I would like to thank Gail Godwin, Bloomsbury USA and Netgalley for giving me this book for my honest review
Review By Stephanie
Eleven year old Marcus just lost his mother and is now being sent to a small South Carolina Island to live with his great aunt. Aunt Charlotte is a painter who doesn’t paint anymore and has a past that has her keeping to herself. She points out a ruined cottage to Marcus that she visits regularly for the past thirty years. She felt a connection to this cottage because like the cottage Aunt Charlotte is ruined as well.
The people of this small South Carolina Island called the cottage the “Grief Cottage” because one day fifty years ago a boy and his parents went missing during a hurricane. The bodies of this family were never found and the cottage as stayed empty for all those years. Marcus decides to start visiting the cottage daily, at first it was an escape from the loneliness while Aunt Charlotte would hide in her studio. Each day he would build up enough courage to get close to the cottage. Then one day the ghost of the boy revealed himself to Marcus……and that is enough retelling of the story for this reviewer! You will have to read the book to see what intentions the ghost boy has for Marcus.
What a good story! I am a sucker for a book that contains a ghost! I love trying to figure out the intentions of the ghost and what the ghost represents. This book was so beautifully written, and Gail did an amazing job capturing the beauty of this beach side town in South Carolina. As I was reading I would totally be picturing the town and the beautiful little cottage!

I flew through this book. Could not put it down. When I requested it, I must have missed the part about it being told from the perspective of an 11 year old. If I had seen that I probably would not have read it and what a loss for me that would have been. Marcus is a boy who loses his mother (never having had a father) to a car accident and goes to live with his 50-something year old great aunt, Charlotte, at her beach house. She is an artist and very used to living on her own. The book follows his first year (and then some) living there, his friendship with Lachicotte, Charlotte's ex, his visits to grief cottage and the visitor there. I don't want to say any more. Just read this book. It is fantastic.

Unique story about struggling. Both Marcus and his Aunt are struggling, feeling alone and isolated, each coping the only way they know how. This story is both heartbreaking and inspiring, demonstrating the need for human connection.

I have long been a fan of Gail Godwin and have inhaled every book she's written. She has, I believe, outdone herself with Grief Cottage. I sat up and read all night to finish this book in one sitting. There were passages that I had to re=read so I could savor the words and I was sorry when the story ended. Well done, Ms. Godwin, well done, and I thank you

Characters inner ruins lay concealed, their grief diverted by obsessions and addictions, in Gail Godwin's novel Grief Cottage.

After the death of his single mother, eleven-year-old Marcus' only living family member, his Aunt Charlotte, becomes his guardian. While his depressed aunt spends her days in her art studio, painting and sipping bottles of red wine, Marcus uses his honed homemaking skills to keep the beach front cottage spic and span, making himself useful, as he did for his working mom. Marcus is also an expert caretaker, responsible and useful; his own needs are shunt aside, his own grief and doubt internalized.

The rest of his day Marcus walks the South Carolina beach to visit the deserted house locals call Grief Cottage. Marcus is obsessed to know more about the tragedy that took place there. A family vacationing at the cottage disappeared in the 1954 hurricane, the parents searching for their missing son. How could no one have recorded the family's name? Marcus visits the empty shell of a house daily, 'courting' the ghost of the boy who appears to him.

"Marcus feels the pain of others," said Aunt Charlotte, "even when they're dead and gone."

Charlotte's cottage is filled with grief. Charlotte tries to escape the memory of her 'devil' father who at age five began to 'poison' her. It is 'the good old family horror story', Greek or Shakespearian in nature. Marcus is burdened by his lonely childhood, shamed when his one friend discovered he shared a bed with his mother. In a rage, Marcus beat the boy up. He underwent counseling and then his mother left her job and they moved-- to worse conditions--then his mother was killed in a car accident.

In the galley reader's note, Godwin writes that she was inspired by stories of ghosts whose arrival coincides with a mental crisis, tales grounded in 'daily life,' but which 'leaves a window for the possibility of a reality we haven't discovered yet."

