An beautifully written book, it did not kept my full attention had to paused a little but overall I adore the story.

The caracters were amazing. Lowspice romance.

Thank you, NetGalley, Hyperion Avenue, and Emily Jane for my advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I said it in my review of her first book, and I'll say it again now...Emily Jane is wonderfully weird. Her style is whimsical and heartfelt, while her ideas are simply out of this world. This makes for a winning blend in my opinion.

Timmy Caruso, a 10-year-old boy on summer vacation, goes missing during a day at the beach with his best friend Jenni only to reappear thirty years later--still 10 years old. Jenn, now 40 and our main POV, discovers him during a summer escape of her own with her two kids in tow. Running from the reality of divorce, deadlines, and burnout, Jenni must now help Timmy on his mission since reemerging--save the world from sea monsters.

At no point did I know where this book was taking me, but I was here for the ride. Here Beside the Rising Tide has elements of fantasy, sci-fi, romance, and mystery. I highly recommend trying one of Emily Jane's books if you're in the mood for something totally different and just a little weird.

Fingers crossed, I stumble upon a squidoodle on my next beach adventure.

This is a sweet, strange novel about sea monsters and friendship, about motherhood and grief and rediscovery. Our main character Jenn, still grieving the death of her mother 3 years ago, and faced with an unexpected divorce, is coping in perhaps not in the healthiest of ways; by packing up her kids, leaving her husband, and spending the summer on her childhood home of Pearl Island. Between cleaning out her mother’s estate and trying to write her last in a series of action romance books, Jenn is visited by a ghost from her past. Suddenly weird creatures appear on the beach, and even weirder events start happening, causing Jenn and her family to band together to save the island, and maybe even the world.

The prose is full of sensory details, which really transported me to the sticky island summer, and every time I thought I knew where we were going, the plot kept on surprising me. I especially loved the characterization of the children, wildly imaginative and obsessed with Pokémon and always convinced of happy endings. The only parts that didn’t work for me were the frequent mini-chapters from different perspectives, and the excerpts from Jenn’s books; I think those excerpts were meant to mirror Jenn’s fantasy life and her real life, but I felt they just disrupted the momentum of the story.

All in all, a fun and extremely original novel, with great characterization and some wacky sci-fi elements. I had a great time reading!

Thanks to Hyperion Avenue and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was a melding of the story of a mid-life crisis and an unraveling marriage, and a scifi book about an extra-dimensional creature attack. Basically the concept is, "is the whole world ending, or just mine?" An intriguing combo, though the two were less well-melded than I would have really liked. Mainly we were kind of swapping back and forth between the two concepts, and when that happened the energy of each scenario, particularly the apocalyptic one, suffered. However while they weren't as seamlessly integrated as I'd have liked, both parts of the novel were intriguing and, while pensive, very funny. I think Emily Jane is a really interesting developing author.

Hey! You got sea monsters in my life-crisis novel!

But just like those peanut butter cups, those things go together, thanks to this creative and fun sophomore effort from Emily Jane. She crammed aliens and cats and television and bacon and swirled them into her successful debut, On Earth as It Is on Television, so with that, the jacket info, and the appealing cover, we know what to expect.

The multifaceted, wildcat plot centers around Jenni Farrow, author of the dime-store romance novel series starring action heroine Philipia Bay. When she was just ten, Jenni’s best (and only) friend Timmy found an odd creature on a beach on Pearl Island, where they lived under very different circumstances. Then, maybe or maybe not related to the “squiddoodle,” Timmy just vanishes.

And thus, while the subsequent thirty years resulted in Jenni’s emergence as a bestselling author, at mid-life everything seems to be wrong. The husband’s leaving, maybe taking the kids, and she’s getting sick of pumping out the same old action-romance story. So, under the pretense of renovating her dilapidated childhood home, she steals away back to Pearl Island. Suddenly, Timmy materializes…still age ten. And so do the squiddoodles. And something’s disappearing ships and wrecking the town…is it the creatures?

Right there, that’s enough. The text is a feast for the imagination. Sea monsters, sea cuties, hot contractor dudes, oh my! I don’t know what kind of dreams (or nightmares) Jane has, but yeesh! That “Tentageddon” was tremendously well-conceived, and that translates into scary stuff. Same for the squiddoodle: it didn’t take much to picture that mythical creature.

Speaking of descriptions, she’ll make you run for Air BNB to book your stay on Pearl Island. The first section pans over Jenni’s age-ten summer, the first one she remembers being independent and fun. I could smell the fried dough and feel the breeze from the Ferris wheel. It’s the dead of winter here in Brooklyn, but this reminded me that Coney Island is a little slice of heaven at that time of year.

The action scenes are tense, detailed, and frightening. Timmy has supposedly returned to save the world, and we get a good idea why. There are sea battles, widespread panic, and mysterious dealings all throughout the story. One such battle probably had one too many “turns,” but it was still exciting.

I’m also a sucker for books featuring kids as main characters. Evie and Mason leap from their screens when they meet the adventurous Timmy, and their dreams of becoming Pokemon trainers approaches reality as they work with the squiddoodles. They have crazy ideas about how to defeat the evil monsters, and after a while the adults just follow their lead. I loved that: succumbing to fantasy and magic, letting go of adult-like realism.

