The Islanders

April 1, 2019
Moore (The Captain’s Daughter) entices in her fifth outing, telling the story of three people whose lives intersect one summer. Single mom Joy Sousa lives on present-day Block Island, R.I., with her 13-year-old daughter, Maggie, and runs Joy Bombs, a bakery. Disgraced author Anthony Puckett has retreated to the island to lick his wounds after being accused of plagiarism. Lu Trusdale is spending the summer on the island with her two young sons, six-year-old Chase and four-year-old Sebastian, while her surgeon husband, Jeremy, continues to work off the island. Lu and Anthony become friends when Sebastian wanders out into the ocean and Anthony saves him. Anthony and Joy begin a romantic relationship, but he fails to tell her that he has a four-year-old son named Max and that he has been using the false last name of Jones. As secrets are revealed, Lu, Anthony, and Joy must decide whether their relationships and friendships can survive the harm caused by hiding the truth. Moore’s narrative is fast-paced, and her lead characters are flawed and believable. Readers looking for an emotional tale will find much to enjoy. Agent: Elisabeth Weed, the Book Group.

February 1, 2019

With the flop of his second novel, Anthony Pucket is borrowing a friend's Block Island beach house to recalibrate. Also on Block Island: single mom Joy Sousa, whose successful whoopie pie café is being threatened by a fancy food truck from New York, and Lu Trusdale, who regrets giving up lawyering for the kids. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2019
When a novelist writer retreats to Block Island to hide, his new life gets off on the wrong foot with a big lie.Anthony Puckett, son of a blockbuster writer of James Patterson-esque dimensions, published his first novel to acclaim so fervent it made his father jealous. Unfortunately, his sophomore effort was found to contain 1,200 words plagiarized from a little-known Irish author. (How do you steal 1,200 words from one novel and drop them unchanged into another? Don't think about this too long.) His downward spiral hits bottom when his soulless bitch of a wife puts him out of the house and cuts off communication between him and his 4-year-old son. Off he goes as "Anthony Jones" to a borrowed cabin on Block Island, where his next-door neighbor is a former attorney who graduated fourth in her class at Stanford Law but is now unhappily married to a surgical oncologist who has demanded she abandon her career to become a stay-at-home mom. In secret, she has become a popular food blogger under a false identity: an articulate, sensitive stay-at-home dad posting as Dinner by Dad. In a coincidence that the author herself labels bold, Dinner by Dad is the favorite food blog of the island native who becomes Anthony's love interest--Joy, a single mom and whoopie-pie entrepreneur with a teenager, who in turn ends up babysitting at the home of the food blogger. Novelist that he is, Anthony often identifies "plot twists" in his life as they arrive, and the final section of this book will give him plenty of material, with an apparent kidnapping, a hurricane, a sudden death, and an earthshaking backstory reveal. Moore (The Captain's Daughter, 2017, etc.) has a pretty jaded view of writers--liars, plagiarists, lukewarm mothers, and terrible fathers. This book has all the elements of an Elin Hildebrand novel--island setting, writer character, second-chance love story--without the polish and sophistication, which unfortunately cannot be pasted in via references to Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, etc. Editing could have deleted some of the flat-footed, sometimes-laughable dialogue and the near-silliness of the cavalcade of climactic events. Also, how many times does someone have to say they have something to tell you before you let them spit it out?Fans of the island-lit genre will find familiar pleasures but also unrealistic situations and cringeworthy moments.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Courtney Patterson provides moving portrayals of three people who must navigate their lies to keep secrets and hide hurts. On Block Island, Anthony Puckett seeks refuge from the consequences of his poor decisions; tough Joy Sousa puts all her energy into her daughter and bakery business, both of which are slipping away; cheerful mother and housewife Lu Trusdale's secret project is on the verge of being discovered. Patterson's dramatic delivery captures the increasingly complicated relationships among the three characters. Their struggles to prevent their inner turmoil from shattering their outward personas are captured with perfectly balanced tension. Patterson grounds the story by bringing out the different generations on Block Island with a diverse range of voices. An engaging story and listening experience. M.F. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

April 15, 2019
Block Island is the year-round home of Joy Sousa and her daughter Maggie, the summer home of Lu Trusdale and her family, and a temporary place of solitude for former best-selling author Anthony Puckett as he decides what's next after a career-ending mistake. For Joy, who owns a whoopee pie business, a little competition has come to town for the summer; meanwhile, Lu runs a secretly successful food blog. And Anthony, trying to figure out where to turn, isn't expecting to run into Joy, who turns his already unsteady path upside-down. This summer on Block Island is memorable, particularly as a storm approaches, stirring up more than just sand. Moore (The Captain's Daughter, 2017) has crafted a beautifully in-depth novel chronicling the intersection of the lives of three strangers during one fateful summer. Her characters are strong, and the realistic situations are both heartfelt and heartbreaking. Moore handles the emotional conflict of a divorced father, a rocky married couple, and a single mother with delicate care. An excellent combination of character exploration and intrigue.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)