Great beach book

A very good summer read. The characters are comical and the author keeps you interested. A very good story.

good summer/vacation/book club read

This is an easy read, good summertime book. The content is light with periods of moderate heaviness, as each main character reflects on their life choices. Some of the plot is predictable, but there are some good twists. Even if you think you know what is going to happen, it is written in a way that makes you want to keep reading it. This is a good book club book, can read in a few days.

Fabulous for forty-something femmes

A quartet of forty-somethings head to the coast in Beach Trip, for a Southern-soul reunion -- shopping, drinking, and the review/reward of life's lessons learned. I read through this, feeling as though I leafed through my high-school yearbooks and "knew" these four.
Cathy Holton crafts a brilliant, bubbly, bracing novel of "sisters" reunited.
Skipping back and forth between 1985 and 2005, the lives and loves of four college friends weave a colorful tale, snapping and fluttering like a beach towel in the wind.
Mel arrives after two failed marriages and a lull in her heretofore-wild-life as a writer, having survived breast cancer, telling no one. Sara keeps tabs on her family -- out of earshot from Mel, her oldest childhood friend, with whom she shares college memories. Annie faces the specter of her youthful indiscretions at a mid-life point, while the seemingly ditzy Lola blithely guides the quartet through a week together, keeping her own dreams well-hidden.
Mel's inner dialogues are feisty, sharp, and defensive. An independent city girl after the college years, she leads the foursome into adventure, keeping herself engaged so as not to deal with her inner demons. Sara's chats with her husband back at the homefront make those with good marriages smile and those less fortunate a little wistful; Annie, the quintessential anal-retentive Stepford wife needs this weekend with the girls more than she knows. Lola hides behind glasses and a quiet, sweet, Southern nature but passions run wild deep beneath the surface.
Packed with hilarity and heartache, Holton delivers two big twists at the end that will make you go back and re-read.
Get a beach chair and a margarita. Perfect summer escape.

Julia Brantley, A Score Of Intervals

Great novel with twists and turns

I absolutely loved this book, the first I had read from Cathy Holden. After finishing it, I immediately purchased Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes and Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes, and was equally pleased with those two reads. Beach Trip is honest with a lot of twists and turns, it's definitely a page turner. I've read the book several times now and it's definitely one of my favorites.

Good story but certainly not my favorite

Here's a piece of what I had to say about this book at Bookish Mom Reviews-
"Some novels reach out and grab you at the very first word, igniting a fire within you that renders you completely unable to put the book down. For me, this was not one of those books. Don't get me wrong, the story was good. However, try as I might, I did not feel any connection to the story or any of the characters. I had such great expectations for this book, considering it is about such a wonderful thing- timeless female friendship, which is why I found it incredibly odd that I could not get in to the storyline."

~Bookish Mom, aka RebekahC