The lives of the many people connected to a house on the coast of Maine.

In the small coastal town of Awadapquit, Maine, a girl named Jane lives in her late grandmother’s cottage with her mother, an alcoholic who tries to earn a living buying things at flea markets and selling them at a profit, and her older sister Holly who also drinks too much and has a police record. Jane had always felt closest to her grandmother, a hardworking and devoutly religious woman who encouraged Jane’s love of reading. Her best friend Allison and Allison’s family provide her with some measure of stability, and she is determined that she will succeed in life, rising above her family’s circumstances. She develops a fixation on a beautiful but rundown house on a cliff on the outskirts of town….it is abandoned but Jane spends a lot of time on the grounds, reading novels and imagining the stories of those who lived there. Teachers at her school notice her intelligence and potential, and through the efforts of many she goes on to study at Wesleyan and later Yale, and by the early 2000’s she is working at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library with her boss and now good friend Melissa who introduces her to the man she will marry, David. Ten years later Jane has moved back to Awadapquit, ostensibly to help Holly pack up their mother’s house and ready it to go on the marker but really because her life has imploded. She has been suspended from her job and her marriage is on the rocks after her scandalous behavior at an important work-related party. Her drinking has been problematic through the years, although she has covered up the extent of her addiction better than many and David has tolerated many earlier episodes. Jane feels shame and remorse, but she may not have hit rock bottom quite yet. While living there, she meets a wealthy woman named Genevieve who with her husband Paul has bought the house that entranced Jane so many years ago. In the process of rehabbing the house, Genevieve has made many changes and also done something shocking about which only a workman and his helper are aware, and which she suspects is the reason that a spirit seems to live in the house. Hoping that she can find a way to make peace but without giving any unflattering details, Genevieve asks Jane to research the history of the house and its inhabitants. Although Jane doesn’t much care for Genevieve (and Allison loathes her) Jane is happy for a project to distract her from her personal problems. She will learn about Hannah Littleton, for whom the house was built and who lost her husband at sea, and Eliza her maid; the Troy sisters who, after the fiancé of one of the sisters disappears, take in boarders to earn an income; and Marilyn, an artist who lived in the house with her husband Herbert until a dreadful tragedy drove them apart and away from the house that held too many memories. A medium, the unpleasant history of Native Americans in this corner of the country, Shaker communities, and more are woven into the intersecting stories of these women.
The Cliffs is a well-researched and beautifully told tale of the loves, losses, sacrifices and resilience of flawed women. While it is Jane who is at the center of the novel, her research into and her own unknown family ties to the house of the cliff lead to the discovery of the other women who had a connection to the house and in many cases were dealt a blow that disrupted their life. Author J. Courtney Smith approaches the familial history of addiction and its impact through the generations with care, and focuses on relating the history of this place through those whose lives were seldom documented yet merit being told. Readers who enjoy authors like Anne Tyler, Julia Glass and Anna Quindlen (as well as the author’s own previous works) should add this story of family, lost history and often shameful secrets to their list of books to read this summer. Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Books for allowing me early access to this beautifully rendered novel.

Thank you to Knopf for the free ARC via Netgalley an exchange for a review! This is out tomorrow.

Jane Flanagan grew up in the small, coastal Maine town in the midst of her family dysfunction and mother’s alcoholism. As a teenage, Jane escaped to a beautiful abandoned Victorian home on the cliffs. 20 years later, Jane is an archivist for Harvard. After an embarrassing evening fueled my alcohol that srrains both her work relationships and her marriage, she head back to her hometown to sober up and pack up her deceased mothers home. She runs into Genevieve, the new owner of the Victorian, who hires Jane to research the history of the home. Jane soon uncovers the mysterious legacy of the home and its formal owners, and why the home might possibly be haunted.

I ended up DNFing st 36% in. Going into it, I read coastal Maine town, mystery, haunted and thought this would grab me right away. Unfortunately, I just could not get into the story. There were periods where it would go into detail of Jane’s work as an archivist or the research she was doing and it felt like I was reading a textbook - dry and kind of preachy. The nitty gritty of the research and the constant name dropping of literary men and women I had never heard of also got old. At this point in the book I feel like it should have picked up but there was SO much backstory (that I frankly found boring) and it didn’t make me invested in Jane’s character at all. This will be a book that will be interested in many people, but I am not one of them.

