Women’s fiction in Florida’s most beautiful beaches…

• Book: Ten Beach Road
• Location: St Petersburg (Florida)
• Author: Wendy Wax

Wendy Wax understands the most difficult of dilemmas regarding family, secrets, undying passion, and inner turmoil, and that makes her stand out as a writer. Carefully, she identifies three women with three different concerns and takes readers on a journey that highlights not only on how their problems are solved, but also the struggles the three women go through, in order to get there.

A headlining Ponzi scheme involving Malcom Dyer leaves Maddie, Avery, and Nikki (among hundreds of others) abruptly penniless they each now only have a beach house-actually not even, since they each own a third of the beach house-to their name. Bella Flora was once a majestic mansion overlooking the shore and the sunset, but today, its grounds are nothing short of ancient ruins.

To destroy the house, or to rebuild it are the only options the three women have, so they decide to take the risk and spend one summer making Bella Flora beautiful again.

Maddie needs to hang on, or else the rest of her family will fall apart. She’s got an unemployed and quite depressed husband, an unmarried pregnant daughter, a college dropout son, and a ruthless mother-in-law on her hands. She needs to prevail with Bella Flora it may be her last chance.

Avery is famous for her looks as a Vanna White on her ex-husband’s home improvement television show-but she’s the one with the architecture degree. Every cent her late father left her is gone, thanks to Dyer’s theft, and having been abandoned by her biological mother as a young child, she’s not sure where to turn. But suddenly, her mom and a childhood crush are both back in her life to offer help with Bella Flora, though Avery is certain she doesn’t need it. Determined to fix the house and fight on her own, just the way she’s been her whole life, Avery learns the lessons of forgiveness and honest love, both strong parts of her that could either lift her up or bring her down.

Nikki’s taking the loss the hardest, not only because no money means no more designer dresses and pretty car, but because Malcom Dyer is her brother. How can the man she’s raised from a little boy (since their parents’ deaths) commit such a monstrous act against her? Her fortune is gone and she is torn, but more importantly, she doesn’t know how she’ll cope with this ultimate betrayal.

Ten Beach Road is the perfect summer beach read, but not because it’s fluffy and romantic. Ten Beach Road weaves a complicated story that brings the lives of three prominent women together, and changes them forever as well. In each of the characters, Wax depicts expert emotion she brings to life everyone, from an adoring mother, to a frightened lover, to a self-conscious “power woman” and knows exactly how to personalize each of her characters.

Relationships between mother and daughter, old acquaintances, and siblings brings sentiments of the breathtaking human life together, in Wax’s novel. While reading, you feel like each of the characters are your own mother, your own sister, your own best friend. And by the end, you wish they actually were.

Check out my revisited review here!

Stephanie Loves: “The words settled over her. [Madeline] hadn’t thought in those terms, she’d just been plowing ahead trying to hang on. But Kyra’s recognition was like a balm to her soul one she hadn’t realized she needed.

‘[I didn’t realize how strong I was, either],’ Maddie said. ‘You don’t really know what you’re made of until things fall apart.’ ” from thestephanieloves blog

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