"People see what they want to see. Or imagine they saw. "

For a lonely eleven-year-old child in a new place, deep in grief, imagining a ghostly friend is not a far stretch. I had Homer the Ghost to keep me company when we moved the year I turned eleven. I knew he was imaginary. Marcus has to work to keep his 'realities' separate, the duties he owed to his aunt and to the ghost boy, to keep his sanity. It makes him feel even more isolated, for who would understand?

I was compelled by this story to read far into the night. Even the supporting characters are sympathetic, full and real. There is a climatic revelation, and life goes on as it had, Marcus and his aunt supporting each other. And at the very end, a moment of grace returns Marcus something he had lost and gives him something he had long searched for.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Well, that was disappointing. From the beginning, Grief Cottage sounded intriguing and lovely, so I was really exited to start the book as soon as I received it (the cover is beautiful too!). Unfortunately, that excitement quickly turned into unease. You see, the writing from the first chapter is just so ... choppy and hard to get into. Which really takes away from the interesting story.

Honestly, I was tempted to give a lower rating, but because I really enjoyed Marcus's journey and the story that was beneath the rather shaky writing, I bumped it up a star. And even though I may not have enjoyed this as much as I'd hoped to, it should still be given a chance - simply because of its heartfelt story.

Thank you again to Bloomsbury, for giving me the opportunity to review this.

As an avid reader of novels set in the south, I would recommend this novel. Enjoyed immensely!

I'm still a bit on the fence about this book. Whilst the story is beautifully written and flows well, I kept thinking that this was meant for a much younger audience than me, at thirty-five. Especially the portions of the book that deal with the ghost.

Oddly at the same time, I found myself thinking that the young man at the center of it all seemed much too advanced for his age and couldn't imagine a child so young having the self-awareness that he displayed in this novel. Because of these two conflicting sides, I find it difficult to decide what I really thought about this book.

The novel's backdrop is amazingly detailed and makes you feel and see exactly what the characters do. I loved the way the author described the setting, as well as the emotions of the characters. The history of the island and the people on it was also fun to read about and made me eager to keep turning pages, but there was something that was missing for me. I can't quite describe exactly what it was, but I didn't feel the strong connection with this book that I should have--perhaps that was because it had such a young protagonist?

Either way, I'm still grateful for the opportunity to have read it.

This review is based on a complementary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

“I wish I knew what she was trying to walk out of, what kind of debris in her history she needed to sort out.”

As this novel focuses so much on young Marcus, living with his reclusive great aunt Charlotte after his mother passes away I think a younger audience would enjoy it so much more. But that doesn’t take away the pleasure for adults. The struggle is immediate, as Marcus deeply loves his mother and is cruelly called her ‘little husband’. Certainly in a household without a father, where the single mother struggles to make ends meet, a boy can feel conflicted. My heart went out to him for these reasons- wanting to do things for her and then the stain of cruel taunts making it sound like something sexual (it’s not). When his mother tragically dies in a car accident, he feels he is a burden on Aunt Charlotte, whom he never really got to know. There is a distance in the family’s history, and too much he doesn’t understand about the relationship between his great aunt and his own grandmother- whom nothing was ever good enough for, including his own mother. Why did his Aunt run off from the family? There reasons, things that poisoned the family structure and the reader slowly comes to know what they are.

Over time, he may just realize his Aunt Charlotte needs him as much as he needs her. On this South Carolina beach, it isn’t just family memories and secrets disturbing the balance. His aunt is a gifted painter, whose been able to live off her work comfortably enough. Highly popular are her paintings involving a cottage, named Grief Cottage after a family was swept away during a hurricane decades past. There is a ghost- a young boy that appears to Marcus- what is it that ties them together? I really like that the author created a boy who is already troubled, doesn’t seem to know much about his father, feels like an unwanted orphan, and then the ghost sightings. Aunt Charlotte is a mess too, and while Marcus comes of age, there is much growing for his relative as well. We’re none of us finished products, and those we step in to care for, may in turn save us too.

