This book was really touching, it's the first time I read about a story on the beach and I'll just say it's full of feelings, every character, I could feel what they conveyed, this book provoked laughter and sadness.
This book is perfect to read in summer in a quiet place, like the beach, listening to the waves of the sea.
Thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I love books involving family secrets and this book did not disappoint. Plus the description of that area on Cape Cod were fascinating. Makes me want to visit that area all over again. Would highly recommend.

I’m in a minority here, that is, not very excited about this book. Within its genre (women’s fiction), it’s not a bad book, but the whole plot relied on constant miscommunication among the characters which I found rather unbelievable in what was painted as such a close family. Warnings: very vivid date (?) rape scene, off-stage suicide.

Christina Clancy has written a story which sounds like she lived it herself.
The characters come alive as we hear their stories through their voices, and they couldn't seem more real, flaws and all. I felt the emotions of the characters, and wanted to know more and more about them.

The second home is the place we all want to spend time. Getting to do so while in the company of such interesting people is an added bonus.

Two sisters and their adopted brother have very different personalities and complicated lives. But all three are brought together through time spent at the summer home on the Cape - a home passed down through the generations and now cared for by their parents.

But one summer separates them all emotionally and physically. Pain and hurt cause relationships to break.

Years later, with their parents dead, the siblings are brought back together against their will to sell the vacation home. Will they find healing, or will the bitterness of the years carry them along to their own graves?

A great summer read!

Is there anything more tantalizing than watching a family uncover old and festering secrets? Add the rich background of a family home holding scores of memories--painful and pleasant--and THE SECOND HOME delivers a compelling and haunting read.

I really enjoyed this novel. It grabbed me from the first page. I loved the characters and the setting, which was described in incredible, vivid and specific detail; it's clear the author was writing about places she lives and knows well (Milwaukee and Cape Cod.) The author did a great job of keeping the suspense going through out, making us wait until almost the very last page to finally have the main characters come clean and be honest about all the secrets they'd been holding back and ways they'd been suffering in silence during the intervening years. It did bug me that Ann and Michael believed such horrible things about each other for such a long time, and didn't give each other the benefit of the doubt, My other big complaint is that after all that waiting and angst, I really really wanted a steamy love scene (or at least a heartfelt kiss!) at the end between Ann and Michael, but instead the author completely drops the ball and leaves it all off the page, giving us a squeaky clean dialogue scene that just ... peters out and quietly ends ... and then flashes forward to an epilogue in the future. Boo! Epic fail! This isn't Jane Austen -- give us the romance we've been waiting for!! I really liked it except for my disappointment over that. I hope in future books, the author gives us a better scene at the end.

A terrific read! A family saga that warms your heart and never fails to engage. Home is something different for everyone but it is always the lodestone of life. This novel depicts that truth with empathy and realism. The Gordons were a special family and it takes a lot of revelations until everyone figures it out. Yet, all the characters are realized with clarity and pathos. The descriptions of Cape Cod and it’s flora and fauna are detailed and create the atmospheric backdrop for this charming Massachusetts peninsula. I recommend this book wholeheartedly.

The story was good but the details and misunderstandings were drawn out for too long. There were dull chapters, great chapters, tiresome chapters, good chapters, really wonderful chapters...and then suddenly it was over. The best part was wrapped up in a few pages.
Advanced reader copy courtesy of the publishers at NetGalley for review.

First- Trigger warning, this book contains a detailed scene with sexual assault

Alright, so. This book is just flat for me. A dud. It’s inconsistent, glosses over the law. Characters are underdeveloped and constantly do things uncharacteristically. One of those books where if everyone just COMMUNICATED it would have been 5 pages long.

The characters were well-written and I liked getting their individual perspectives. It made for a much more well-rounded read. I recommend this for anyone who enjoys the intricacies of what makes a family and forgiveness.

I enjoyed this book very much but last chapters of the book was kind of felt rushed. But still it was quite an emotional story. <3

I really got invested in the characters in this book. I had to keep reading to see what happens to them in the end. The story has a lot of bad things happening to real people. How the people react to hardship is sometimes disappointing or aggravating, but they are young.

I am always drawn to family drama set in a beach scene. This book started really good for me I was hooked for the first half. Then I thought it dragged. The storyline was ok but the ending too predictable.

Genre: Women’s Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Pub. Date: June 2, 2020

Itsy-Bitsy Mini Review

This is a women’s fiction beach book. The kind I like to read sitting in the sun with a glass of chilled wine in my hand. Considering that I am not usually a fan of women’s fiction and because I read “The Second Home” at the beginning of February, I am surprised that the book kept my interest. The story revolves around a couple with two biological daughters and one adopted son. We follow the kids’ life struggles from their teen years until they are in their thirties. There is rich descriptive writing. The author breathes much life into the families’ generational Cape Cod summer home. (I so wanted to be there). There are thought-provoking dark themes in the plot. However, as the years go by, the story became a bit too melodramatic for my taste. Yet, I went past my 50-page rule and finished the novel. Maybe that is because I enjoyed the family, especially the hippie parents. On the other hand, maybe, it is just that, while reading the novel, I was pretending to be on a warm beach.

