We all deal with grief in our own unique way. Willa was so devestated by her husband Ben’s death that she practically imploded, she shut down just about everything but her overwhelming grief. Unfortunately, that reaction meant that her son Jamie didn’t have his mother to help him deal with his own grief over his father’s death.

By the time Willa’s grief has settled to a lesser pain the damage in her relationship with her son was already done. Now estranged, each alone in their grief they need to find their way back. Years pass, and it’s now time to face their past once again… and perhaps heal with the help of the one person they both love.

Every Time You Go Away is an emotional story with many layers of grief, acceptance and recovery. It is, at times, not an easy story to read for the grief flows off of the page right into your heart. Watching Willa and Jamie deal with the beach house, with the memories that it brings back is heartbreaking and yet healing. Ben’s ghost adds such a poignant touch to this story. Willa and Kristen, her best friend, relive memories this last summer at the beach house, while Jamie and Kelsey pick up their childhood friendship with ease. I enjoyed my time in this world. It is emotional, healing in many ways and realistic in how we all grieve and heal differently.

*I received an e-ARC of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley. That does not change what I think of this story. It is my choice to leave a review giving my personal opinion about this book.*

Poignant and well-written. This is a touching story of love and loss, of coming to terms and rebuilding. The characters are compelling and the reader feels like they know them personally. This is a book that many will be able to relate to.

This is the first Beth Harbison book I have read and I was pleased with the book. I am not a huge fan of ghosts or spirits but she did it very tastefully. By the end of the book I was almost wishing my Papaw would come visit me so I could tell him I love him one more time.

Willa's husband died three years ago of a heart attack while working at their Ocean City, Maryland beach house. This summer she has decided it is time to put the beach house up for sale. She gets there and realizes a lot of work needs to be done on the inside and outside before she can put it up for sale. Not long after she arrives her husband's spirit visits her. At first she thinks she is cracking up but the more she visits the more she realizes he is there for a reason. As the summer progresses her son, best friend and best friend's daughter come to help her get the house in order and help her finally deal with her husband's death. It is a summer of change for everyone.

I am not 100% sure that Willa's husband's spirit actually came to visit or her. I think in her grief she wished for a connection to him and conjured him up in her subconscious when she needed the connection to him. I believe there is a bit of Willa in all of us when we lose someone close to us. We want that person to be here with us and look for any sign to show is that they are here with us.

They relationship between Willa and her son Jamie is very believable. I was impressed with how much he grew in a few weeks at the shore with his mom especially when he got rid of the psycho girlfriend. The scary idea is the psycho girlfriend was so real. Sad to say my own son had one of those for a while. I was glad to read a story where the someone was strong enough to break it off and not keep dragging the relationship out continuously.

Every Time You Go Away is a tender, heart wrenching book that will make you think about how short life is and how quickly it can change.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher, St. Martin's Press, through NetGalley. Any and all opinions expressed in the above review are entirely my own.

I understand that authors write what they know. And it would appear that the death of Beth Harbison's ex-husband influenced this book. I'm sorry for her loss. Still, overall the book wasn't that interesting. And the character's dead husband just seemed to speak in cliche. I skimmed after a while. The story, the dialogue, the characters were not anything out of the ordinary.

Normally I steer clear of novels with an element of the paranormal, but I totally enjoyed Every Time You Go Away by Beth Harbison. The ghost of Ben was not so far-fetched as to take away from an otherwise realistic story. However, I did wonder how Willa was able to financially support two homes on a teacher's salary after having sudden widowhood thrust upon her. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book. I definitely plan to read more by this author.

This was a refreshing story about second chances, friendship, reconnecting, living life, and healing after tragedy. Definitely recommend this one for a weekend when you can put your feet up and escape for a little while.

**Received this ARC for review from the publisher via NetGalley**

‘Everytime You Go Away’ is a light, quick, enjoyable read.
Willa’s husband, Ben, died unexpectedly while making repairs at their beach house. It has taken Willa three years to get up the courage to return to the beach house and get it in order to sell. She does not want to keep the beach house filled with memories without her husband.
When Willa returns to the beach house she finds that it is not only filled with Ben’s memories but it is filled with his ghost as well.
I enjoyed how the author portrayed the friendships in the book, how Willa could lean on Kristin and how Jamie could lean on Kelsey.
This is a sweet story about saying goodbye and moving on as well as a story about friendships and family.

Every Time You Go Away is a touching, quick read. Featuring Willa, a widow of several years who is finally returning to the beach house where her husband died, with the intention of packing up and selling, and her son Jamie, a surly teenager battling with his own memories. With a beach setting and a tender plot, this will be a good recommendation for those looking for easy summer reading. It's a bit sad as Willa begins to communicate with her husband's ghost, who clearly tells her he's just there to help her move on, and she's struggling with the memories the house holds. I did feel that the ending was a little abrupt, but still found it overall enjoyable and one that will be a great traditional "beach reads" style recommendation.

