Beth Harbison

Willa Bennett has been lost ever since her husband, Ben, passes away suddenly from an undetected heart condition while alone at their beach house. Willa used to believe in happily ever afters, but now she is lonely and has lost all hope of ever recovering enough to be the mother her son needs. Three years later, Willa has finally come to the realization that it was time for her to join life again and to reconnect with her son Jamie who is now seventeen years old. Willa decides it would be show more best to pack up and move into the beach house where her husband passed at least for the summer to fix up the house so she could sell it. There are just too many memories of the life she shared with her husband to want to keep it. The house has been an empty tomb for the past three years and going back there will be hard, but Willa is determined to put the past behind her and to stop being a failure to her son when he so desperately needs her. When Willa starts seeing the ghost of her husband, Ben, at the beach house is she finally able to accept his death and move on from the life she once shared with him?

Every Time You Go Away is a such a heartfelt story about life, love and death that is told in such an honest and realistic way. We have all lost a loved one in some point in our lives and the emotional toll it can take on you is heart wrenching. It is so easy to sympathize with what Willa has gone through with losing a husband at such a young age. We never think that someone so young and vibrant can pass away in an instant, but it happens more often than you think. So I can understand the despair and the total aching loss of losing the one person you love the most. Married couples often talk about what they are going to do when they grow old together, Willa lost all of that when he husband suddenly dies. She is left an emotional wreck that not even medication can pull her out from.

I really felt myself engrossed into the story right from the beginning and really loved the ghost aspect to the storyline. I do believe that loved ones can come to you and speak to you, maybe not to the extent that is in this story, but in a more subtle way. I do believe you need to be open to the possibility of ghosts in order to see and hear them. One of my favorite movies even till this day is Ghost with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze and Everytime You go Away has certain aspects to the love story of this movie which made me really connect with the characters even more. I loved the scenes with Ben as a ghost and felt he really helped Willa comes to terms with his death.

Willa also ropes in her son, Jamie, her best friend Kristin and her daughter Kelsey to come help with the renovation of the beach house and here is when the story really opens up the life and laughter that has been missing for far too long in Willa’s life. You can really see the awakening in Willa and you can’t help but to root for her to finally find a way to accept everything that has happened in her life and to learn to embrace life and live life to the fullest.

Beth Harbison has such a way of pulling you into the story and feeling as if you are on that beach, feeling the breeze from the ocean and the sand through your toes. Harbison’s writing style is lyrical and poetic in its simplicity. She shows us that loss doesn't mean the end of life and that laughter and family and learning to live after a tragic loss all has meaning and a purpose in our lives. show less

The readability of this book truly depends upon the personality of the reader.

A friend of mine gave this book to me because she thought it was cute and she thoroughly enjoyed it. I, on the other hand, did not enjoy it at all.

During a Christmas Eve snowstorm, Noelle finds herself locked inside the high-end department store for which she works. It is a dream come true! While looking forward to a night of luxurious sleeping accommodations, gourmet foods, and round the clock shopping, Noelle show more is rudely interrupted by her guardian angel, Charlie—an aggravatingly smug old woman who says “Zooterkins” at regular intervals. Over the course of the night, Charlie prompts Noelle to remember decisions she made in her past; Charlie then reveals the alternate scenarios for what would have happened if Noelle had only made the “right” decisions. All of these “right” scenarios center on Noelle eventually getting asked out on a date by her childhood classmate, Jacob Marsden. Christmas Eve culminates with Noelle finally learning her lesson and making the “right” decision to go to Italy with her friend, Lorna, on a buying trip…with the inevitable results.

Noelle is a successful woman who has friends, a job she loves, and a life she is reasonably happy with. In fact, despite the standard heartbreaks and regrets most human beings share, she is pretty content; until her guardian angel comes along and browbeats her with just how miserable and pathetic she really is. And her guardian angel is bound and determined not to quit harassing Noelle until poor, silly Noelle realizes just how big of a failure she is…without a man. The angel even quotes a parable that equates Noelle’s inability to snag a man with a stubborn man’s death by drowning. But, never fear, the guardian angel is administering CPR by giving Noelle one last chance to fix her broken life by shoving Jacob Marsden into the picture once more. Zooterkins.