The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan was truly an engaging story.
Extremely well-written and characters are all fleshed out.
This book exceeded my expectations; it was both atmospheric and heartwarming, and the characters were so loveably flawed in their own individual ways. I was totally engaged throughout.

Thank You NetGalley and Knopf for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

I totally enjoyed this book. The mystery - the history and even the family drama all woven through.

I really like how the ending chapters tied up all the loose ends
.

3.5 stars rounded up. I've read all of J. Courtney Sullivan's books so far and I have to say this was my least favorite one.

The writing's great, as usual. The characters were interesting in a realistic way. There isn't much of a plot, but that's okay. The characterizations make up for that - for the most part.

This book was just so slow. I found myself skimming large chunks of it, mainly the historical ones. I was a lot more interested in the present day plot.

All in all, I'd say this was still a worthwhile read and J. Courtney Sullivan remains one of my must read authors.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All comments are my own.

I always find stories fascinating when there are strange coincidences with deceased relatives or friends. In The Cliffs, stories of different women are intertwined when one of them buys an old home on a cliff in Maine and her son is convinced a ghost of a little girl is in the house. The other women are local residents who have connections to the house and each other. This book was stunning, for lack of a better term. One of my favorite authors continues to amaze me with her ability to paint a whole picture and use words together that I never dreamed would sound so poetic and capture a scene, add depth to characters and describe emotions so perfectly. I loved how details were slowly revealed so my impressions of characters were created first based on the information then provided and then the truth was revealed. There is a historic component to the book that got a little too academic (and long!) for me reading poolside at a hotel over the weekend but the way it played out and came together so was interesting and it did help to explain everything.

I really enjoyed several of this author's other novels, so I was expecting to like this book more than I actually did. A lot of ground is covered in this story. It definitely holds a lot of good information and research, but the storyline weaves in and out and it all seemed somewhat complex and convoluted to me. I liked parts of the story, but not enough to keep me interested or engaged. I hope that others may find this book more appealing.

My sincere thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Publishing for providing me with a DRC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

The Cliffs follows the story of one house on a cliff in Maine that the main character Jane becomes obsessed with learning more about because throughout high school and college, she explores this abandoned home. One day she comes home and goes to visit the home and a new family has moved in and is changing so much about the historic Victorian and the story takes off from there.

At first this story felt a little slow for me but at about the 30% mark, I became really invested in the characters and their connections. The story of family secrets and family/generational trauma passed from one generation to another had me hooked. I was interested in both the modern day timeline and the various historical timelines and how they tie together.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

The bones of this book are really good! The title is misleading because the main character is actually the house on the cliffs, its history, and the people who have interacted with it. The main human character, Jane, is a women's history curator, and I really liked how that was mirrored in the variety of points of view that were all female. It gave empowerment to their stories in the way that Jane's job was to find the lost stories of women in history. What I didn't like were the long meandering lectures about various social justice causes. Yes, I am a supporter, but every time the plot gained some traction, the book diverted to one of these lecture tangents and it distracted from any engagement with the story and characters. I feel like a good strong editor could have helped weed some of that out and streamlined it so the reader didn't feel like they were being scolded, because at the heart of it, this was a really strong and interesting story.

I liked many parts of this book, but did not get along with the author's meandering style of writing. There are many subplots in this book and while not hard to keep separated, much of the book, reads reads like a textbook. Initially, this book really interested me and seemed like it was just my kind of read, but I struggled to finish this one.

Thank you to Net Galley and Knopf for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

There was a lot to like about this book about a woman coming to terms with her past while also exploring the history of a house haunted by a ghost in the small town in Maine where she grew up. However this book had too many tangential threads. If one or two of the threads had been deleted, it would have been a tighter, more enjoyable book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy. I have mixed feelings about this book. It is beautifully written and incredibly well-researched, but I think there were too many historical tangents. Some chapters felt almost like reading a textbook which really took me out of the story. I also felt like everything was tied up a bit too neatly at the end. Overall, Sullivan is a talented writer and I would recommend this to certain people who would appreciate the extensive historical research.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book.

This one is hard to describe. It started slowly and I almost gave up, but I am really glad I didn't. Once I got into it, it was hard to put down. It is the story of Jane Flanagan, or at least the story is told through her eyes. And sometimes those eyes are squinting and bloodshot, because Jane is one of a long line of alcoholic women in her family. But she only knows part of that story, too, although she THINKS she has it all figured out.