I was very happy that I chose to read Every Time You Go Away while at the beach since it proved to be just the sort of escape that I was looking for; Beth Harbison has written a sweet and touching yet not overly heavy read (until the last few pages that had me sobbing!) with her newest novel that is just perfect!

Willa Bennett, a young schoolteacher, lost the love of her life three years ago when her husband Ben suddenly died from a rare and unknown heart condition at the young age of 36 while alone at their family beach home in Ocean City, Maryland. They'd been a couple since they were teenage sweethearts and had a young son together, Jamie who is now 17 years old. Since Ben's death, Willa has been buried in her grief and completely unable to move on. In that time she's also not given Jamie the type of support that he's needed to get past the death of his father. She's been wallowing in her despair and both she and Jamie have suffered because of it.

Yet, Willa finally decides that it's time to move on, so she takes the first step by deciding to sell the beach house where Ben died. She hasn't been there since Ben's death, so she heads there with her dog along for the ride to fix the place up but when she gets there, she sees Ben everywhere. And it's not just memories of Ben that keep flashing across her mind although being there brings back many memories of their being together...Willa literally sees Ben. His ghost. While she thinks she's losing her mind, she isn't. He's there to not only let her hear from him again how much he loves her and always will, but to tell her that she has to move on and even find a new love.

While not everyone might not care for a book that has a ghost as a character, I personally loved Ben and thought his and Willa's relationship was just wonderful. It was sweet and touching if anything. Also, Harbison really captured the emotions of the characters in the book in such a real way and a wonderful job writing about moving on after being struck a tragic blow. Even though the book is not a heavy read, when there are moments that Willa is grief-stricken while either talking to Ben about how much she wants him to come back to them or her friend Kristin about Ben, you can just feel the depths of her emotions. As I said the ending left me sobbing, so it is a bit emotional! But I'm also a huge crier when I read too!

Every Time You Go Away is tender, beautifully written, has moments of humor, is full of friendship and love, and will tug at your heartstrings. Harbison has deftly shown in her new novel how sorrow and grief can be turned to hope for a new tomorrow. This is one book that I highly recommend you add to your summer TBR!

**Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for my fair and honest review.**

This was the most emotional book I have read this year, maybe in the last decade. Willa is a young widow and mother. When she decides to sell the beach house where get husband died three years ago, she believes it is the best thing for her and her son. When Ben died, so did a part of Willa and she started to neglect her son. Not intentionally, but she couldn't find a way out of the darkness to be there for her son.
Once at the beach house, she starts repairing and renovating the property so she will be able to sell. This is when the waterworks Nathan, for me at least. She starts thinking that she is seeing Ben, but knows she us only imagining it. When she starts hearing and conversing with him, the deep connection they shared is obvious.
What would you do if you had the chance to talk to and see a loved one again? Could to let go a second time and be better for it? Or, would you fall apart again? I cried so much, especially when they were talking and I could see and feel their connection and how much that loved each other. Would Willa still decide to sell the house or find a way to make peace with what happened?
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest, voluntary review.

I loved this book. Now I generally love Beth Harbison’s books, and was going to read it no matter what, but I will admit I was a little skeptical when I realized that the main character was seeing her dead husband’s ghost. Harbison gets a pass since a few years back, she lost her husband at a relatively young age....but still that didn’t mean I would necessarily enjoy the book.

But the more I read, the more I liked. It also didn’t hurt that it was set in Ocean City, MD, one of my favorite places to vacation, and referenced the Boardwalk and a lot of the local beach eats. I really liked how Harbison tackled a really sad subject and brought light and humor to it without keeping it in a maudlin state, and how the protagonist’s son’s perspective balanced out the family dynamics.

If you vacation in OCMD, or you’ve suffered loss at a young age, or just love Harbison’s books, there are a bunch of reasons to read her latest, and I would highly encourage it.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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 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.

Poignant, touching, and sweet!

Every Time You Go Away is a tender, moving novel that takes you on a journey into the life of Willa Bennett as she learns how to cope with unexpectedly losing the love of her life, enduring the heartache involved in acknowledging and accepting the loss, surviving the grief, healing as a family, and learning to live again.

The prose is heartfelt and immersive. The characters are lonely, scarred, and endearing. And the story is an absorbing tale about life, loss, love, grief, familial drama, friendship, relationship dynamics, courage, parenthood, moving on, happiness, and first loves all interwoven with a thread of the paranormal.

Every Time You Go Away is another uplifting, beautiful tale by Harbison that reminds us that love is powerful and everlasting, and that life is precious and should always be lived to the fullest.

Willa is our main character. As stated in the description, she was widowed three years earlier and hasn’t dealt well with it.

She returns to the beach house where Ben had passed away. She is surprised that it is not in good condition. This house represents her life. She has wallowed in her grief and many relationships along with the house have suffered. She will need to put some work into the house in order to sell it. By coming to terms with the house and working through the repairs, she will also mend and build stronger relationships with family and friends.

An emotional ride. Take it but have a box of tissues handy.

This was not my favorite book. I struggled to embrace the supernatural aspect of the novel. It is not one that I would choose to read again, but I know that several people loved this book.

