Where does one start with an emotionally complex story like this one? Probably at the beginning.
I like how we get to know both our characters when one is in therapy and the other is her therapist. Yes that’s also (going to be) problematic. I like the emotional depth we get by attending the therapy session. Simultaneously I find them troubling because of the nature of the therapy and our MC’s relationship. I won’t divulge anything here as it’ll spoil the some of the storyline. I just had issues with it personally, it made me uncomfortable, could be that was what the author intended. If so, awesome job.
I find it all drags on a bit too much and the resolution to the story does come too late in my opinion. Not to mention I don’t like how “easy” the resolution is. Again, zipping it because of spoilers.


The author has a nice writing style, I liked the general flow of the writing. I could see some improvements in pacing the book. The author did a great job of setting the scenes and being descriptive about the places and feelings, I appreciated that very much.

This book is different, I could have done with a few more chapters later on in the book. Despite my issues with the therapy and relationship stuff, and the dragging, I find this to be a fine read

A beautiful wriiten story about family and loving someone enough to let them go so they are able to spread their wings and find happiness elsewhere. I thought the author did an amazing job with all the characters making them very relatable. I absolutely enjoyed this book and look forward to more from this author. I recommend

Thank you NetGalley and Ylva Publishing.

This was an intriguing story that pushed against taboo from multiple angles. Not only does it explore a relationship between therapist and client, but it adds the extra layer of falling for your brother’s girlfriend. I’ve read both of these tropes separately before, but this combination kept me on my toes the entire time.

Despite those challenges, I really appreciated the mature way Maeve—the therapist—navigated the situation. I can’t even imagine the heartache of falling for your brother’s girlfriend, especially with the close bond Maeve shares with Charles.

It was also beautiful to witness how the people in both Maeve’s and Brielle’s lives slowly come to recognize just how deeply these women care for others—often putting the happiness of their loved ones ahead of their own. I loved that, in the end, they both found the peace and happiness they’d been craving for so long.

That said, it’s rare for me to deeply empathize with the man destined to become the ex in a sapphic love story, but I really loved Charles. I was constantly intrigued by how the story would unfold, and how Maeve and Brielle would eventually tell Charles and their families about their feelings. There were moments I truly felt for Charles, knowing how things would end, but that only made the story more difficult to put down.

Pros
+ gorgeous cover
+ I love Maeve 3000
+ and her dog and her gay bestie

Cons
- unfortunately, everything else

The writing leaves much to be desired, and the romance, which started out so promising, progresses too quickly to be called a slow burn. There is also a lot of suspension of disbelief required, more so than other romances I've read. This whole thing wraps up too neatly. I also found Brielle really annoying; her POVs were a slog to get through.

I really wanted to like this. I was hoping this would be messy and visceral, but it was mostly meh.

Still recovering from an abusive relationship with a man, Brielle is in therapy with Dr. Raleigh and is living with a really good man named Charles who she is unable to fully love. When Charles takes Brielle to California for a beach vacation with his family, she discovers that Charles' sister, Maeve, is her therapist. As the week progresses, the two spend time together and an attraction blossoms.

On the positive side, the author has been careful to navigate the ethical issues involved in a therapist-client relationship. Once they realize what's going on, Maeve terminates their therapy relationship and speaks with a professional colleague about the ethical issues involved. The author also tries to set the reader up for the surprise by explaining that Charles (who Maeve calls Chaz) has a different last name than Maeve (we never find out why) and never says much about his family to Brielle (even though they've been together a year and are living together).

So there are a few plot issues and credibility strains, including understanding why Maeve begins to fall in love with Brielle when they are at the beach house (I had a better sense of why Brielle fell for Maeve).

But overall, it wasn't a bad read and the question of how this was all going to work out kept me engaged, in spite of some of these flaws.

I enjoyed this thoughtful, angsty, age gap (10 years), taboo romance. Brielle is a best selling author and mother of a six year old. She has been in a relationship with Charles for almost a year. Her life should be perfect but it isn’t. She sees a therapist to help her deal with her feelings and even now stills feels the repercussions of her first marriage. It isn’t detailed but there is implied abuse in her past. Brielle flies to California to be with Charles and meet his parents and siblings. She is surprised when her therapist Maeve is sitting next to her on the plane. And the pair are shocked when Brielle realizes that Maeve is Charle’s sister.

Maeve is ten years younger than Brielle and a seasoned, successful professional. She has one long term relationship that ended badly. Careful writing has the pair recognizing their attraction and Maeve knows her limits professionally. The taboo of falling for your sibling's girlfriend or having feelings for a patient are sorted with guilt and care. And Brielle has the added realization she isn’t as straight as she thought. There is a lot of messy life stuff to sift thru and it works out surprisingly well. When I finished I still had a few questions about this or what about that. But for such a messy book I was happy with the ending. Shout out to best friend Julian for adding some badly needed humor and advice. And also for Brielle’s sister as well.

