Three musketeers--that’s the image I conjured up when getting acquainted with Ariana, Ivy, and Cam. Three adults that had been brought up on Mariners a small beach community, were good close friends all through high school. Mariners was the place families go for beachfront vacations. Tourists come and go but THE SEASIDE LIBRARY is constructed around those who live there year-round. Now as adults each has carved out a life for themselves, and in fact they’re not even close anymore. Ariana is in NY with an important job. Cam is a successful architect. And Ivy is the owner, manager, and conservator of the local library left to her by her grandmother.

Now with Ariana back in Mariners, it is obvious that the three of them are going to come face to face with their pasts. Little hints about that past, vintage Brenda Novak, which seems to involve some tragic event. A body just discovered after being missing for the last twenty years. And somehow the three friends are linked to that young girl.

All three admit that they have been lugging around baggage of what had happened the night that Emily disappeared. The girls had acted as Cam’s alibi. In their hearts, they knew Cam was incapable of doing anything to Emily, but even after all these years, there was a niggle of doubt. Doubt that they had done the right moral thing in banding together. But really no doubt that any of them had done anything sinister resulting in her disappearance. Emily was thought to have been a victim of a kidnapping.

Now as adults, they seem to have come home to roost as they say. The investigation has been reopened. There is a private investigator snooping around. All three are candidly uncomfortable with the newest development in what had been for so many years just anxiety mostly hidden in their subconscious.

If you want to watch this brilliant author at her very best then search out THE SEASIDE LIBRARY by Brenda Novak as your next must-read. It is that good of a page-turner as facts and suspicions unravel at a fast pace keeping the amateur armchair detective on the edge of his seat. If you were expecting a simple seaside reunion with a dash of romance, then you haven’t met Brenda Novak.

I must admit that I read THE SEASIDE LIBRARY twice before actually writing the review. This is quite normal for me with almost anything written by Brenda Novak. Her books get dog-eared and THE SEASIDE LIBRARY is no exception.