There’s a lot to like about Jenni, since her story arc is a relatable one. Though told in the third person, the narrator seems to ask, “Is my life headed in the right direction?” That said, this seemed to me the slowest part of the novel, forcing a little too much length for my taste. Jenni’s crisis feels less like a diary and more like a diagnosis. A bit too much “tell” when the rest of the book is “show.” Also, Dax is a good love interest, and that relationship had potential, but it seemed to have been swallowed up by other plot elements. Finally, the title is a line from a classic Grateful Dead song, “Uncle John’s Band.” But there’s no connection in the book!

All the same, this is a very strong follow-up to her appearance on the scene. Jane seems to have imagined a genre all her own, a set of themes no one’s ever considered before. Call it “family-fantasy-romance-disaster-sci-fi.” Here Beside the Rising Tide is a creative Cyclone, a thrilling and imaginative ride. Get your tickets now!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

This is the first book I've read by Emily Jane and I absolutely loved it. It was weird but in a loveable, relatable way. The main character is a famous romance author and she's overcoming a divorce and her mother's death. She wants to get away so her husband doesn't come and take her kids for the summer so she and her family goes back to her childhood home by the beach to clean it out. Once there, a series of strange events happen that she and her family have to overcome in order to save the world. Oh, and sea monsters are involved and cute little ocean creatures called squidoodles. And there's a love interest with a cute contractor. There are some parts where I was laughing aloud. I'd say this is a cross between women's fiction, fantasy, and sci-fi, but heavy on the women's fiction. After reading this book, I really want to check out Emily Jane's first one.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for the eARC.

Absolute chaos, this book. Jenni's life in total chaos, dealing with a divorce, her mom's death and a deadline on a book she is bored of writing. Her chaos made me anxious, because for much of the book it seemed that she couldn't muster any momentum for changing anything. The kids' Pokemon-infused chaos was fun. The story reeked of summer -- I could feel the heat and smell the boardwalk. And then there's *waves hands around* all the other apocalyptic stuff happening on Pearl Island, what with a disappeared childhood best friend reappearing 30 years later, on a mission to save the world from the sea monster that is killing people and the mysterious, adorable, sugar-eating squidoodles. A LOT going on. Maybe too much. The anxious first half gave way to the crazy and whimsical second half and I didn't mind it. Although, every once in awhile I looked up and said, "This is insane." Out loud.

Thank you net gallery for the advanced copy of this book. This is a roller coaster of a book. I found t a fun read full of childhood, imagination, beaches, aliens, candy, candy and more candy with eye candy thrown in as well. I would definitely recommend.

The title drew me in, lyrics from the Grateful Dead’s Uncle John’s Band, which I had been listening to in my car. Then the description sounded offbeat and amusing. Sadly, I don’t think I’m the target readership for this title. I struggled through it. I don’t mind superficial every now and again, and I can certainly suspend disbelief, but this, well, there was no character development, and while I wanted to like the characters there just wasn’t enough to them, and I found the sea monster battle ridiculous, I am nonetheless grateful for the opportunity to read the eARC, because you don’t know if you don’t try!

Current-day Jenn is a best-selling author and mother to two distracted and bratty children. She's in the process of divorcing her entitled husband, and mired in a sea of transactional emotional relationships. Childhood Jenni grew up on Pearl Island, where her best friend Timmy mysteriously disappeared in the ocean 30 years ago. (For 10-year-old Jenni, it had been the best summer ever until suddenly it wasn't.) Returning to the island with her children after her mother's death, ostensibly to clear out her mother's house, Jenn inexplicably encounters Timmy. Frozen in time at age 10, he claims he was sent back on a mission to save the world. But from what, exactly? What really happened to Timmy? And what, exactly, is that lurking out in the water?

Holy cow, what a ride. The book sometimes seemed like it didn't know what it wanted to be, it was a mash-up of sci-fi and mid-life existential crisis with a dash of romance. It also had more of a horror story element than I expected, especially as the book went on. There was a lot of underlying tension and a persistent feeling of foreboding, and I was unsure what or who to trust after awhile. (Much like adulthood, I guess.) The wistfulness is strong in this story (especially in the first half), and there's a palpable mournfulness for all things lost. Jenn seemed adrift, and also deeply unhappy. In fact, there's a distinct thread of unhappiness in all of the current-day characters. I'll be honest, I do think that the ennui and emotional listlessness of the first part of the book went on too long. It started to feel like a bit too much, because for a large part of the story there wasn't lot of hopefulness and the narrative and interpersonal detachment among the characters constantly kept me on edge to some degree. This definitely served as a distinct juxtaposition to the final chapters of the book, but I think the author took a risk that she'd lose readers to all of the free-floating emotional misery that hung over a large part of the book. Overall the writing was very well done and the mystery of Timmy's disappearance and return, as well as the looming danger that kept snowballing (and an enduring hope that everything would turn out okay), was enough to keep me reading.