Does anyone’s idea of a guardian angel really tally with this old buttinsky? I certainly hope not.

And Jacob Marsden himself is no dreamboat. His pushy demeanor and constant reappearance in the angel-corrected version of Noelle’s life make it genuinely seem as if he is supernaturally stalking her. It’s both creepy and unsettling.

Readers who are inclined to exaggeratedly twee sentimentality and who enjoy a corny bit of romance will probably eat this book up over the holidays. For readers like me who are sick to death of reading about women who have to be attached to men to have meaningful lives, this book is about as agonizingly painful as being caught in a beartrap. show less

If I Could Turn Back Time by Beth Harbison is an "if I knew then what I know now" kind of time travel book.

The writing is good but there were times when I felt Harbison had already made her point yet insisted on saying the same thing in a slightly different manner. That was probably the biggest let down in the book. Each nuanced retelling of a thought was well-written but even the superior writing couldn't overcome the deja vu effect. That said, the story was still quite good.

I think show more Harbison's greatest strength, in other books as well, is her characterizations. She makes her characters easy to appreciate on their own terms and, mostly, likeable. Even better than being likeable I think is that she makes them understandable. Whether I might like or dislike a character, if I can understand her then I can empathize.

Aside from the repetition of some thoughts the other stumbling block for me was what I will call the fun element. I want a character who travels back to a time we have all likely imagined going back to to have fun with it. A little less overthinking and a bit more "what the hell, go for it." I just didn't feel the fun from Ramie so I didn't have the level of fun I wanted to experience vicariously through her.

While I don't think this is Harbison's best work I would still recommend this to readers who like to ponder the idea of going into our past and re-living some moments. I do think this will appeal more to those who like the lessons learned from such stories more than the pure fun of them. But there is enough of both to satisfy.

Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads' First Reads. show less

Colleen Bradley is happy with her discordant life but often wonders what would have happened if she hadn’t gotten pregnant 15yrs ago. Wonders if her husband would have still chosen her of if he would have spent his life with someone else. A boy’s trip for her son and husband gives her the perfect opportunity to plan a little road trip of her own to restock her antique shop Junk and Disorderly and to do a little soul searching. But the best laid plans are never faultless and she’s just show more learned her bump in the road will be sharing it with her recalcitrant 16yr old niece.
Motherless and stuck with a father who rarely bothers except for dishing out punishment, which happens often for sixteen-year-old delinquent Tamara Bradley. She knows she’s heading down the wrong path but doesn’t seem able to stop and now she’s expected to go on this lame trip with a tattletale aunt who she doesn’t know or like.
Bitty Camalier's life is in the toilet and she just wants to end it all but first she’s going to have one last meal for old times sake at the diner she and her college friends used to frequent, the last place she was happy. But when she leaves not only has her car been stolen with all her money and her suicide weapon but right there witnessing it all is a woman she hasn't seen in ages, her best friend from college who’s picking right up where she left off all those years ago and picking up the sorry pieces of Bitty’s life.
What starts out, as a road trip for one quickly becomes a sojourn for these three wounded souls who will be different people at the end of this journey of self-discovery.

Driving With The Top Down is a fabulous mix of Fried Green Tomatoes, Steel Magnolias and Thelma and Louise with the one-of-a-kind voice of Beth Harbison. Her storytelling brilliance shines through once again in this at times enlightening, disturbing and genuine tale of three very different women thrown together and all in need of healing. Her characters are funny, witty, wounded and amazingly authentic from the nurturing Colleen, the slightly narcissist/depressed Bitty and the devastatingly crushed and heading straight for disaster Tamara. Readers will laugh and cry, share the triumphs and tragedies but most of all will be right along on this very special journey. Her narrative brings to life the sights, sounds, people and cadence of the south gives a fly on the wall account of her special story. If it’s women’s fiction you love, Southern Fried fiction you crave or a real look at life you’re after this is your next must read. show less