A delightfully comfortable book, melding together the lives of women who seek refuge in a guesthouse by the sea. Dreamy but also relatable, this book is the perfect read for our stressful times.

Starts a little like a sequel, with a condensed back story. Then it starts to fill out with the stories of the guests and the reasons they came to stay. Dealing with old people and dementia, old relationships that need a rework, and new possibilities, the house is a place to cone to terms with the past and forge a new road ahead.

The Guest House by the Sea by Faith Hogan

Esme has run a guest house in Ballycove for many years but her eyesight is failing and an accident leaves her immobile and relying on her housekeeper Marta to do everything. But the guests still need her friendship and emotional support - Cora who has left her husband of many years, Niamh who is facing a tough decision and Phyllis who worries about her husband and her widowed son and grandson.

What a lovely book! I loved the friendship and community of the guest house, the characters were all interesting and different, but worked so well together, and I absolutely loved the setting - I'd love to go and stay at the guest house myself! Very VERY highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

I love this story and the theme of second chances. It made me want to take a trip to the seaside and relax like a guest.

This was my first Faith Hogan read but it will not be my last! This book had a Maeve Binchy feel…full of warmth and wisdom and amazing characters. Esme owns and runs a guest house in Ballycove where families have enjoyed the holidays for many years. When Esme’s life takes a rough turn, she worries that this will be the end of what she loves so much. This is an amazing story of love and friendship and how bad things can turn to good with a little help from our friends.

A guest house on the west coast of Ireland with stunning sea views and a wealth of advice, love and understanding makes this a memorable and uplifting read. Esme finds running the guest house increasingly tricky, but she doesn't want to leave. Cora has seen her son marry, making her examine her marriage with critical eyes. Phyllis is in denial, her family is everything, and she doesn't want things to change, and Niamh is a career woman with a married lover and an unexpected complication.
The guest house provides solace for those who need an escape. It is a quiet place to think about the future and accept what it brings. Esme has an emotional journey to navigate but still opens her home and heart to those who need it. I love the believably complex characters, the magical qualities of the guest house ethos and Esme's wealth of experience and love for her guest community.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

What a lovely fictional escape - this time to the west coast of Ireland and the village of Ballycove. There, the charming old guest house called the Willows, is hosted by eighty-two year old Esme Goldthorpe.

Esme has recently had a fall which has left her immobile. It is early in the season and the guest house is just opening for the summer. Esme's friend and housekeeper Marta takes care of the guests AND Esme who is nearly blind in addition to her injury. But don't think for a moment that Esme does not have a good handle on the guests. She monitors their comings and goings from her dome chair in the entry hall and she is the custodian of the guest book. Esme's guest book is like none other. On every page of the book there is written a quote imparting pearls of wisdom. Esme loves people and she cares about them. She is an excellent listener and imparts sage advice to all who will listen.

This summer's guests include:

Cora, a woman who is dissatisfied with her marriage of thirty years. A marriage that has grown unexciting and stale...

Niamh, a young woman who has been having an affair with a married man and now finds herself pregnant, much to his dismay. Her urges her to 'deal' with it.


Joel, a wealthy engineer, who is staying at the guest house while he works overseeing the replacement of the roof on the village church.

Phyllis, an old friend of Esme's whose beloved husband Kurt is suffering from dementia. She wants Kurt to have one last 'good' summer in the guest house they've visited for years. With them is their widowed son and his four year old boy.

With characters that you come to care for, this was a marvellous and uplifting novel. The people faced some very realistic problems yet the overall tone remained hopeful. It is a book about making life-changing decisions, and having the courage to make them. It is also about contentment and being satisfied with what life has dealt you. Making the most of every day and finding joy in the ordinary.

As with most of this author's novels, the reader finishes the book with a smile. Uplifting women's fiction. Just what the doctor ordered...

4.5 stars rounded up

The Guest house by the Sea, a tranquil place where people go to sort their lives out, with invaluable advice from the owner, Esme. A wonderful read, perfect holiday reading.

