The Cliffs by J Courtney Sullivan

The Cliffs by J Courtney Sullivan

J Courtney Sullivan is a bestselling novelist with her book Maine being Time Magazine's Best Book of the Year in 2011 and The Engagements being in People Magazine's Top Ten for 2013. Her most recent novel, The Cliffs, was just released in July of 2024 and was chosen as Reese's Book Club's pick for that month. It deals with alcoholism and addiction, cancer, child death, slight homophobia, infidelity, miscarriage, racism and slavery, suicidal thoughts, terminal illness, violence and blood, kidnapping, grief, murder, pregnancy, cultural appropriation, abandonment, sexual harassment, colonization, war, and classism, however there was nothing graphic.

Jane Flanagan's life is falling apart. She never thought that once she left Awadapquit, Maine for halls of academia, she would ever have to come back for more than just a visit. But now her marriage is on the rocks, and she's on a - possibly permanent - sabbatical from her job, and she must live in her mother's house as Jane packs up the last of her mother's things. When she gets the offer to research the history of a local mansion that she loved seeing as a kid, she jumps at the chance. But there's a twist, the new owner Genevieve thinks that the house may be haunted. Join Jane as she follows the twisted history of the purple house overlooking the cliffs and finds more than she ever expected, including some sordid secrets of her own family.

I really enjoyed the historical aspect of this book, or rather, how the characters in the book enumerated the difficulties of trying to unearth indigenous history in the United States. The rest of this book was rather unappealing to me. I found the main character Jane to be judgmental, overly critical, and incredibly selfish. Her best friend had next to no personality other than having it all together. It contains an array of secondary characters with their own short chapters, and it attempts to bring everything together in a cohesive storyline, and for the most part it succeeded. I just wish that I had been more interested in that storyline. At the end of the book, I was mostly just excited to move on. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be. And I did not like the ending.

I'm giving The Cliffs by J Courtney Sullivan 3.5 stars out of 5. It had some interesting parts but I was uninterested for most of the time.

For more from J Courtney Sullivan, check out her website at https://www.jcourtneysullivan.com/

Pairs well with corn on the cob and a massage with Hans of the Healing Hands.