Book Review: Tea by the Sea

Title: Tea by the Sea
My Rating: 5
Genre:
Format: ARC*
Publication Date: June 1, 2020
Author: Donna Hemans

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~Book Blurb~

A seventeen-year-old taken from her mother at birth, an Episcopal priest with a daughter whose face he cannot bear to see, a mother weary of searching for her lost child: Tea by the Sea is their story-that of a family uniting and unraveling. To find the daughter taken from her, Plum Valentine must find the child’s father who walked out of a hospital with the day-old baby girl without explanation. Seventeen years later, weary of her unfruitful search, Plum sees an article in a community newspaper with a photo of the man for whom she has spent half her life searching. He has become an Episcopal priest. Her plan: confront him and walk away with the daughter he took from her. From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, Tea by the Sea traces Plum’s circuitous route to find her daughter and how Plum’s and the priest’s love came apart.

~My Thoughts~

Sometimes books come around that are so emotional and gripping that the story stays with you long after you finish the last page. Tea by the Sea is one of those books.

Tea by the Sea is a story of love and betrayal, hope and despair, how a person can be both lost and found.

One of the most striking moments for me was the scene where Plum realizes her daughter is gone. She’s just given birth, wakes up to find her daughter missing. Tragic enough on its face, but the father has stolen her and entirely disappeared.

This is where Donna Hemans grabbed and pulled me into this family’s story.

It wasn’t the unbelievable circumstances, but rather, the incredible writing of what is every woman’s worst nightmare. The loose belly and full breasts that only occur after the birth of a child, were used to underscore the clawing desperation Plum felt when you daughter was ripped out of her body and heart. I was with her in that moment and had genuine tears for a character I barely knew.

This story is a true journey of discovering that somehow still builds hope throughout desperate circumstances. I really hope you choose to give Donna Hemans some of your reading time, because you will not regret it.

~About the Author~

Jamaican-born Donna Hemans is the author of the novel River Woman, winner of the 2003-4 Towson University Prize for Literature. Tea by the Sea, for which she won the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award for Adult Literature, is her second novel. Her short
fiction has appeared in the Caribbean Writer, Crab Orchard Review, Witness, and the anthology Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad, among others. She received her undergraduate degree from Fordham University and an MFA from American University. She lives in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Red Hen Press, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.

*Special thanks to Donna Hemans, Red Hen Press, and Rachel’s Random Resources providing a copy of Tea by the Sea in exchange for an honest review.