Publishers Weekly
02/10/2020
Kauffman’s keen, atmospheric follow-up to The Gunners explores class, friendship, and dark family secrets. In the mid-1990s, Lisa and Scott Daly invite Lisa’s longtime friend Poppy Ford; her husband, John; and their kids to join them for an all-expenses-paid four-day trip to South Carolina’s Fripp Island. The Dalys’ wealth is a source of tension for the Fords, who are still driving an ’81 Dodge Omni and struggle to get by. Despite this, Lisa is eager to reconnect with Poppy while their children soak up the sun. Fourteen-year-old Rae Daly is instantly smitten with 17-year-old Ryan Ford, who is about to start college, and Ryan’s younger sister, Alex, makes fast friends with Rae’s little sister, Kimmy. However, a current of unease runs through time spent at the beach and boozy rounds of golf. Lisa suspects Scott is having an affair, Lisa and Poppy discover that a registered sex offender lives on the island, Ryan is secretive, and Rae simmers in quiet desperation. Perhaps inevitably, events spiral to a shocking conclusion. Kauffman’s characters leap off the page; her portrait of Rae, a girl who longs to be seen as a woman, is especially vivid, as is her rendering of Lisa and Poppy’s fraught yet affectionate relationship. Readers will devour this suspenseful summer drama. (June)Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly spelled the title of the author's previous book.
From the Publisher
"Gripping." —People, "Best New Books, June" "Page-turner pacing...Combustible...The tensions between predators and prey — and how quickly one can become the other — haunt the novel, from its ominous beginning to its heartrending conclusion. But Kauffman also deftly crafts moments of great tenderness and light throughout, reminding us that memory endures and life perseveres, even after a harrowing and grievous loss." —The Charleston Post and Courier "Rebecca Kauffman has long been one of my favorite writers, and The House on Fripp Island is her best novel yet. The story of two very different families brought together for an unlikely vacation that takes a dangerous turn, Kauffman's latest is a rare and gripping combination of gloriously observed prose and three hundred pages of pure suspense. I loved it." —Julie Buntin, author of Marlena "A novel full of secrets set in a stunning beach house is my definition of a perfect summer read. I was stunned by the twists and turns of Rebecca Kauffman's masterful novel, The House on Fripp Island. Bring plenty of sunscreen when you take this book to the beach...you'll be reading all day long."—Amanda Eyre Ward, author of The Jetsetters "A sharp, modern story about the wilderness of family life."—Adrienne Celt, author of Invitation to a Bonfire and The Daughter “Kauffman’s keen, atmospheric follow-up to The Gunners explores class, friendship, and dark family secrets…inevitably, events spiral to a shocking conclusion. Kauffman’s characters leap off the page…Readers will devour this suspenseful summer drama.”—Publishers Weekly"Our assumptions about whose tensions, desires, rages, and shy longings might erupt into murder are provoked and reversed right up until the final pages, when the mystery of Fripp Island is revealed...An entertaining and ultimately tender book."—Kirkus "The tensions between the haves and the have-nots offer an insight into contemporary America...In watchful prose by turns powerful and delicate, the action builds to an event as inevitable as it was unpredictable. Gripping." —The Sunday Times "Suspenseful...While the fault lines...allow for plenty of tart observations on marital disenchantment, Kaufmann spins a secondary, far more disconcerting story about the toxic power of suspicion and rumour. A smart summer read."—The Daily Mail "Under the guise of a skilful domestic whodunnit Rebecca Kauffman has produced a disturbing novel for our times."—Shots Magazine "Readers will be drawn into a smart, keenly-observed look at family dynamics as they try to figure out which of the eight characters was speaking from the grave in this atmospheric beach read." —Amazon Book Review
Library Journal
01/01/2020
A Center for Fiction First Novel Prize long-listee for 2016's excellent Another Place You've Never Been, Kauffman sends working-class Poppy and her family to an otherwise unaffordable island resort thanks to now-wealthy childhood friend Lisa. But both families bring secrets, and an air of menace pervades (35,000-copy paperback and 3,000-copy hardcover first printing).
Kirkus Reviews
2020-04-13
A summer vacation to the beaches of South Carolina reunites childhood friends Lisa and Poppy and their families, but when the week ends in tragedy, the survivors are left to untangle the secrets snarled just beneath the surface of their seemingly ordinary lives.
Lisa and Scott Daly are rich and unhappy. Married almost 20 years, they've settled into a routine of petty irritations that contains neither passion nor interest in each other’s lives. When they win an all-expenses-paid vacation to Fripp Island, South Carolina, at Scott’s company’s Christmas party, Lisa jumps at the chance to invite her best friend, Poppy, who has stayed in their hometown of Wheeling, West Virginia, and lives the kind of working-class life Lisa escaped with her marriage to Scott. From the first it's apparent that the families have brought their problems with them to the island. Lisa feels certain Scott is having an affair, one that he seems to be pursuing even on his family vacation. Poppy’s husband, John, is recovering from a nagging back injury, but his reliance on pain medicine has Poppy up every night counting his pills. Poppy’s oldest child, Ryan, an awkward but handsome boy primed to leave for college in the fall, spends more and more time immersed in mysterious projects, and Lisa’s 14-year-old daughter, Rae, is a seething mass of hormones and fragile teenage ego. The younger girls, Poppy’s Alex and Lisa’s Kimmy, are at crossroads of their own, poised in the fraught territory between childhood and the first of their teenage years. Throw into the mix a handyman on the sex-offender registry and his long-distance-runner wife—the improbably named Keats and Roxie Firestone—and the mood of the week is a mix of emotional turmoil with the occasional golden moment of beachfront reconciliation. However, the opening chapter is narrated by the ghost of one member of these two families, describing the moment of their murder during that vacation from the vantage of 20 years in the future. With that in mind, the reader is primed to pick up all the tantalizing clues Kauffman weaves through her sometimes exposition-heavy prose. Our assumptions about whose tensions, desires, rages, and shy longings might erupt into murder are provoked and reversed right up until the final pages, when the mystery of Fripp Island is revealed.
An entertaining and ultimately tender book.
