Review & Excerpt: Christmas At The Beach by Wendy Wax

Title: Christmas At The Beach 

Author: Wendy Wax  

Series: Beach #2.5

Published: October 2013 Penguin Group (USA)

Format: ARC e-book, 52 pages

Source: Netgalley 

Wendy Wax entranced
audiences with Ten Beach Road and Ocean Beach. Now, the ladies of Bella
Flora are back in an all-new holiday novella.

When Madeline
Singer, Avery Lawford, and Nicole Grant first gained ownership of Ten
Beach Road, they didn’t realize that remodeling the house would not only
bind their fates together but give them a second chance at rebuilding
their lives.

Now, as Kyra, Madeline’s daughter, returns to the
newly sold Bella Flora for one last Christmas, she’s hoping to get a
brief respite from the paparazzi that constantly hounds her and the son
she had with famous actor Daniel Deranian. But when a string of bad news
threatens to disrupt her happy holidays, Bella Flora’s sanctuary may be
threatened for all of the women who call it home…

My thoughts:  I fell in love with Maddie, Avery, Nicole, Deirdre and Kyra first in Ten Beach Road and then again in Ocean Beach. Now they are back with a novella that sets the scene for the next book in this series, The House on Mermaid Point, which is due out next year and we find them back at the place where this motley crew first came together.

Christmas At The Beach is a short novella that brings the women back to Bella Flora, the first house they worked on together. They are gathering there for their last Christmas at this house, as it has finally been sold. Luckily, they were able to work out a deal where they could use it until after the first of the new year.

Of course, there isn’t a gathering of these women without any paparazzi present, and this holiday is no exception. On top of that, the cameraman from the reality show the women are part of, Do Over, is there with their next assignment…which is the setting for the next book. Where will these women end up next? Will it be another ocean front home? Find out in The House on Mermaid Point!

I really enjoy this series and loved this short novella. It was the perfect snack to hold me over until the next full-length novel comes out. Have you read any of these books yet?

Books in this series:

      1.  Ten Beach Road

      2.  Ocean Beach

      2.5  Christmas At The Beach

      3.  The House on Mermaid Point – due out July 2014

Excerpt from Christmas At The Beach:

Having your own personal pack of paparazzi gives you
sympathy for hunted animals and is nowhere near as exciting as people think. It
wouldn’t be quite so bad if they kept regular business hours–you know, showed
up around nine and clocked out at five. But celebrity stalking is a twenty-four
seven occupation with no time off for good–or bad–behavior. Because if they
don’t get pictures that make you look nasty, stupid, or even less attractive
without makeup than the average tabloid reader, they don’t eat.

Of course, it’s a lot easier to become a celebrity today
than it used to be. You can be famous now for the size of your boobs and butt,
a five-minute cameo on a reality TV show, doing a below-average tango on
Dancing with the Stars, or dating and/or marrying someone who’s done any of the
above. The celebrity bar has dropped so low that if it were being set for a
game of Limbo, that bar would be ankle-height.

You can even become a celebrity by accident. I happen to
know this because that’s what happened to me.

My name is Kyra Singer, and I became famous for falling in
love with a movie star named Daniel Deranian while I was working as a
production assistant on my first feature film, believing him when he said he
loved me, and then getting pregnant with his child. I might regret this more if
Dustin, who just turned one last month, weren’t so incredible. And if Daniel’s
movie-star wife, Tonja Kay, were a normal human being whose head doesn’t do a
360 when she gets pissed.

If Dustin is the best thing in all of this, and he is, the
worst is the extra burden it put on my mother, who was handling a lot already
when I got booted off the set by the head-spinning Tonja Kay and then sliced
and diced in the tabloids. Unlike a lot of other ankle-height celebrities, I’d
way rather be behind the camera than in front of it. But today, which is
Christmas Eve day, when I get out to the curb at the Tampa International
Airport with my son, his car seat, our suitcase, and my film gear, a bunch of
paparazzi are waiting at the curb. My mother and her minivan are not. I’m
careful not to make eye contact with any of them while I try to figure out what
to do. I’m considering turning around and going back inside to regroup, when a
text dings in. It’s from my missing mother. It reads Sri. My fats in fyre.

I read it twice, but it doesn’t get any clearer. My mother,
Madeline, is fifty-one, and she’s impressive as hell in a lot of respects, but
I think she communicated way better before her phone got so smart. Her next
text reads Sree. Mint tries flit. IMHO, most people over forty don’t have
control of their thumbs and shouldn’t be allowed to text.

“Kyra, over here!” The accent is British and I recognize the
voice. Every once in a while you’re forced to realize that there are real
people behind the cameras. People who barge into your life uninvited and then
become strangely familiar.

I look up and see Nigel Bracken at the front of the pack. As
always I try to shield Dustin as best I can, but he’s one now and not a baby
that I can hold in any position I want. Plus he’s a veritable clone of his
movie-star father, with the same golden-skinned face, dark brown eyes, and
curly hair. The paparazzi can’t get enough of him. A couple of weeks ago a
crazed Daniel Deranian fan stole one of Dustin’s dirty diapers out of the trash
and tried to sell it on eBay. That’s how weird it gets sometimes.