As the book begins, Jane is living in her dead mother's house, presumably cleaning it out so she and her sister can sell it. But the truth is, Jane is hiding out. One night, in a blackout drunk, she in destroyed her marriage, lost her job, and lost the respect of her colleagues and for herself. But she slowly starts looking around and finds there are a lot of stories worse than hers, and many of them seem to be connected to an abandoned house that she has admired and wanted since she was a teenager. As we hear of many of the stories centered on that house and the land it is built on, we, along with Jane, get a feeling of how much American history has simply been forgotten, or long buried.

The cliff on which the house stands was once the home of a tribe of indigenous people who lost it when the white people took it over. There was at least one other house there that was destroyed in an uprising against those whites, and the builder of the current house died within site of it when attempting to return home from a long voyage and having his ship destroyed in site of his house, with his wife and children watching. Others who have lived there have their own stories, and none of them seem to turn out happily, but can that change?

Jane's journey includes psychic mediums and charlatans, spirits and past lives, mothers, marriage, and the legacy of alcoholism, the disgraceful treatment the original settlers of this land received while it also shows some hope that there may be justice of a sort yet for them, and for all those that followed.

Going in I would not have classified this as historical fiction but having read it that is what comes to mind. I loved the story. Especially as I love history. So many themes are touched upon. The Shakers, indigenous people, mediums, ghosts, and alcoholism. The mystery and the different generations that had lived in the house was interesting. Really lovely story.

I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley. This book had a lot of interesting plot points for me, including an unfolding mystery, a Victorian house, a ghost, local indigenous history, and the coastal Maine setting. It also made me want to do a little more research into the history of the Shakers. Overall it was a great summer escape, without feeling too fluffy.

I have been a big fan of J. Courtney Sullivan's work and was so excited to see she had a new book coming out. I am so thankful to Knopf for sending an advanced copy along.

In this book, our main character Jane is working to uncover the history of a local house that she has always admired. Some of the stories she finds are not the best, but she is a historian seeking to uncover the story of this house.

I read more than half of this book, but I did not finish it. There were too many different storylines happening and I struggled to remain interested in the book. What I will say is that this is the third book I've read this year set in historical Maine and it continues to make me realize how uniformed I have been about the indigenous history of that area. While this book had quite a few interesting details regarding indigenous history and even shouted out my alma mater - UVA, I just struggled with the flow of the book, or the lack thereof. I just felt a bit lost in this book. 2.5 stars, rounded up because I love this author so much!

It started out great. An abandoned house, a little boy seeing a ghost, secrets, & house with history that has been forgotten. However, this story didn’t have the flow and felt like it was forcing information to the reader at times and completely ignoring the storyline for a history lesson.

This had all the makings of a great story. Sullivan clearly did a ton of research on the setting, historical institutions in the Northeast and the history of indigenous peoples in Maine and crafted some fascinating characters bound by a common place...but the story was missing the cohesive driver to put it all together.

“You have to hand it to men, they’ve managed to convince us that the things that make women powerful are weaknesses. Motherhood is the most radical act in the world.”

This book was a little…I don’t know…strange? Janes chapters were truly the only ones I really enjoyed and looked forward to. I wish the whole book was focused on her.

So much of this book could have been taken out. The chapters are LONG, just a bit disjointed, and often academic in nature. I was relived when I made it to the end if I’m being honest.

Thank you @PRHAudio for the complimentary audiobook and to Netgalley, @aaknopf, and the author for the free book!

This is Jane Flanagan’s story. She holds a PhD and works at Harvard. However, she harbors a secret: she is struggling with alcoholism. Jane faces the threat of losing both her job and her marriage when her secret is very publicly revealed.

I enjoyed Jane’s story, although at times, there were too many side stories which made it challenging to read.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for the early read in exchange for an honest review. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

This may be the perfect summer read! I couldn't put The Cliffs down! Every plot line was carefully crafted and woven into the wider story. Jane was a character I didn't always like, but I was rooting for her. There were historical elements that were interesting and made me go on a couple of internet deep-dives. I felt like I was there, in Maine, standing on the cliffs and in Jane's small town with her feeling claustrophobia. A great novel and perfect for summer reading!