An alternate title could have been Lucy and William Redux. Once again this long divorced couple is back together for another road trip to New England. In Oh, William they were searching for the sister William recently discovered his mother had left behind when she left his father for another man.
Now COVID-19 is on the move and so are Lucy and William. William tells Lucy to pack up-they're going to New England to escape the pandemic.
They settle into an old house overlooking the sea. That's pretty much all the action. Lucy again ruminates on her past, her dysfunctional family and it's impact on her life. William establishes a relationship with his sister and her family.
There are tragedies some related to COVID and others not.
I liked the catch ups about characters from other books - Olive, Isabelle and the Burgess boys but for me, William and Lucy have run their course.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read this title.

“When you are truly humbled, that can happen. I have come to notice this in life. You can become bigger or bitter, this is what I think. And as a result of that pain, I became bigger.” Lucy Barton, Amhash #4

Lucy and William are back, and the ever changing emotional and environmental landscape of Maine is at the heart of this story. As they navigate new challenges brought on by the pandemic, the richness of these characters comes to life. This could be read as a stand-alone book, but I think the reader experience will be greatly enhanced by reading “Oh, William” first.

It is a rare and wonderful thing that a novel pierces your heart with such force and precision that you find yourself on the verge of tears from cover to cover. To-date I had not connected with any of the “pandemic novels” out there, which have slowly been released. Ms. Strout’s latest has me reeling, for the following reasons:
I also fled to Maine during the pandemic, and have remained here.
I also sheepishly surrendered my out of state driver’s license to officially become a Maine resident (when they punched holes through my Texas one, it looked like gunshots, which I found disturbingly appropriate).
I also have adult children who were affected by permanent, severe and traumatic change during the past 3 years.
I also have been devastated by my sibling’s untimely and heartbreaking death.
I also have been forced to take an introspective look into my life.

What I imagine will be the universal message of Lucy by the Sea will be that we truly are connected by the loneliness, fear and uncertainty we have all faced. Maybe understanding this will bring some solace to the burdens we bear.

I will be making some edits to my review before publication to give this novel the credit it so richly deserves, but wanted to express to the publishers how deeply it moved me. Thank you Net Galley and Random House Publishing for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Reflective, moderately paced, occasionally surprising…I loved this continuation of the Lucy Barton story. This is the fourth, and I haven’t read the second one yet, so it’s not necessary to read them all or in order to appreciate this book. Posted on Instagram, @jant.reads

I'm always excited to see a new Elizabeth Strout book and really appreciated the ARC from NetGalley! Lucy is such an interesting character--passive and passionate at the same time. Lucy by the Sea started off a little slowly for me, but I was soon drawn into the story of Lucy's life during the pandemic. So many of the day-to-day details resonated with me and captured the sense of disconnection from the world we knew and creation of a new bubble of our own to get through. Highly recommend.

Oh how I loved meeting up with my friend Lucy Barton again. There is just something special about Elizabeth Strout's writing that draws me in. I had doubts that a book about the pandemic would bring me so much entertainment. Read in one sitting.

Oh my goodness, how I love Elizabeth Stout and her friend Lucy Barton who we got to know earlier. Now in lockdown, Lucy and her ex William are holed up together in Maine and we eavesdrop on the intimacies of a lost marriage, an enduring friendship and all the highs and lows of their lives together. Some of the writing was so good, and so true, that it was almost difficult to read without a lump in my throat. Thank you Elizabeth Strout for another exquisite novel. Highly recommended for anyone not acquainted with her work.

Lucy by the Sea was a different type of read. I would say it's "dry". If it were all humor I would equate it to a dry humor. It was intriguing and I definitely enjoyed the book. The dryness seemed to stem from William. It's how he spoke and lived and it shines through the book. I'm sure it the perfect depiction of him as a person.

Lucy by the Sea continues the stunningly beautiful story of Lucy Barton. Her rich life story extends itself here as she continues her deeply felt connections with ex-husband William. The writing is stellar - nothing compares to Elizabeth Strout - and enables the reader to feel a kinship with this thoughtful, flawed character whom I consider a friend - a must read!