“Over here, Kyra!” another one of the paps shouts. His
name’s Bill and he has bad teeth and a potato shaped nose. They are their own
League of Nations– American, British, French, and lots of Heinz 57s. They’re
tall and skinny, short and round, and everything in between. Some of them are
good-looking enough to walk the red carpet. Others, like Bill, have faces only
a mother could love. You rarely see women doing this. I like to think it’s
because women are too smart and sympathetic to view stalking celebrities as
gainful employment, but it could just be that, like the movie business, it’s a
good old boys’ club that women have to work twice as hard and be twice as talented
to break into.

“Just give us a couple shots and we’re out of here!” Nigel
shouts.

This is a lie. One clean shot will madden them like bees
whose hive has been swatted. When I don’t respond, they surge closer.

An airport security guard passes by and warns them to keep
out of the traffic lanes. The transportation line is downstairs and so are the
car rental desks. What I really need to do is call my mother and find out why
she’s not here, but I don’t want to do this on-camera. Most of these guys can read
lips better than an NFL coach with a pair of binoculars trying to decipher the
other team’s plays.

“Come on, Kyra, luv! It’s practically Christmas! Give us a
smile!” I’m not sure who died and elected Nigel spokesman, but at least they’re
not all yelling at once.

Dustin’s arm loops up around my neck, and he lifts his head
from my shoulder. “Krimas!” he says. The camera drives whir and the digital
flashes explode.

I feel the pack moving in, and I fall back a step, not
wanting to be surrounded. I turn and move quickly–I prefer not to think of it
as running–into the terminal. I head for the only place I might be safe: the
ladies’ room.

In a locked stall I check the floor on either side to make
sure there are no size-twelve shoes. I drop our suitcase and my camera bag on
the floor, stand the folded stroller in a corner, and perch gingerly on the
edge of the toilet seat with Dustin in my lap. I could text my mother–she reads
texts better than she sends them–but then she might text me back and if I can’t
read it will be another big waste of time. I hit speed dial for her number.

“Mom?” I keep my voice down when the phone is answered just
in case. And because it’s always kind of gross when you hear someone making a
phone call from the toilet regardless of what they are or aren’t doing there.

“Oh, Kyra, thank goodness.” My mother sounds agitated and
out of breath. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I had a flat tire on the Bayway and I’m
still waiting for AAA.” I can picture the beige-gold minivan on the side of the
causeway that leads from Pass-a-Grille Beach, through Tierra Verde, to the
interstate, while Cadillacs and old Chryslers putter past. The population of
St. Petersburg and its environs is largely elderly. The joke goes if you leave
a glass of water sitting out someone will put his or her teeth in it. My mom
hasn’t even made it off the beach. Even if she got the tire fixed in the next
five minutes, which is unlikely, she wouldn’t be here for another thirty-five
minutes after that.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll rent a car and meet you at Bella
Flora.”

“Are you sure?” My mother has witnessed the paparazzi up
close and personal from the day they first found me while we were desperately
trying to restore Bella Flora, which is a really cool Mediterranean
Revival–style home that was built in the 1920s and was all my mother and the
equally unfortunate Avery Lawford and Nicole Grant had left after they lost
everything to Malcolm Dyer’s Ponzi scheme. That’s where I’m headed right now.

“Absolutely. Who’s at the house?”

“Avery, Deirdre, and Nicole are there. Chase and his sons
are joining us tomorrow morning to open presents. Your dad and Andrew are
driving down from Atlanta today.”

“Okay. I’m going to pick up a car. I’ll take the Bayway from
275 so I can stop and help if you’re still there.”

“Be careful. I don’t want them chasing after you and
Dustin.”

I know from the way she says this that she’s thinking about
what happened to Princess Diana. But I’m not a princess, and the Howard
Frankland Bridge to St. Pete is not a Paris tunnel. Still, it will be better if
I can just disappear. I don’t want to lead the paparazzi to Bella Flora, even
though I’m sure they all already know that Dustin and I are headed to Ten Beach
Road.

“We’ll be fine,” I say because we’ve had this conversation
before. Or at least we will be, once I put on my disguise.

©Wendy Wax

About the author: Award-winning author Wendy Wax’s work, including While We Were Watching Downton Abbey, Ocean Beach and Ten Beach Road, has been highly praised. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
says she “writes with breezy wit and keen insight into family
relations.” Her novels have been featured in national publications such
as USA Today and Woman’s World, and online at sites such as On A Clear Day You Can Read Forever, Luxury Reading, and Book Reporter. 

            

The author of nine novels and a novella, Wendy’s work has been sold to
publishers in fifteen countries, including the U.K. where While We Were Watching Downton Abbey was recently published. Her novel, Hostile Makeover, was excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine.

            

She is now at work on her next book, The House on Mermaid Point. On sale in July 2014, it reintroduces characters from Ten Beach Road (St. Pete Beach) and Ocean Beach (Miami), and sets them loose in the Florida Keys.   

            

A native of St. Pete Beach, Florida, Wendy and her family have lived in Atlanta for sixteen years.

 

www.authorwendywax.com ● facebook.com/AuthorWendyWax · @Wendy_Wax

 

CHIRSTMAS AT THE BEACH, A Ten Beach Road Novella

Wendy Wax

An  InterMix E-Original

On Sale 10-15-13/9781101625965