Synopsis:

For decades, the Campbell women have reunited at the family’s rambling seaside cottage known as Beech House to celebrate life’s many occasions. But this year, they will be called back to Martha’s Vineyard for a celebration of a different their beloved matriarch Cora is getting remarried. And all the town gossips are calling him the one who got away, years ago…

For renowned chef Mickey Campbell, this wedding isn’t just a welcome excuse to return to the place she first learned to cook at her grandmother’s side. It’s also a chance to regroup while she figures out a way to tell her smoldering head chef boyfriend that she’s mismanaged their restaurant into the red.

Mickey’s mother, Hedy, is still mourning the passing of her adored father three years earlier, and she isn’t sure she’s ready to welcome a new man into the fold―and she’s not certain her own thorny relationship with her mother will weather the storm of her upcoming marriage.

But everyone knows a woman’s heart holds more than meets the eye. For Cora, drawing her daughter and granddaughter back to Beech House isn’t just about a ceremony, but a chance to reveal a history she has kept close to her heart for decades. As the days leading up to the wedding unfold, secrets of Cora’s past come to light– a secret that will cause three generations of Campbell women to question marriage, motherhood, and ultimately learn to savor the delicious joy of following your own heart.

Told in dual timelines on the sumptuous beaches of Martha’s Vineyard, OUR PLACE ON THE ISLAND is the sparkling, romantic read of the season.

Happy Publishing Day to Our Place on the Island, the second novel by Erika Montgomery! It’s exactly what I want in a beach read: an atmospheric setting in the summer at the beach, characters who jump off the page, food references that have me salivating, and love stories I root for with each new chapter.

I adored the author’s first book, A Summer to Remember (My Review), so I was excited to pick up her newest historical fiction novel. Sometimes with historical fiction, I find myself favoring one time period over another, but that wasn’t the case with Our Place on the Island. Jumping between 1999 and 1948, I was eager to to return to each storyline.

In 1999, the “present” storyline for the book, we meet Mickey Campbell who is struggling with the secret that she’s kept from her chef boyfriend that she’s done a poor job of managing their restaurant, and she isn’t ready to face the fact that it’s time to make some hard decisions. So when she receives a call from her mother that Mickey’s beloved grandmother Cora is getting remarried, she can’t say no to the invitation to return to Beech House, the seaside cottage in Martha’s Vineyard that the family has always called home, for the wedding.

“Once Upon a time, Beech House was the one place heart-break and hurt couldn’t stick. Water to the world’s oil—the two refusing to mix. All these years later, does she dare to think its healing magic might still work?”

It’s been three years since Mickey’s grandfather passed away, but she and her mother, Hedy, are having a hard time accepting their matriarch’s remarriage. Especially when they discover the groom is someone from the bride’s past.

In 1948 we meet Cora as a young bride arriving to Beech House for the first time, meeting her husband’s life-long friends, unsure of how she’ll fit in. It’s in the remodeling of the kitchen, as she makes the changes that she wants, where she finds the place she’s most at-home, a place where her love of cooking can shine.

Cora’s kitchen is the heart of the story, uniting the past and present, bringing three generations of women together to share new and old secrets. Our Place on the Island really is a love letter to cooking, and I could picture the Campbell family gathering in the kitchen throughout the years.