Esme Goldthorp is in her 80’s and she is still running her Guest House near the beautiful shore of Ballycove, Ireland. Due to a fractured ankle, she finds herself relying on her good friend Marta to run the house. Esme spends her days mostly sitting in the parlor where she is available to her guests to offer a listening ear, support and some very interesting life stories that somehow are relevant to each guest’s particular need at the time. Many of the guests have vacationed here before and they bring with them good memories of times spent at the guest house in years gone by.
This summer some of her guests have returned with a heavy heart. Cora is escaping a marriage that seems loveless and lonely. Esme’s old friend Phillis is coming to terms with her husband’s dementia and another guest, Niamh, has found herself pregnant and the father is a married man.
There is a lot going on at the guest house this summer and Esma is a great comfort to all while handling her own troubles.
This book was a delight to read. I enjoyed all the characters and getting to know each person and their individual troubles. The Guest house offered a welcome respite to all, including this reader.

A wonderfully heartwarming book. Set in Ballycove, where the owner of the Willows guest house, Esme, offers every guest the benefit of her years of experience to guide them in making decisions to find a way forward past their particular stumbling blocks: dementia, pregnancy, or marriage breakdown. All this while Esme herself deals with her frail and ageing body

The Guest House by the Sea by Faith Hogan wasn’t at all what I anticipated. It turned out to be the place where a small variety of people with a handful of problems, met and through conversation, common sense, and relaxation, found the solutions to nearly everything bothering them. Esme, was in her eighties and she had owned the guest house, had for years. She was spry, but blind. She had a woman living with her helping: Marta who had run away from her husband across the water many years before. Marta moved things. In an attempt to find the register book, Esme moved a coffee table and climbed on top of it. Of course, she fell and damaged her ankle. They wanted to put her in a home but Marta wouldn’t allow it. Just as they’d been getting in the ambulance a woman showed up: Cora a women in her fifties, who had needed some time away from her marriage. Her husband had become blind to her and her needs. Cora later checked in a guest with a reservation, Joel Lawson, who was in town to supervise the repair of the church roof. He was an engineer, about Cora’s age. Soon Phyllis and her family arrived: her husband, adult son, and grandfather. She hoped to have a final family weekend before she told her son about his father’s illness, so like his father’s had been. And Niamh, a woman who had been sleeping with a married man and was now pregnant. She was bout 40 and this was her last chance at motherhood. She was here to take an abortion pill but she needed some time. Esme came home and sat watch in the lobby and spoke with the guests as they came through.

What a fabulous group. Esme, with her years of wisdom was able to help some of them. With some of them, nature just took its course. It was a heart-warming and interesting slice of life with a problem to suit every reader. The characters were well-written and real and the stories were from everyday life. Hogan did a masterful job in bringing them all together. There is really no plot, but there are sub-plots and they are handled with grace and subtlety. It was a supremely enjoyable book to relax into.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of The Guest House by the Sea by Aria & Aries, through Netgalley. All thoughts an opinions are mine. #Netgalley #AriaAndAries #FaithHogan #TheGuestHouseByTheSea

This was a simple, fun, easy and quick read. The perfect type of book for your holiday, beach, pool kind of read. The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

What a lovely novel, it takes you through life with all the different stages and emotions. I would love to be visiting this guesthouse by the sea, what a wonderful place to be. I highly recommend this book to be read by all. 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher for this ARC

Just what you need on your sun lounger! A gentle read, full of homespun hand knitted wisdom. A predictable enough ending but no worse for that!

Esme has a guesthouse on the Irish coast which she runs with the help of Marta. As the season is about to start, Esme has a fall and breaks her leg. With Marta running the guesthouse, Esme sits in the foyer and talks to the guests allowing the to talk through their problems.
Told by Esme and the guests, it was a little confusing remembering who was speaking, but the tale was good.

If you're searching for a book that will leave your heart warm, look no further.

Esme is all most ready for the new season at her guest house The Willows, when she has a fall that leaves her dependent on her dear friend Marta.

Cora is reaching breaking point with her husband Michael who has become old before his time.

Phyllis, Esme's best friend, is beyond sad watching her dear soulmate Kurt lose himself to dementia.

And Niamh has a life changing decision to make.

They all escape to the Willows, a place of beauty and refuge, where they form friendships that will guide and comfort.

Beautifully warm and wonderfully uplifting, Faith Hogan delivers heartfelt books that move and connect us.

This was a really easy read. Kind of like a hug in a book. A Sunday afternoon feel good kind of story.

I enjoyed the range of characters in this story and the peak we get into each of their lives. Choices are made, futures are changing and the guests all find a bit more of themselves during their stay in the guesthouse by the sea.