Somehow it manages to be a ghost story that flows with a family story, rather than coming off as something silly. The characters throughout are just what Marcus needs to heal. Aunt Charlotte isn’t just a silly old spinster, so often in novels any woman past a certain age doesn’t seem like a real person. She has a story, she is lively and strong, blunt with her honesty to Marcus. I kept thinking of Judi Dench in my head, it played as a movie. I enjoyed it, it was tender and sad but hopeful too.

Publication Date: June 6, 2017

Bloomsbury USA

An interesting story about grief and loneliness wrapped around a ghost story. Good but not great, I felt for the main character but somehow this story just didn't click with me.

Remarkable. Haunting. Unforgettable.

I read the last page with a sigh, so sorry it was ending, but knowing I would return to visit again and again through the years to come.

In Grief Cottage Gail Godwin has touched that rarified atmosphere that pervades memorable Southern novels. There's a bit of a Pat Conroy feel, although that may just be due to the setting in the South Carolina sea islands with a hint of Low Country Gullah coming through.

There's also a whiff of To Kill a Mockingbird that caught me by surprise. Not that Grief Cottage is anything like To Kill a Mockingbird, because it isn't. I think it was just that old Southern atmosphere. Time moved slowly and felt as thick as molasses. Uncomfortable secrets were swept under the rug never to be faced or acknowledged. Ghosts come in many guises.

Don't let this treasure pass you by.

Grief Cottage is a remarkable novel that combines a ghost story and a coming of age story with skillful plotting and impressive prose. It is so easy to fall in love with eleven-year-old Marcus, to feel his sense of loss after his mother's death and his apprehension at being sent to live with his reclusive great aunt on South Carolina island. He worries about being a burden to his reclusive Aunt Charlotte, about being sent away.

Grief Cottage, so named after a hurricane swept away a family 50 years ago, lies at one end of the island and Aunt Charlotte's paintings of the ruin are her most popular. To fill his hours while Charlotte paints in seclusion, Marcus visits Grief Cottage daily. When the ghost of a fourteen-year-old boy reveals himself, Marcus is unsure if the boy is friend or foe, but his fascination grows.

The characters are all rich and unique, and the story unwinds slowly with beautiful details of the island and its inhabitants, Marcus' fascination with the sea turtle nest and the anticipation of the "boil"--when the eggs hatch and exit the sand to make their run for the ocean, and the ghost boy in Grief Cottage.

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His attempts to court the ghost boy are not always successful, but his curiosity increases:

"I wished I knew if he could think about me when I was not there, as I was thinking about him. I didn't know whether ghosts could keep track of what was going on in the living world, imagine what could be happening, or be likely to happen, by comparing with what had gone before. Or were they like animals in not being able to project or imagine the future?
It struck me that he might need me to keep faith that he was still there."

I imagine that this novel will be one of my year's favorites. Highly recommended!

From Description: Grief Cottage is the best sort of ghost story, but it is far more than that--an investigation of grief, remorse, and the memories that haunt us. The power and beauty of this artful novel wash over the reader like the waves on a South Carolina beach.

Read in January; blog post scheduled for May 15

NetGalley/Bloomsbury

Literary Fiction/Ghost Story. June 6, 2017. Print length: 336 pages.

AN interesting book about a young boy whom upon the death of his mother goes to live with his solitary aunt. A little too detailed at time but good character development and characters that you can really care about.

Marcus is only 11 years old when his mother dies. He’s forced to move to a small South Carolina island to live with his artist aunt Charlotte. Charlotte shows him a ruined old cottage telling the boy that it helped her 30 years before when her own life was falling apart. She credits the cottage with giving her the ability to paint. Locals call the ramshackle building Grief Cottage because a boy and his parents were killed there during a hurricane 50 years before. Marcus begins to visit the cottage every day and it’s not long before he meets the ghost of the boy who drowned there. The relationship he forms with the boy is unusual and Marcus can never tell if the ghost wants to be his friend or is looking for something more sinister. The beauty of the South Carolina Lowcountry and Godwins prose make this an absolutely gorgeous Southern Gothic.