I love Elizabeth Strout's Lucy Barton series, and I particularly enjoyed last year's "Oh William," so what a treat it was to discover "Lucy by the Sea" was on its way--and it definitely did not disappoint. In fact, it may be my favorite of the series thus far. Picking up shortly after where "Oh William" left off, "Lucy by the Sea" starts in March of 2020 with the opening lines "Like many others, I did not see it coming. But William is a scientist, and he saw it coming; he saw it sooner than I did, is what I mean." And from there we are plunged back into those tumultuous and uncertain days at the beginning of the pandemic, when everything felt surreal and uncertain and completely unsettling. The brilliance of Strout as a writer--well, one of the many brilliant things--is her ability to create characters who are utterly authentic and believable, and these early scenes when William convinces an unwilling and skeptical Lucy that they must leave New York City at once to shelter in the house he has rented on the coast of Maine were almost painful in their recognizable immediacy. You feel, when reading this book, that Strout is narrating not only Lucy's thoughts, but your own, in every small and telling detail.

After this opening section, the story moves to Maine, as Lucy and William navigate living with each other in a town where they are not particularly welcome, helping their daughters through the turmoil the quarantine has wrought on their personal lives, and confronting not only the pandemic but also the police murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests which followed.--while somehow managing to find pleasure and a new understanding of each other amidst the upheaval. There is a continuation of a storyline from "Oh William," and Bob Burgess from "The Burgess Boys" makes a welcome return and becomes a confidant to Lucy, both of which will please readers of Strout's other books, but "Lucy by the Sea" is certainly capable of standing on its own; readers do not need to have read the other books in the series, although I can't recommend them highly enough. I only hope that Strout is not yet done with Lucy Barton; she's a character I will continue to come back to with pleasure.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review; I loved it!

Wow! Excellent writing and an outstanding thriller! I was really blown away by how the story came together and honestly kept me guessing until the very end. I highly recommend this novel! The main character is such a force as well.

Elizabeth Strout does it again! Lucy is such an interesting, complex character that I both love and loathe. I root for her though as I think we all have a little Lucy inside of us. Interesting to read about those early pandemic days that seem like a lifetime ago or last week.

LUCY BY THE SEA is the latest in Elizabeth Strout's Amgash novels centering around the lovely Lucy Barton. In LUCY BY THE SEA, we see Lucy escape New York City in 2020 for the coast of Maine with William her ex-husband. I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the Amgash novels and this one was no exception. Strout handles many tricky topics of the past few years - a global pandemic, isolation, political unrest - with grace and tenderness. This novel was an easy read, full of nuggets of wisdom and heart-felt, believable characters and storylines. I would whole-heartedly recommend this novel to any who enjoy Strout's work, and would suggest folks read all the Amgash novels in order to fully enjoy - those fans of Lucy Barton will surely enjoy this latest novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for this ARC which I received in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed this delightful, quick, easy read about being being confined during the pandemic with a former spouse. William convinces his author ex-wife, Lucy, to leave New York and go to a cabin by the sea in Maine to wait out the pandemic. It was a very fun, enjoyable read.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of this very heart-warming novel.

By this point in Elizabeth Strout's Amgash series, her character Lucy Barton has become like a very good friend to readers, one who shares her life's pain, worries, struggles and joys.

In the midst of the pandemic, I wondered how authors would come to write about the ordeal the world was going through. This is Strout's answer. In the early days of 2020, Lucy's ex-husband, Dr William Gerhardt, convinces her to leave her apartment in NYC and go with him to Crosby, Maine, to stay in a house by the sea. He also talks to their two daughters and their husbands about leaving the city--one couple agrees, one does not.

As one reads of the ways they find to deal with the isolation of lockdown, it will surely bring back one's own memories of how each of us dealt with it all. I know it did for me. My husband broke his foot on the last day of February, 2020, and spent the next eight weeks virtually unable to leave the house so lockdown was no problem for him but dealing with it all fell to me. I often think that the isolation probably saved his life as he has many underlying health problems.

Elizabeth Strout is quite the story teller in this introspective, character-driven novel. Given all the time in the world to think, Lucy examines her past with her dysfunctional family, the sorrow of losing her husband David, her present circumstances with William and some newly-made friends, and her worries about her children and their problems. Most of all she finds she really needs a hug!

Will Lucy spend the rest of her days at the house in Maine with the manipulate William? I for one can't wait to see where Strout takes the story next.

I received an arc of this new novel from the author and publisher via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and opinions expressed are my own.

Oh, Lucy! Elizabeth Strout knows exactly how to articulate the small joys and pains of life, the big moments and the little ones in between, and the way so many of us feel. In her newest about Lucy Barton, she captures that again, getting straight to the heart of the collective grief we experienced in the early (and later) days of the pandemic.
My only gripe is this: to me, it still feels too soon. This is the second book I have read that is set in the pandemic, and both times I have walked away enjoying the story, but not able to shake the feeling that reading about something we experienced so recently is a little...close to home.