If you are in the mood for a more serious or messy romantic story, this fits the bill. Thank you to NetGalley and Ylva Publishing for the eARC and I am leaving an honest review.

the person who designed the cover for this book deserves a special mention.
Brielle is such a character to root for. we come to her at a time when you feel like you can see her pains through the words in this book. you can see those mixed emotions and the push and pull of what past hurts can continue to do to us in the present and future. her need for something verses the shoulds and should not and just trying so hard to figure all this 'stuff' out that feels to big.
lots of the characters ni this book want to do the right thing. or are stuck in the roles we need to put ourselves in to fit, or to do whats best. and thats often the last place they should and also often the last place any of them will be happy.
getting to know and see how these relationships worked throughout was a great read. its complex and its real and its not all going to be easy. i thought Morgan wrote that so well. this wasn't a beginning middle and end there we go sorted. it was life. it was a snippet of people lives and its going to take some doing. so when id gotten to know these characters i wanted to know how it would end up. where at the end of this book would our characters be.
this was a slower read for me and one i could sit with and then think on for a while after.
it was all trumpets bells and whistles and sometimes that what a book needs to work and i think this one did just that.
i wanted the characters to be happy in this book. and was so often struck by how you cant force that. you can force it even if the "happy" situation you on in seemingly should give you that end result. because we all know,deep inside when things arent right. and so finding whats right is brave, and sometimes impossible if that has to go outsdie the walls,lines and people we live amongst.

Angsty age gap romance...with surfing!
I wasn't sure about this book at first because main character Brielle is in both an enviable and bad place in her life when we meet her. It's tough to read characters who are stuck and struggling due to trauma and its aftermath and angst isn't my go to for escapist reading. I got more invested further in to the story, in seeing how the tangled knots of feelings versus actions and non-actions of the characters were going to be sorted out and how much more angst, for the characters and reader, there would be along the way. The relationship dynamics between siblings and parents with their kids ring true as do Brielle's backwards slides out of progress in her therapy sessions back into unhealthy familiarity. She is a character who at times is frustrating thanks to an abusive relationship she's still recovering from but is also one you want to be happy and whole and at ease in her life. She and Maeve have a wonderful rapport that changes over the course of the book and it's easy to root for them to be together but tough to see how that will come to pass given the complicated circumstances that surround their mutual attraction, and what price may be paid by everyone involved. Secondary characters like Maeve's pal Julian are hilarious, borderline scene stealers, and Maeve's family are hard core in all that they do, often to someone's detriment. Julian's obsession with Maeve's dog Molly makes for entertaining reading and comic relief; I wish there had been more of it and more of Julian overall though particularly at a key moment in the story where he and at least one other secondary character who figured more heavily earlier in the story were conspicuously absent. Some twists in the plot I anticipated while others took me by surprise; the ending is sweet but had me wondering what scenes might have been originally written in the lead up to it that ended up being edited out. If you're a fan of surfing, that plays heavily in the story with several characters out on and in the waves. Overall I did enjoy the story once I got past the initial hesitation, mostly because I was intrigued to see how Brielle and Maeve would get together and who might be hurt along the way. There aren't really any 'baddies' in the story (other than Brielle's ex-husband who's referenced a few times), just well meaning people stuck in patterns of outdated expectations and roles, doing dumb or misguided things, putting themselves last and everyone else first; it makes them complicated, realistic and relatable on some level to the reader but also makes quick and easy fixes to their issues an impossibility.
If you're hankering for an age gap angsty romance that puts the characters in less than ideal situations and circumstances, and appreciate good verbal jousting between characters, consider reading this book. I'm curious to see what the author publishes next and look forward to reading it.

I grabbed this one because I was really excited to see some psychic love and I love a good beach romance so this seems like something I would really enjoy. I also really liked the cover art in the colors. It’s just so gorgeous.

The writing style is not something that I connected with unfortunately, it’s just not my favorite and that’s a personal preference. I also did not find myself connecting with the characters, which for me is really important in a romance book. I may end up picking this one back up once it’s published to see if I have a different experience but for now this isn’t for me however, I would still recommend it to those that enjoy heartfelt slower burn sapphic romances.

I also think this romance book should have some content warnings as it seemed a bit dark as far as the themes that were covered. PTSD seemed to be one.

I unfortunately stopped reading this one around 25% because it just wasn’t for me. That being said, I think this book does have an audience and I think it’s a fantastic read and a work of art.

Thank you for this ARC! I appreciate the opportunity to leave honest feedback voluntarily.

Beyond the Shoreline has a very appealing premise, and as a reader who is drawn to emotional, messy, and even taboo romance plotlines I was intrigued. Brielle Stone should be happy. She's got everything she should want on paper--success in her career, an adoring daughter, and a handsome, genuinely kind, and caring partner; one that she desperately wishes she could love and feel safe with, but can't. The only person who makes her feel safe is her therapist Maeve Raleigh. When the universe forces them together in a personal setting, facades break down and both parties are forced to confront their underlying feelings.

While this novel had a lot of potential, it fell a little flat to me unfortunately. I struggled connecting with the characters and resonating with the relationships between them. Executing a novel that navigates complicated relationships and difficult topics in a nuanced way is not an easy undertaking, and so much of the interiority of the characters and their decisions feel like they're being told and now shown throughout. I also felt that some of the prose got trite (ie epithets). I feel like there is a stronger novel in the bones of this one and I wish I could read that one instead.

2.5 rounded up since this is a debut, and I can see the potential.
Thank you to NetGalley, Ylva, and the author for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.