Elderly Esme the owner of a guest house delivers sweet stories and quotations to her troubled guests. The book is just a selection of these stories told to each guests to help them deal with what is troubling them. I think the guest house and surrounding area is picturesque but besides that it is just a feel good type of book where everyone has positive closures to their problems.

This was a lovely easy read. The Willows, the Irish guesthouse by the sea, run by Esme for 60 years. The night before the season opens, Esme has a bad fall and breaks her ankle. Fortunately her friend Marta is there to keep the place going and look after Esme. A stubborn independent 82 year old, Esme doesn't take kindly to being sat with her foot up in the hallway greeting guests. But these guests become friends, new and old. All with their own stories and reasons for escaping to the idyll that is Ballycove. Esme shares the wisdom of her years and all help each other. A beautiful story. #netgalley #theguesthousebythesea

EXCERPT: She remembered so clearly, years earlier, walking up the steep drive with weary legs after a day spent careening in and out of the waves and building sandcastles on the beach.
This evening, the sinking copper sun made the tall Victorian house blush as if it were a great old schoolgirl, still easily swayed by the gentle flattery of the elements around it. It was an assemblage of assorted windows pointing out at odd angles with the blue bangor slates falling like a heavy poncho down through several ravines and more windows jutting from the roof. At the very top, a line of soaring chimneypots rose to attention, like old generals, unwilling to stand down regardless of their futility in a time when the whole country wanted nothing less than carbon-neutral this and eco-friendly that. The window glass caught glints of light from the waves beneath spiking occasional flashes of gold and silver that meant the house was forever catching your eye, even though the view beneath was breathtaking.

ABOUT 'THE GUEST HOUSE': People come to the guest house for fresh air and views across the Atlantic. But if they're lucky, they might just leave with the second chance they didn't know they needed...

Esme has run the guest house for as long as anyone in Ballycove can remember. But in her declining years, her sight is failing, and when she has a fall on the eve of the summer season, she is forced to take a back seat for the first time in her life.

From her chair in the entry hall, not much passes Esme by. There's Cora, the wife visiting indefinitely... without her husband; Niamh, the city professional with a life-changing decision to make; and Phyllie, the grandmother whose family is slipping away from her.

Esme's guests provide the colour that helps her keep her grip on the world. All of them have something they want to escape – or to hold on to. But can Esme can help them find their way before the summer is over?

MY THOUGHTS: Author Faith Hogan said that this was a wonderful book to write. It's also a wonderful book to read. It's a wonderfully heartwarming and uplifting book about taking responsibility for your own happiness and not being afraid of opening your heart to new people in your life.

The characters are wonderful people, the setting magnificent, the plot thought provoking and heartwarming.

Esme, owner of the guest house, is a strong woman. She may be blind, but she sees and understands a lot more than most people. Phyllis, Esme's oldest friend, has always been sure of herself, and everything. But now her husband is showing signs of the dementia that took his father she is suddenly feeling unmoored and struggling with the realization that she's not invincible. Cora is taking time out from a stale marriage. Will she decide to resurrect the marriage or fall for the charms of another? Niamh is also taking time out. She has made a decision, but keeps putting off actually implementing it.

These people and a few others meet at the guest house: A group of random strangers who influence each other's lives in unexpected ways.

Definitely recommended. This is a book I lingered over, in absolutely no hurry to close the cover and say goodbye.

My favourite quote: 'It's true what they say about youth.'
'It's wasted on the young?'
'Yes. It's like happiness and contentment, we don't realise how precious it is until it's gone.'

⭐⭐⭐⭐.3

#TheGuestHouseByTheSea #NetGalley

I: @faithhoganauthor @headofzeus

T: @GerHogan @HoZ_Books

#contemporaryfiction #domesticdrama #irishfiction #love #romance #sliceoflife #smalltownfiction #womensfiction

THE AUTHOR: Faith Hogan is an Irish award-winning and bestselling author. She was born in Ireland. She gained an Honours Degree in English Literature and Psychology from Dublin City University and a Postgraduate Degree from University College, Galway.

She lives in the west of Ireland with her husband, four children and a very busy Labrador named Penny. She's a writer, reader, enthusiastic dog walker and reluctant jogger - except of course when it is raining!

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Head of Zeus, Aria, for providing a digital ARC of The Guest House by the Sea by Faith Hogan for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.