Told over the course of one heartbreaking summer, THE SHORE by Katie Runde, is a poignant story of love, loss, grief, and a dose of hope. This was a much, much heavier read than I was expecting from a book set on the Jersey Shore. I was expecting more of a beach read and although I enjoyed it, August was likely not the right time of year for me to dive into this one blind.

Teen sisters Evy and Liz live in the small town of Seaside, NJ...the quainter version of its wild MTV neighbor Seaside Heights. Evy and Liz have typical summer jobs, typical friends, and typical teenage angst, but all is not as it seems. Their father, Brian, was diagnosed with a brain tumor the year before and as his condition deteriorates, he uncontrollably morphs into a completely different person. Their mother, Margot, suffers along with them as they helplessly watch Brian drift away from them.

Family dramas are almost always my jam, but stories about life-changing illnesses are going to be a heavy lift for me. Ultimately I'm glad I picked this one up because despite the grief, the story did resonate with me.

This book is good but so, so sad. The sadness is so overwhelming and maybe that’s the point but no matter how hard the author tries, the sadness never feels redemptive.

Thanks to @scribnerbooks for an ARC of #TheShore.⁣

I consider

Thank you to Book Club Favorites at Simon & Schuster for the free copy for review.
The cover of this book led me to think that this would be a book about summers at the beach, but it is so much more than that. The Dunne family lives in Seaside, NJ, a town that had been devastated by Superstorm Sandy. Margot and Brian own E&E Real Estate, renting bungalows to the summer crowd. The company is named for their daughters Elizabeth (Liz) and Evelyn (Evy). This company was their dream together, but now, Brian is dying from a brain tumor, and their world turns upside down.
Liz and Evy are two teens, just wanting a normal summer at the beach - finding love and experiencing life anew. Their mom is trying to make ends meet, while struggling with too many debts and too many memories.
This is a poignant look at loving, losing, and growing up -- and finding out where your home truly is.

There was sooo much to love about this family drama set over the course of one summer as a mother and her two daughters grapple with new love and life-changing illness. When Bryan gets diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor his wife and daughters' lives are turned upside down, especially as the tumor suddenly affects his personality causing the man they all loved to quickly disappear.

This book does such a great job showing the difficulties of caring for a loved one suffering from a chronic and debilitating disease. Brain tumors come in all shapes and forms (not all fatal) but unfortunately for wife Margot and daughters Evy and Liz, this tumor turns out to be fatal for Bryan.

Told in alternating POVs between mother and daughters, we learn how the diagnosis affects each person differently. Margot sees it as the opportunity to escape from the couple's vacation rental business that has kept her tied to their seaside town. Whereas the two teenage daughters choose to distract themselves with romantic relationships and uncovering lost letters between their parents.

Written with heart, humor and incredible insights about chronic illness and the often invisible burdens placed on family caretakers. As a survivor of a brain tumor myself, I related to this story deeply and found it completely different from the usual women's fiction summer fare. Highly recommended and great on audio with a full cast of narrators. Much thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my advance review copy!

Did not expect this book to be so good! Great novel exploring contemporary teenagers, sisters, mothers and daughters, and grief and loss. I cried so much as the author really made me feel the characters feelings and thoughts. The novel tells the story of a family that has a rental business in a beachside town on the Jersey Shore. The two daughters are 16 and 17 and the parents are a seemingly happy couple. Then the husband gets the type of brain tumor that makes him act erratically and extremely out of character. The whole family dynamic changes as they deal with the father.

I liked this but it’s very emotional. I had an uncle die from glioblastoma and that was a a bit of a trigger for me. They do a great job of explaining and I just felt for all of the characters but it is heavy.

Family dynamics, coming-of-age stories, heartbreaking drama, all set in the city of Seaside Heights on the Jersey Shore? Sign. Me. Up.

As a life-long Jersey shore vacationer (lower shore cities), I knew I wanted to read The Shore by Katie Runde, and I am so grateful to NetGalley for an eARC. If you're looking for a summer-themed, family drama that will leave you in your feels, look no further!

We alternate our POV between Margot (mother), Liz and Evy (daughters) as they work through the last summer of their patriarchy's life. Brian (dad) has a degenerative disease caused by a tumor that is slowly taking his life and turning him into a person none of them know. Through this summer, our three leads are trying to maintain some level of normalcy while still processing their grief and deciding how to move forward when the time comes. Our sisters are in high school, and despite their father slowly slipping away, they are still dealing with the regular ins and outs of being teens (first times, boyfriends, girlfriends, friends, partying, summer jobs). But those traditional milestones definitely look different in the light of the heaviness their young lives are also dealing with. Mom on the other hand is grappling with the desire to flea the home that will remind her at every turn of her previous life with Brian, or stay and live in peace with those memories.

What I loved about this story is the complexity and flawed nature of our three main characters. Their decisions may not seem logical to an outsider, but grief plays such a crucial part in these decisions and Runde does a wonderful job at humanizing our characters through their flaws. I also absolutely adored that Seaside became a secondary character. In a lot of ways it was living and breathing through these women and we see how a hometown really does become a part of your identity.

This was a beautiful story and very enjoyable. I can see The Shore being a hit this summer and making quite a home for itself on shores everywhere as a go-to beach read.

The Shore
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Romance
Format: Kindle eBook
Date Published: 5/24/22
Author: Katie Runde
Publisher: Scribner
Pages: 304
Goodreads Rating: 3.93

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for providing a digital advanced readers copy of the book for me to read for my honest opinion.

Synopsis: Brian and Margot Dunne live year-round in Seaside, just steps away from the bustling boardwalk, with their daughters Liz and Evy. The Dunnes run a real estate company, making their living by quickly turning over rental houses for tourists. But the family’s future becomes even more precarious when Brian develops a brain tumor, transforming into a bizarre, erratic version of himself. Amidst the chaos and new caretaking responsibilities, Liz still seeks out summer adventure and flirting with a guy she should know better than to pursue. Her younger sister Evy works in a candy shop, falls in love with her friend Olivia, and secretly adopts the persona of a middle-aged mom in an online support group, where she discovers her own mother’s most vulnerable confessions. Meanwhile, Margot faces an impossible choice driven by grief, impulse, and the ways that small-town life in Seaside has shaped her. Falling apart is not an option, but she can always pack up and leave the beach behind.

My Thoughts: The story is narrated by the three women, Margot, Evy, and Liz, mother and two daughters, from their own perspectives; Brian does have a few chapters in his perspective. This centers around family trauma and how different people deal with trauma and grief. While it is odd saying this is a summer read, it absolutely is, as it takes place in the nostalgic Jersey Shore, what is more perfect than that? This book is not a light read, by any means, but still a summer read. There were some slow parts of the book but overall a good read. The character development was written with depth, was intense, and creative. The author’s writing was complex, knowledge of brain tumors, very descriptive with the scenes, you felt a part of, and kept me engaged throughout the whole book. This was a debut book and very impressive as a debut. I would read more by this author.