Jennifer Vido: For readers unfamiliar with the Cape Sanctuary series, please give us a brief overview. What makes it such a special place?
RaeAnne Thayne: Cape Sanctuary is a fictitious town in northern California, roughly based around Trinidad. It’s a community made up of sometimes quirky, always caring people who consider themselves fortunate to live in a place of beauty and peace, where neighbors help each other. I call Utah my home, eight hundred miles from the nearest beach, but I absolutely adore beach towns. I took two of my favorites, Cannon Beach, OR and Pacific Grove/Carmel, CA, and combined them to come up with Cape Sanctuary, a place beloved equally by artists, writers and those who love the outdoors.
Each of the five books in the series (THE CLIFF HOUSE, THE SEA GLASS COTTAGE, THE PATH TO SUNSHINE COVE, SUMMER AT THE CAPE and now THE CAFÉ AT BEACH END) is a standalone title, connected to the other books in the title only by geography. It doesn’t matter which book readers start with!
Jen: What inspired THE CAFE AT BEACH END?
RaeAnne: I love reading about characters who have reached rock bottom, with nowhere else to go, so they turn to the one place they always found peace. That’s the case with Meredith Collins, a woman who is reviled for reasons that were wholly outside of her control. After she has lost everything, she holds onto the only thing she can, her half-share in a café in a little California beach town, left to her by her grandmother. Unfortunately, she has to contend with her cousin, who inherited the other half of the café and despises her more than anyone else does.
Jen: What’s happening in Meredith Collins's life that takes her back to Cape Sanctuary?
RaeAnne: After Meredith was caught up in a web of lies and deception spun by her late ex-husband, who died in prison a year ago after being convicted on multiple fraud charges, she is desperate for a new start. She couldn’t be there for her grandmother in Frances’s waning years but now Meredith wants to make it up to her widowed cousin Tori, the one who cared for their grandmother, who kept the Café at Beach End running … and who absolutely doesn’t want anything to do with Meredith.
Jen: Why does Meredith have a rocky relationship with her cousin Tori?
RaeAnne: Once they were the dearest of friends. When they were eighteen, they had plans to take a summer and travel around Europe. Meredith couldn’t fight her parents’ expectations of her, however, so she backed out of their plans. Tori certainly could have gotten over that. After Meredith turned her back on Cape Sanctuary – and especially their grandmother Frances – Tori decided Meredith was just like her parents. Snobbish, greedy and cold.
Jen: What draws Meredith to Liam Byrne?
RaeAnne: At first, he is the only person in town who reaches out to her. While others are casually kind, Liam genuinely seems to want to spend time with her. Considering the hell of the last year as she dealt with her divorce, losing everything and her ex-husband’s trial, conviction and subsequent death in prison, Meredith is bruised and broken. Liam’s kindness begins to help her heal … but will he still want to spend time with her if he truly knew her identity, the most despised woman in Chicago? Meredith has no idea that Liam has secrets of his own … and his motivation for befriending her might not be as innocent as it seems.
Jen: What’s your current work in progress?
RaeAnne: I just finished a book that will come out as part of Harlequin’s 75th Anniversary edition next summer. It’s part of my Women of Brambleberry House series, set on Cannon Beach. This is likely the final book in that series and tells the story of Jenna Haynes, who first appeared in A Brambleberry Summer. I’m now starting a new trade paperback about two sisters whose lives were indelibly altered twenty years ago. One has written a touching, emotional memoir about what happened to them, which leaves the other sister feeling exposed to the world. I can’t wait to write their book!
Jen: What’s on your TBR stack?
RaeAnne: So many books!! I am so behind on my reading. I realized the other day that I have listened to far more books than I’ve read in the past few months. On my Kindle, I’ve been re-reading two series, JD Robb’s IN DEATH series and Julie Ann Long’s Pennyroyal Green series. Love them both! The most recent audiobook I enjoyed was a biography of Michelangelo’s life and trials as he frescoed the Sistine Chapel.
Jen: What’s the best way for readers to stay connected with you?
RaeAnne: I am available via most social media platforms but I’m most active on my Facebook page, AuthorRaeAnneThayne, and on Instagram @RaeAnneThayne I can also be reached via email through my website.
Jen: Thanks for stopping by to chat about The Cafe at Beach End. Best of luck with your new release!
RaeAnne: Thank you so much! It was my pleasure.
Cape Sanctuary #5
A Summer Beach Read
For fans of Debbie Macomber and Susan Wiggs, an emotional story of starting over and reclaiming happiness.
When Meredith Collins was a child, the little beach town of Cape Sanctuary lived up to its name. Spending summers there with her grandmother, Meredith finally felt safe and loved.
Now she’s returning in disgrace. Her late ex-husband swindled investors out of millions of dollars and made Meredith a figure of scorn—though she knew nothing about his scheme. But she still has the beach cottage she inherited from her grandmother and half ownership of the local café. It’s a place to work and earn a little money. That’s if her cousin, Tori, will let her through the door. Once, Tori and Meredith were as close as sisters—until Meredith chose her neglectful parents’ expectations over their bond. Now widowed with a teenage daughter, Tori isn’t setting out a welcome mat for the woman who let her down so badly.
While Meredith tries to make a fresh start, she is drawn to a mysterious writer renting the cottage next door. Liam Byrne’s kindness is a balm, though she worries he might not be so friendly if he knew who she was. But Liam has his own secret and a mission that will help Meredith confront her past—and maybe, claim a surprising future…
Women's Fiction Contemporary [Canary Street Press, On Sale: June 13, 2023, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781335458162 / eISBN: 9780369736697]
Five stars for this amazing story about starting over
Stories of Hope, Healing, and Heart
RaeAnne Thayne will do anything to tell a story. In 15 years as a newspaper reporter and editor, she rode along with a motorcycle gang, took a trip in a hot air balloon and even gave a hunky country music star her home phone number (it was for an interview -- honest!).
When she wasn't working as a journalist, though, RaeAnne worked on her real love -- writing romance novels. She dreamed of publishing a book long before she ever thought it was possible. In fact, college friends used to spend hours when they should have been studying, trying to help her come up with a good pseudonym (none of which she actually ended up using, since she writes under her own name!).
After graduating from college, she took a job as a reporter at a daily newspaper, then moved to news editor. It wasn't until she was home on maternity leave after the birth of her first child in 1990 that RaeAnne seriously tried her hand at fiction writing. She sold her first book in 1995 and quit her editor job two years later to write full-time.
She is a two-time recipient of the Heart of Romance Reader's Choice award and has been a finalist for the RITA and for the National Reader's Choice award.
Jennifer Vido writes sweet romances set in the Lowcountry filled with southern charm and hospitality. In between chapters, she interviews authors for her bi-weekly Jen’s Jewels column on FreshFiction.com. Most mornings, she teaches an arthritis-friendly water exercise class for seniors before heading to the office to serve as the executive director of a legal non-profit. A New Jersey native, she currently lives in Maryland with her husband and two rescue dogs and is the proud parent of two sons who miss her home-cooked meals. To learn more, please visit her website.
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