans to restore the beach house to its original glory, and Josh is the perfect person to help renovate the wrap-around porch weathered by the coastal breeze and the peeling white paint faded by the sun.

But hiding in a closet is a yellowing stack of letters that could change everything. The looping handwriting reveals the mystery of the rickety house—a long-lost secret that touches everyone in Rosemary Bay. Will its revelations bring Melanie and Josh together or tear them apart?