A Walk Along the Beach: A Novel

A Walk Along the Beach by Debbie Macomber takes readers to Oceanside, Washington. The Lackey family has had its share of tragedies over the years and now they are all on the right track. Willa has the bakery/café she has dreamed of and it is popular with the locals. I liked the strong characters the author created for this story. Willa became the "mother" of the family after their matriarch died when she was thirteen. She was there for her younger sister, Harper when she received her treatment for leukemia. Willa worries that Harper will have a reoccurrence and tends to hover. Harper is full of life and always on the move. She is training with a group to climb Mt. Rainier at the end of the summer. Harper pushes her sister into dating freelance photographer, Sean O'Malley. Loving someone is a risk because you never know how it will turn out. A Walk Along the Beach is an emotional novel. I thought it was well-written with steady pacing. We see a close-knit family and community that rally around each other. I found it to be a realistic novel. Life is never smooth sailing and that is true for our characters in this story. The developed characters had good traits and weaknesses. Alcoholism, illness, long distance relationship, and financial troubles are some of the problems our characters deal handle in the story. I did feel that it was rushed at the end and I would have liked an epilogue that showed how the family was doing in a year or two. A walk Along the Beach is a lovely story, but I do not feel it compares with some of Debbie Macomber's other novels (especially A Blossom Street Novel series). I did like how Willa enjoyed walking along the beach to clear her head and how it felt soothing to the soul. I know I find looking at the Gulf of Mexico to be soothing. A Walk Along the Beach is a poignant tale with a cute kitten, a clever canine, a preoccupied photographer, a fraught father, and a caring community.