There is just something about her writing style that rings so true you half expect to drop the book and see Elizabeth Strout jabbering away in the chair next to you. I've read several covid genre books in the past year and each one has held the underpinnings of universal truths from the time and yet also each story has the colors unique to each individual story. Lucy by the Sea captured beautifully the experience of later in life feelings about a once in a lifetime event like the covid pandemic. This story is a wonderful addition to the William collection of stories and I'm so glad I had a chance to read an early copy.

"Meditative. Reflective. Soulful."

Elizabeth Strout returns following Oh William! with her latest LUCY BY THE SEA (Amgash #4), featuring her complex character, Lucy Barton. A divorced couple escapes to Maine during the lockdown pandemic while the world falls apart and experiences a new kind of "normal" with renewed hope for the future amidst troubling times.

Lucy married her husband, William, and they divorced and remarried. They have two grown daughters, Chrissy and Becca. William is now divorced and has a younger child with his second wife.

Lucy remarried David, which is now deceased. It is COVID, and the world is crazy, including New York. William encourages Lucy to join him in Maine at a small house on the coast.

Lucy suffers from asthma, and she cannot risk getting the coronavirus. It is now in Europe and making its way to the US. William also encourages the two daughters to join them. Chrissy and her husband leave New York, but Becka and her husband do not.

The author takes us on a journey of frightful and uncertain times as they two get re-acquainted with their new home and surroundings while remaining safe and distant from others in these challenging times.

We learn more about Lucy's daughters, their relationship with their parents, and their spouses. Lucy is still grieving from her second husband and always thinking of her past and childhood memories which are not so pleasant.

Lucy surrounds herself with new friends and some old ones and comes to count on William and their new relationship. William had secrets in the past, and of course, she worries as well as the daughters about the future.

Lucy and William have a complicated past, but they seem to be able to move beyond their past difficulties.

The author explores many emotions- isolation, anxiety, fear, panic, grief, uncertainty, loss, and love—all part of the pandemic.

As always, I adore Strout's writing style as she openly shares what is going on inside Lucy's head from one scene and moment to another. She is complex and struggles with her past, her childhood, and the present, even though she is a successful author with a loving family.

While some of Strout’s characters from her previous novels are referenced in this story, we also meet a few familiar characters.

"We are all in lockdown, all the time. We just don't know it, that's all. But we do the best we can. Most of us are just trying to get through."

If you want to read a pandemic novel, Elizabeth Strouth would be the author to read. Insightful, thought-provoking, introspective, and relatable, a beautifully written story of second chances and the importance of family, friends, survival, and our well-being.

Highly recommend all of Strout's books. LUCY BY THE SEA could be read as a standalone; however, I recommend reading the previous books in the Amgash series to get to know the honest Lucy.

A special thank you to Random House and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
My Rating: 5 Stars
Pub Date: Sep 20, 2022
Sept 2022 Must-Read Books

Usually, I enjoy reading Elizabeth Strout’s novels. But, this book “Lucy by the Sea” was too depressing for me. I guess I didn’t want to be reminded of the pandemic, especially since some of us are still feeling the effects of this pandemic. Also, I found some details about this timeframe were not fact checked. Even though it is a work of fiction, it still involved actual events, I found some facts that just were just incorrect. Therefore, I only gave it 3 stars.

This book is a follow-up to Oh William! In this book, we follow Lucy from her apartment in New York City to a small town in Maine to escape the worst days of the Covid pandemic.

Imagine experiencing those first days of lockdown and fear after being whisked away from your home to spend quarantine in a seaside cabin with your ex-husband. This is a situation ripe for self-reflection, existential crisis, and social commentary.

I really enjoy this author’s relaxed conversational style of narrative. If you are looking for a lot of action or thrills, this one isn’t for you, but if you enjoy genuine dialogue and living in another person’s head for a while put this one on your TBR. I like characters that feel unabashedly authentic and Lucy Barton is a superb blend of mess and mentor.

I'd like to thank NetGalley for an advanced copy of Lucy by the Sea for my unbiased evaluation. 4 stars

What a beautiful, heart tugging novel! A divorced couple stuck together during lockdown, explores life, love, loss, and grief in a captivating story that is brilliantly written. Rich characters that are relatable and easy to empathize with, character driven and thought provoking. Elizabeth Stout is a master storyteller and this one packs a punch.