SUNSET BAY – Susan Mallery
A Perfect 10
Pocket Star
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-6717-2
March 2009
Fiction

Los Angeles, California – Present Day

Eighteen-year-old Megan Greene has a family situation that is enough to drive her crazy. Her mother, Tina, forever bewails the fact that Megan has no style, no shape, no good looks, never dates, and will probably end up supporting herself since no man will marry her. Megan's thirteen-year-old sister Leanne is everything Megan isn't: cute, popular, and already has boys calling her. The only boy who ever looked at Megan was Travis Hunter, and he ended up in prison two years ago, something about beating up someone. The only reliable person in her life, her rock, is her father. He makes her feel special; it's him and her against mom and Leanne. Then one night at a party, Megan sees Travis again, and all the old feelings come rushing back. But several weeks later, Megan must make a decision, run off with Travis or stay home and go to college as her father wants. Megan loves Travis, but she feels she's still too much a child...why, she sleeps with her teddy bear, how can she do something so adult at this stage of the game? So Travis leaves for parts unknown and ten years later Megan is an accountant and engaged to marry Adam, a doctor, in just two weeks. Then something happens to tear her family apart, and Adam turns out not to be the man she believed in. Megan's either ready for suicide or a mental breakdown.

Travis Hunter's family life was impaired to say the least. His father was a criminal and beat his mother. Despite pleas from him, his mother would have nothing of punishing his father or calling in the police. At seventeen, Travis is put in jail for two years, and after coming out, he goes to work for his mother's landscaping company and tries to forget Megan with any other girl he can find. Megan is eighteen and innocent and sweet, he has no reason to try to ruin her life for her. But at a party, Megan comes up to him and he's unable to resist her soothing ways. After they sneak away for a weekend in Las Vegas, his mother calls and says she has found guns and money hidden by his father. Upon arriving home he tells his mother to call 911 and starts to beat up his father with a rage that grows as he thinks of every time he hit his mother. But mom tells the police he is beating up his father and Travis must run away. When Megan refuses to go with him, he is on his own and vows never to return. Ten years later, he is called back to town to help mom's business, and with his dad still in prison for the guns and money in his suitcase on that long ago day, she has no one else to rely upon.

The back and forths of Megan's and Travis's lives are so similar, yet so different. Megan gave up her dream of becoming a fashion designer and became an accountant and is almost married. Her only family ties are with her father; her sister still remains in her memory as mother's favorite and the beautiful one more deserving of her attention. Her mother remains the same, self-absorbed and needing the attention of everyone. But within the space of several days she loses her ties to her father, breaks off her engagement with only a week to go until the wedding, and her world becomes incomprehensible to her. And work, her last bastion of sanity, has a new employee named Carrie who seems intent on getting her in trouble just before partnerships are ready to be declared, so it's no wonder Megan's stressed to the max. Then she meets Travis again and the sparks are still there. Travis is also working for a landscaping company just as he used to do, but fixing and making motorcycles has been his escape from life for years. But the needs of making a living have never let him take a chance on doing what he really wants. Their ups and downs are very believable, and the mental anguish Megan goes through is enough to break your heart. But her sister Leanne tries to become a part of her life again and is fighting her own battles against the casting couch and getting jobs on her acting ability, not her sexual ability.

Wow, Susan Mallery has unequivocally amazed and impressed me with the power, passion, and emotional writing in SUNSET BAY. Character development that clearly shows Megan as a mixed up girl and woman, pretty much running her life by what her family tells her to do. Travis is a man who leaves home because he cannot change his mother's love for her abusive husband. Then as grown ups, Megan is about to get married and Travis is still living a life with no purpose and no future ahead of him. Leanne has grown up a spoiled young woman trying to make her way in the acting game. Told from each of their points of view, the drama and heartbreaking emotion is a perfect mixture of pain and misunderstanding. The depth and maturity of the writing totally rocked my world and has taken me to a place Susan Mallery never took me before. I'm not sure this review can capture all the nuances and mental pain family has caused both Megan and Travis, but needless to say we all learn how our parents have quite a bit to do with how we perceive ourselves and attain our self worth.

Megan's best friend, Allegra, was an outcast like her until modeling took her away in college. Her roommate from college is Payton, both of them joining forces to keep Megan sane when her world threatens to fall down. Megan's mother, Tina, is cast as the beautiful mother who worries about others loving her and making sure everyone takes care of her. Megan's father, Gary, was always her rock and champion, until something so horrific happens that he no longer considers her his child. Adam is Megan's fiancé; they're due to get married in a week, and after the upset with her father, she inadvertently finds out something she can't ever forgive. And good old sister Leanne wanted to hurt Megan any way she could as a teenager; she wanted both her mother and her father's attention, and Megan had to pay for hogging all of dad's attention. Leanne has now turned into a would-be actress, screwing producers and agents for any chance at a part, and doesn't know how to stop doing it.

SUNSET BAY is a MUST READ for anyone who loves Susan Mallery or heart tugging books with a story to tell of modern society and families. Strong writing that will make your heart race and situations that look hopeless to struggle through make this a dynamite read and so worthy of our Perfect 10 award that I would be remiss in not pointing out this sensational book to one and all. Be prepared to be dazzled by what I feel is the definitive story of a dysfunctional family and what it takes to survive with your soul intact.

Carolyn Crisher