Anticipation grows through book with myriad of family plots and excursions. Many interesting twists on character development hinted at fun dead end reader conclusions. Although many authors seem to be drawn to families revisiting Cape Cod, Clancy has lines of story weaving and intersecting in ways that make it original.

Christina Clancy has produced, quite possibly the best book I've read in a few years. Her attention to detail made me feel as if I were a part of the story and lead to believable situations that I couldn't wait to hear more about. I laughed, I cried, and I got mad. I loved and I hated. I'd definitely recommend this title and can't wait to see more from Clancy.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley.
This is a well-written story of a family. Ed and Connie are the parents. Ed is a schoolteacher in Milwaukee. The family spends their summers on Cape Cod. The featured characters in this story are their children. Ann and Poppy are sisters. Ann is the beautiful, intelligent solid citizen growing up. Younger sister Poppy is the free spirit, experimenting with all kinds of things with all kinds of people, eventually falling in love with her surfboard and being a gypsy. Ed and Connie adopt a third child, Michael, when all three children are in their teenage years.
The characters are very well portrayed. The story sees them grow up happily together, then separate amid all sorts of turmoil, then find the need to come together again to resolve conflicts over ownership of family property.
I loved the first three-quarters of the book, seeing the tensions develop between the characters. I thought that the ending was too fairy tale. Resolution of the issues was too neat, too clean.
Still a very enjoyable book. Very well-researched and intelligently written.

This was a great book. I really enjoyed it! I look forward to reading more from this author. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy!

Christina Clancy writes a family drama with some very dark elements, featuring the Gordon family from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with parents Ed and Connie, their teen daughters, Ann and Poppy,and their late adopted son, Michael. They spend their summers at Cape Cod at a family home and 15 years ago, they experienced a troubling and traumatic summer of raging teen hormones that is to have devastating consequences and repercussions on all of them. In the present, the parents have died in a dreadful car accident, and decisions have to be made about that home. Neither Ann or Poppy can afford to keep it on and decide to sell it, only to have a spanner put in the works out of the blue.

Michael, who has not been in touch for so long, comes back into their lives, making a claim on the estate. He wants to keep the house, and more than anything he wants the truth of what actually happened that despairing and distressing summer to come out. There are machinations over the will, and in a narrative that goes back and forth in time, the question that hangs over the siblings is can they come to terms with what happened sufficiently for them to have a future as family? Clancy gives us a gloriously vivid sense of location in her descriptions in this story of teen siblings ill equipped to handle what occurs to them, too naive and trusting. I did find her characters a little difficult to invest in, and Ann herself is not the most likeable of people.

This is a complex, fraught, full of intrigue read of family dynamics, blackmail, abuse, trust, rape, trauma, poor teen decision making and sibling relationships. This will appeal to those who enjoy their twisted family dramas set in a fabulous location. Many thanks to St Martin's Press for an ARC.

3.5 stars

I'm always up for a book that revolves around some long-standing family drama. This story held my interest but I wouldn't say that I loved any of the characters. That's okay though because that's not really a requirement for me to enjoy a book. I do wish that lack of communication which was an ongoing theme wouldn't have been so prevalent in the story. I think that's part of the reason I became frustrated with just about every character in the book.

Ann Gordon is back at the Cape Cod home she spent her summers at while she was growing up. Her parents have recently died and she has been tasked with selling their summer home as neither she nor her sister, Poppy, can afford to keep it. Her adopted brother, Michael, hasn't been in contact with the family in years and when he tries to claim he has rights to the home, it doesn't go over well with Ann. You see something pretty major happened about 15 years ago when they were teenagers that caused a huge rift in the family. It's not a cliche to say things were never the same after that particular summer on the Cape. The story follows Ann, Poppy, and Michael during that fateful summer and the present day when they are reunited. Hmm... family members that aren't on good terms and now you throw in a disagreement about a house. Yes, there is going to be some drama in this story, that's for sure.

For much of the book I thought Poppy was an unnecessary character to include but by the end I did think she brought something to the table. As I mentioned before it was easy to feel frustration when some characters make certain decisions. It's like I wanted to reach thru the pages, grab them by the shoulders, shake them, and yell, "what are you doing?'. However, despite my varying levels of annoyance with some of the characters, I still felt invested enough to want to see how everything would play out in the end.

There are two random things I really loved that the author included in the story. I was happy to see a couple Polish references, and my guess is if she can name drop Polish Falcons, she must have some Polish blood in her like I do. The other thing I liked was at the end of Part One there was a good joke about the parents. I gotta tell you it was 100% necessary as it really had been driving me nuts how naive and oblivious the parents were when it came to the kids. The joke at least acknowledged this fact which helped ease my frustration.

There were a few times the author kinda glossed over something I thought could have been covered more thoroughly. While I liked the story, it could have used some polishing up a bit in order to really take it to a higher level. I still consider it a good read though. If you are interested in reading this one, be prepared, there are some dark moments in the story. If you are strictly looking for a lighthearted read, I would look elsewhere.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review!