Author: Erika Marks
Publisher: The Penguin Group
ISBN: 978-0-451-41885-2

“Cooper was right. Her mother and Kim were right. She had been waiting for eleven years for Hudson to close the door of his unexpected departure out of her life, her heart. She’d felt abandoned yet it had been her choice to leave that door open, waiting for something to close it.” Erika Marks writes in her novel, The Guest House.

This three hundred and forty-six page paperback book is the author’s third novel. With minor profanity and some light sex scenes, this love story would be rated PG-13 due to its topics of lost, forgotten love. In addition to the author’s acknowledgements and biography at the end of the book, there is a conversation guide with ten questions for discussion for group reading or book clubs.

Good and bad emotions blended with memories of past romantic relationships can last years and even decades. In the lives of a mother and daughter living in the coastal town of Harrisport, Massachusetts, love trysts that are shattered resurrect secrets, shame and revelations years later.

Now in her sixties, Edie Worthington is alone again when her husband Hank passes away suddenly. Her thirty-four year old daughter, Lexi, has come back to Cape Cod after spending two years at an architectural photography school in London. Both women have a past with one family of “wash-ashores,” the wealthy, socialite Mosses that seasonally live in the big cottage with guest house on the edge of town.

With written chapters going back and forth in time, Edie crossed paths back in the nineteen sixties with Tucker Moss, a son who was told whom to marry, what to do for a living and where to be when by his rich, controlling father. Eleven years ago, Lexi had a five year relationship with Tucker’s older son, Hudson, which brought her humiliation and sorrow when he broke off their engagement unexpectedly.

When Tucker passes away and his younger son, Cooper, comes to sell the family property, complete with the run-down guest house, both mother and daughter must choose to move on or cling to those past romantic memories that would have changed their lives drastically had they played out differently.

Not only does this tome bring up how past relationship viewpoints change over time, it amplifies inbred cultural differences that money and social status make. With the unpredictable ending, the reader walks away realizing that what one thinks and perceives may not always be what really happened when looking back on the past.

This book was furnished by the publisher for review purposes.

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