The Sound of Glass by Karen White

• Title:  The Sound of Glass
• Author:  Karen White
• Genre:  Contemporary Southern Fiction
• Published:  May 2015 – NAL
• Source:  Publisher

Synopsis:  It has been two years since the death of Merritt Heyward’s husband, Cal, when she receives unexpected news—Cal’s family home in Beaufort, South Carolina, bequeathed by Cal’s reclusive grandmother, now belongs to Merritt.

Charting the course of an uncertain life—and feeling guilt from her husband’s tragic death—Merritt travels from her home in Maine to Beaufort, where the secrets of Cal’s unspoken-of past reside among the pluff mud and jasmine of the ancestral Heyward home on the Bluff. This unknown legacy, now Merritt’s, will change and define her as she navigates her new life—a new life complicated by the arrival of her too young stepmother and ten-year-old half-brother.

Soon, in this house of strangers, Merritt is forced into unraveling the Heyward family past as she faces her own fears and finds the healing she needs in the salt air of the Low Country.  (publisher)

My take:  When Merritt inherits her late husband’s ancestral South Carolina home she leaves Maine and moves to Beaufort. It’s the perfect opportunity for the fresh start she seeks. What she finds is a home in need of repair, curious neighbors and family she didn’t know she had.

Merritt and the rest will discover their strengths as they learn some of life’s truths and solve a complicated (I thought unbelievable) mystery along the way. They will also come to appreciate the significance of sea glass. I love sea glass and could almost hear the sound as I read Karen White’s novel.

The Sound of Glass contains so much of what I enjoy in a novel: evocative writing, heartfelt characters, and a gorgeous, hot and humid setting on the water. And it left me wanting to read what happened next in the lives of the main characters. I continued to think about Merritt, Gibbes, Loralee and Owen long after I turned the last page. That’s my sign of a good book.

Recommended to fans of the author and Southern Fiction.