Willa lost the love of her life too early. Like most that are grieving, grief takes a hold of our hearts, minds, and souls, Beth Harbison writes a great book which takes you through the life of Willa after the loss of her husband, Ben. Their son, Jamie, has lost his dad and somewhat has lost his mother as she deals with the pain. For three years, Willa flounders along with Jamie. Now Willa has to deal with selling their beach house, their annual retreat spot, and also the place where Ben died alone. As Willa deals with preparing the house for sale, Ben makes his presence felt in more ways than one. Kristen, Willa's best friend, and Kelsey, Kristen's daughter, come and join in their last summer. Jamie comes in and helps with preparations and finds himself also after dealing with a girlfriend issue. It was a great book that will have you giggling some, cheering for Willa and Jamie, and just a "feel good" ending. This was the first book I have read by Ms. Harbison and I will be reading more. Thank you to Ms. Harbison, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

There are actually two blurbs regarding this book on GoodReads and I kind of wish that the other blurb were the real one but I live in a lovely fantasy world where I have powers. This is one of those books where nothing happens, nothing happens and then bam, a lot happens and the author didn't appear to have time to wrap it all up so parts of the last 30% of the book seemed rushed to me. I remember glancing at the percentage thinking, that's all that's left? There's so much to do!

Willa decides to go to the beach house she owns with her late husband. She hasn't been there since he died in the house three years ago, leaving her and their son Jamie to find their new normal and learn how to cope. There's a couple of chapters of flashbacks to shortly after Ben died that seemed unnecessary to the plot to me but I think it was more about character development. Jamie and Willa don't have the best relationship. Willa hates his girlfriend (so do I) and nags him all the time. Jamie is a teenager and really just wants to be left alone. They both are grieving in their own way but their communication suuuucks.

Most of the book was Willa getting the house ready to sell and talking to Ben's ghost. Right, so there's a ghost. Ben keeps showing up to talk to Willa and everyone else thinks she's a lunatic as they keep catching her talking to herself. Through conversations with Ben, Willa begins to grieve and starts being more present to the people in her life, including Jamie and her BFF Kristen, who comes to stay at the beach house with them to help prep it for sale. Kristen brings her daughter Kelsey who is the same age as Jamie. We see the two of them rekindle their friendship from when they were kids while we are watching Willa grieve.

While I thought the book was a good look at grief and loss, I found it underwhelming when it came to the other plot points. There were too many things that seemed rushed, especially towards the end. I was left with a lot of questions, which is normal for women's fiction, and why I don't read a lot of it. I need my HEAs dangit.

Overall, While You Were Gone is a good character study and look at the grieving process. I give the book a solid 3 out of 5 stars. It wasn't bad, it wasn't amazing.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance copy of the story.

I really like it when a story is set in a town I am familiar with (like Ocean City) but I was not able to finish reading this novel -- I just couldn't buy the storyline of Willa seeing and talking to Ben's ghost...it just seemed too ridiculous to me. I was very disappointed because I was looking forward to reading it so much but I just couldn't stay with it and I hate to leave a poor review.

In this emotional novel about tragedy, grief and moving on after loss, the author captures the attention of the reader quickly by including a paranormal element. Ben died of a heart attack, alone at the family’s Ocean City beach house. The book opens with his widow Willa deciding to return to the beach house and prepare it for sale. The house has been abandoned for three years, since Ben’s death there, so it needs a lot of repairs, cleaning and some tender loving care. This is a very unique story because Ben’s ghost appears to Willa and they communicate. Doesn’t everyone want a last chance to say good-bye to someone that you have lost suddenly? That is the wish that is granted to Willa in this book. She also gets the chance to repair the broken relationship with her son Jamie, whom she has neglected since Ben’s untimely death. The character of Willa is very realistic, causing the reader to identify with her and her being lost in her grief. I enjoyed seeing Jamie re-connect and get a close friendship with Kelsey, the daughter of Willa’s best friend Kristin. So, this book is about loss, grief, friendship and ultimately, moving on. It was a good read, but hard to take at times because of the sudden appearing of Ben and how Willa dealt with seeing him after he had died. That made the book definitely fiction for me and not as realistic as I would have liked it. On the other hand, the paranormal element may draw more readers who are interested in that kind of thing.

“Every Time You Go Away” by Beth Harbison is an emotional and ghostly tale about Willa, a mom who is widowed and raising her son Jamie alone; however, because of the death of her husband Ben, she and her son’s relationship has been strained. Willa can’t seem to get past grieving the death of her husband and has been putting her son’s welfare on the back burner. When Willa arrives at the beach home where Ben died three years ago, her plan is to get it ready for sale, as she has no desire to live there without her husband. While she is spending her last summer there, continuous visits from her husband's ghost help Willa move on with her life, leave the past behind and start living. Although this is an easy and fast summer read, it is also a gripping, emotional novel about life and death, grieving, healing and moving on.
This book was given to me as an ARC from Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an honest and unbiased review.