About the Book

Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash

Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

Book Review

A sweeping, complicated love story, that compassionately showcases first love, not-quite-right love, and mature love.

As a twelve-year-old girl, Bea’s sent over to America to avoid the bombs of London. She lands with a warm, loving family with a lake house on a private island in Maine, where she can spend her summers forgetting the war even exists. She loves the Gregory boys – Gerald, the younger, who wholeheartedly embraces her from the very first moment, and older William, who’s passionate, angry and tender in intervals. From fancy dress parties to races on the island, Bea fits perfectly into their life. But looming over their heads is her eventual return to London, as both boys fall in love with her. Bea and William share fleeting moments, but Bea cuts off contact upon her return. She can’t stand to have her heart in two places like that.

The book alternates between Bea’s teenage years with the Gregorys and her adult life in London. It shows the complications of relationships and the ties that bind us to each other, both those easily broken and those never lost. It’s a story of forgiveness – Bea’s forgiveness of her parents for the trauma of being ripped from them, then being ripped back from a life she loved, and Bea’s mother’s forgiveness of Bea for loving the Gregorys so much. It’s a tale of regrets – a girlhood lost, families left behind, loves that couldn’t go the distance and characters who die too young. But above all, it’s about the meaning we find in certain places and people.

This book takes hold of your heart, making you fall in love with all the characters, but perhaps most so with Nan Gregory, the mother figure at the center of it all. She’s the sun in all the other character’s solar system, bending their worlds with her love without even trying.

This is one I will read again.

Thank you to the publisher for the advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.