I did not see this story coming and I don't think the book description really does it justice. I haven't read this author before and I am in awe of her imagination, that she created such an off-kilter and fantastical story that blended together such a punch of emotions by the end. I did struggle a bit with the layers of this complex story, which kept shifting my expectations of what it was, especially when things took a dark turn. Events didn't really pick up speed until after the halfway mark so I was glad I kept reading. I did eventually enjoy this book, even though I'm still not 100% sure what I read. My best advice to you is to stick with it and suspend disbelief, you'll be very glad you did. I gave it 4 stars but it was really closer to 4.5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC of this story, this has been my objective review. Publishes January 28, 2025.

Part chick lit, part sci-fi, part family dysfunction, Jenn is a character most of us can relate to. She's become the family bread-winner, but lost touch with the raising of her kids. So when her husband threatens divorce, all she can think is to find some solitude, spend some time with her kids, and to go thru her mom's house to close it and sell it. But what she finds in Pearl Island is her past coming back to haunt her, in a way she never expected-the reappearance of her best friend from years ago, spit back onto land by the sea that took him. Only what took him was a sea monster. An actual sea monster....As she struggles to come to terms with chaos that seems to be swirling around her, odd natural occurences start happening and her kids realize it is up to their family to save the world, only Jenn isn't quite sure about that...Meanwhile her editor's contractor for hire that is supposed to be helping at her mom's house, is proving to be a distraction not a help, but then he suddenly is more than just part of the solution they need to thwart sea monsters. A hysterical read with heart, don't miss this book!

This was the first time I have read a sci-fi romance book. While I think most people will love this book, it personally wasn't my favorite. Jenn is a child growing up on Pearl Island, Her mother is a single mother, so she spends a lot of time by herself. One summer she becomes friends with a boy named Timmy. After a tragic accident that summer, Timmy drowns. 30 years later, Jenn is going through a bitter divorce from her husband, the death of her mother, and coming to terms with her mistakes. She decides to take her children to Pearl Island. Once there, freaky things start happening.

Thank you to Hyperion Avenue and NetGalley for the advanced copy.

[Thank you to Hyperion Avenue and Netgalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest opinion!]

The plot is a little bit absurd, and I have no idea how Emily Jane was able to make everything work together, but this book is fun in this beautifully chaotic way. I mean, there are squidoodles, a tentageddon, and dinosaurs! But no matter how crazy the story gets, it always feels grounded because the characters are so realistic.

As a mom (of two pokemon loving kids), I truly connected with Jenni... though it was easy to feel fondness towards all the characters! Even though there's family drama, it's balanced with moments of sweetness or humor so it never feels too heavy. Often, I found myself highlighting passages - some because they were funny, some because they were deeply relatable.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for the eARC.

This was a cute story based in magical realism that I enjoyed. I think that maybe it leans a little young adult, but still enjoyed my time with it.

Sometimes genre mash-ups do not work and I think this book fell victim to wanting to be the book for everyone. I kept thinking what a great YA magical realism book this could have been if they had removed the Philipia Bay and the manly man whatever excerpts. They took me out of the story without adding anything. Along the lines of a YA book, the Pokemon references and names the kids made up were awesome! As a Poke-mom, I found this totally charming and, again, a perfect part of the story I wish this book had told. But if you read this thinking it was about a woman dealing with her marriage falling apart and work deadlines, you are in for a surprise! So, final thought, remove the excerpts and maybe tone down the "sexy contractor" parts and this would be a solid 4, maybe 5, star YA book.

I love the cover of this book! Seems like a heart warming read and I’ve seen good reviews but I personally couldn’t get into it.

From the blurb about this book, I was not expecting the sci-fi battles and weirdness that turned me off. Jenn is an author and a mom, reeling from her husband’s request for a divorce. Jenn decided to take her kids to Pearl Island for the summer to escape her husband’s constant emails and questions. When she arrives, a boy who drowned thirty years ago appears. Up until that point, I liked the story and then it turned into a science fiction nightmare. I can’t recommend this book, and all opinions are my own. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Quite an interesting and whimsical mix of romance, sci-fi and horror. The writing is excellent, the characters are likable and well developed. Definitely recommend this book.

Clever, quirky, satire that has some of everything - Sea monsters, time travel, crushes and a bit of romance, tsunamis, and of course male empowerment because they are so subjugated! [Yea, snark inserted there!]. Funny and sometimes not so funny, but quite the off the wall adventure, highly entertaining.

This! Whatever this genre is, I want more of it! A little bit science-fiction, a little bit romance, a little bit chick-lit and pure quirky entertainment.
It starts off a bit morose and "woe is me" then quickly turns into a quirky sea monster adventure story. Generally, I'm not a fan of divorcees with lots of problems. This take on that role is quite different since she's a famous writer who's been more than able to financially support her family. While her husband, discovers "himself" and basically does the guy version of "eat pray love." Yet, all that messy life stuff is a backdrop and setup for the monster story.
Kind of like in Bear, where the story is part fever dream, part to incredible to believe story. You keep wondering while reading if at the end, the MC will "wake up from her dream and realise it was all a metaphor?" I won't ruin anything here for you.
Just when you think you know what's going to come next, the book takes a non-sequitur turn into the deep blue abyss. Enjoy!