The Cliffs

February 1, 2024

Sullivan's Friends and Strangers was a best seller and a Read with Jenna pick. Her newest centers on a seaside Maine house that Jane loved exploring as a child. When the new owner becomes convinced that the house is haunted, she hires Jane to look into its history, uncovering more than expected. Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 6, 2024
Bestseller Sullivan (Friends and Strangers) toys with gothic and supernatural elements in her propulsive latest. After a drunken faux pas lands Harvard archivist Jane Flanagan in trouble at work and on the rocks with her husband, she moves back into her recently deceased mother’s house in coastal Maine. Grief and shame weigh heavily on her, so when Genevieve, the new owner of a neighboring cliffside mansion, offers Jane a research project, she jumps at the chance for a distraction. Genevieve has overheard her young son talking to someone in an upstairs bedroom who might be a ghost, and she asks Jane to investigate the house’s history, terrified that her renovations—including digging up graves to make room for a swimming pool—have disturbed the spirits of those buried on the property. The stories Jane discovers reach back through the Victorian era to encounters between Indigenous people and colonists, and include a rewarding twist that sheds light on long-held mysteries from Jane’s childhood. Sullivan leans on many pages of exposition and a few too many coincidences to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, but, for the most part, the plot motors along like a well-oiled machine. This satisfies.

June 1, 2024
The death of Jane Flanagan's estranged mother opens old wounds, and she returns to her childhood home in Maine to help her sister clean out their mother's house. Jane's friend Allison sends her to a psychic medium in hopes of providing her with some closure, but the visit brings up a mystery related to a dilapidated seaside mansion that Jane loved as a teenager. The mansion's new owner, Genevieve, hires Jane to research its history, and Jane struggles to connect the psychic's message with the unusual--possibly ghostly--occurrences happening in the home. Sullivan (Friends and Strangers, 2020) thoughtfully explores both Jane's inner life and the history of the Maine coast, weaving stories of settlers, Shakers, and Indigenous inhabitants of the area with the contemporary plot. Jane is a complex character shaped by her past and trying to figure out her future, and her research leads to an overarching theme: whose story is remembered and told, and why? Readers who enjoy the blend of history, interpersonal drama, and ghost story found in Karen White's Tradd Street series will feel right at home.

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June 1, 2024

This highly anticipated novel from Sullivan (Friends and Strangers) was worth the wait. Protagonist Jane is a Harvard archivist who, like her mother and sister, is addicted to alcohol. After getting blackout drunk at a work event, she finds her job, as well as her marriage, in jeopardy, making this the perfect time to escape from all her troubles. She heads up to Maine to settle her late mother's estate, which is complicated by the fact that her mother was a hoarder. As a teenager, Jane found an old abandoned Victorian house up high on a cliff nearby, which became her refuge. As an adult, she is surprised to learn that a wealthy young family has bought the house and turned it into a typical beach McMansion. The owner, who fears that the house is haunted, possibly due to some unsavory work she had done, hires Jane to research the house's history. That research is at the heart of this novel that spans generations and covers colonialism, Indigenous history, spiritualism, the Shakers, and so much more. VERDICT A beautifully written, expansive novel, sure to please fans of Daniel Mason's North Woods or the work of Kate Morton and Susanna Kearsley.--Stacy Alesi

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Starred review from June 15, 2024
A novel about a woman, a house, and the history that haunts them. Jane Flanagan, who lives in Awadapquit, Maine, with her alcoholic mother and chip-off-the-old-block sister, is in high school when she first sees the house, perched on a cliff overlooking the water. Deserted, rotting, and creepy, but boasting colorful turrets and an abiding sense of mystery, the abandoned Victorian home fascinates Jane. It becomes her refuge, where she can escape her life's hassles and feel at peace. Eventually, Jane goes to college (Wesleyan) and gets a graduate degree in American history (Yale). She lands her "dream job" as an archivist at Harvard and her dream husband, a handsome, kind economics professor who runs marathons and bakes. Then, in one boozy blowout of a night not long after her mother's death, Jane explodes her whole dreamy life. When she returns to Awadapquit to ready her mother's cluttered home for sale and contend with her equally messy legacy, Jane connects with Genevieve Richards, a wealthy woman who's bought the old house and, while renovating, heedlessly bulldozed its history. Has Genevieve stirred up the property's ghosts? Hired by Genevieve to unearth the house's secrets and its often painful past, Jane must contend with her own. Sullivan--whose bestsellers include, most recently, Friends and Strangers (2020)--writes with her usual compassion, insight, and sensitivity, creating multidimensional characters about whom, even as they make regrettable mistakes, the reader unwaveringly cares. She also tells a broader story of America's complicated history, weaving in accounts of Indigenous and Shaker women, and poses powerful questions about how to right the wrongs of the past. Sullivan artfully and astutely engages with difficult topics in this absorbing, affecting novel.

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