Ocean Beach by Wendy Wax ~ Book Review

The premise of this story sounded so wonderful. Five women who have hit some hard times in their lives come together in Miami to redo a beautiful art deco home owned by a charming ex vaudeville performer who is in his '90's. Filming the reno, they are hoping to sell it to a lifetime tv network and make it a series making it a do over for their lives. But when they arrive the network has sent their own crew to film it with a much different vision for the show. They are wanting a reality show and they want the cameras on them at all times. Finding a private moment the women swear to not give the filming crew any drama amongst themselves for the channel to film, but can they live up to that promise when there is so much going on in their personal lives and amongst their own interactions and relationship.  Sounded like a great story of female friendships and getting second chances.

 What to say about this book? I started to really enjoy it. Seemed like a perfect beach kind of read that I took on holidays. It started off great although there were some parts that I did skim due to sexual content. I was interested in the dynamics of the group, their back stories and what got them together, what was still affecting their lives. I found Max, the owner of the home, charming and a fun addition to the story. It was his personal story that was the real hook for me in the book and is what kept me reading the book to the end when I just wanted to throw it in the nearest garbage can. In fact, I did put it down for a couple of days and wasn't going to continue but had to find out how his story wrapped up. I felt cheated by this book.

 One of the elements when reading a a secular book for me is being able to judge how deeply into the promiscuous side and the language side the story is going to be headed fairly early into the book. I'm just not interested in stories that are heavy into either one. This book started off fairly good. Had a bit of sexual stuff but nothing I couldn't skim over. Hard to find a secular book without sex outside of marriage portrayed in some way. I kind of expect that but draw the line when it is filled with explicit descriptions. The language was fine. That is up until 3/4 of the way through. And then it turned absolutely vulgar with one late introduced character. And a party scene overly described. And this is why I felt cheated. Don't hook me that way and then introduce the filth 3/4 of the way through! The sex scene at the party was totally unnecessary. And I get why the character was written that way, but to make me think the book was a fairly clean read only to get hit with it that far into the story just made me mad and I think has ruined me for picking up any more books by this author and has resulted in the low rating I give this book.