The Cliffs was engaging for the first third. I enjoyed reading about the abandoned house and Jane's struggles, but then it slowed down with other, rather unlikable characters. It was very slow for me, and I almost gave up reading it but finished it. It probably is a "not right now" book for me, but at another time it could be a hit. Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A house in Maine that drew Jane’s interest as a child, has a new owner. The house sits on the cliffs with a beautiful view. Twenty years later Jane is back and the house has a new owner and is being repaired as it needs much work after just sitting empty for years.
Secrets, ghost and history. Mother/daughter relationships.
A captivating story.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for the opportunity to read this book.
Reasons I enjoyed this book:

I was granted Early Access to the cliffs by Jay Courtney Sullivan on net gallery. For review All opinions and thoughts written here are my own.
The cliffs is a wonderful story that answers the question. What if the walls could talk? What if homes or lands could share the stories of the time that they've spent and the lives that they've seen live within?
This is also a wonderful story about healing through love. The ordinary trauma that can come through addiction and travel through families and sometimes touch over years in ways we don't expect. This book was very moving and I encourage anyone looking for an escape that might also connect you to part of your real world to pick up this book and enjoy. Thank you!.

I had read Maine several years ago and enjoyed it, so I was happy to be able to read The Cliffs and review it. This is one of the best books I have read this year! It has everything - an old Victorian house set on a cliff overlooking the ocean, ghosts, a medium, family secrets, Native American history - once I picked it up, I didn't want to put it down! Very highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this novel.

I was very into Jane and her personal struggles but then at 35% the plot meanders along into various tangents that felt like preaching and read like a textbook.

The MC calls people “dumb” but then says that was harsh, it was probably due to their education. She, however, went to Wesleyan where her classes focused on marginalized voices and talked about reparation, allyship, and gender fluidity twenty years ago so now she has a lens through which to see the world.

Unlike us plebeians, she’s so much better and more enlightened than the rest of us.

Sorry but this book is boring af and reads like a lecture.

I find myself really savoring and enjoying every book that I pick up from this author. I saw this on an email from Netgalley and I was like "about an purple Victorian house..." sign me up!

I thoroughly enjoyed the writing, and the themes just kept evolving, I think that's the only thing that kept me from giving this book a higher rating. A few too many threads going on in this one, some relevant, and interesting and others just felt too bloated. I can clearly see how much research Sullivan did on the topic of Indigenous repatriation, and I just wish some of the fluffiness of the house and the psychic stuff and the familial issues with alcoholism was cut out. All of these are important topics but were so heavy that it made it a tiny bit hard to focus with so many different threads.

I really loved the psychic medium parts - Clementine (can we take a second for such a great name?) was a delight and I loved the whole idea of Camp Mira - a spiritual campground of sorts. I loved all the pieces of the house coming through. Ultimately, I really enjoyed this novel but just know it's a bit a grab bag of topics going in. This just reminds me that I really need to read her other novels.

I loved Friends & Strangers, so was excited for this one! The writing is beautiful as always- I found myself highlighting paragraphs. The setting of Maine and the creepy abandoned house initially grabbed me. The book started out strong and I was intrigued, but ultimately when it switched to Genevive’s POV I started to get a little run down; I think there were too many themes trying to be crammed in for me personally and I found that it was hard to stick with it.

I have loved each of this author's books for the emotional journey they take me on. Yes, it's a ride, but the way she writes her character's stories with such depth and authenticity pulls me in and doesn't let me go until that very last sentence. This book was hauntingly beautiful, and my words can't truly explain how captivated I was. It's a story about women trying to find their way as they navigate with the past and the present. It's about the complexities of relationships and intergenerational connections. I recognize I am not giving traditional details, but y'all, I just need you to know what a wonderful book this is. Thanks to NetGalley for the look at this July 2024 release.

Based on some of the reviews, I was hesitant to read J. Courtney Sullivan’s “The Cliffs.” I’m glad I didn’t listen to the naysayers because I enjoyed this book. However, I found the description to be slightly misleading.

This is a difficult book for me to review. The book does involve the Victorian house and Jane Flanagan’s connection to it as both a teenager and then as an adult. The house’s presence, though, is used by the author as more of a plot device rather than showcasing it as its own character.

This book had several different narrators. It also goes back-and-forth at times between present day and past decades, even centuries. I enjoyed reading about the modern day efforts related to colonialism, as well as Jane’s educational and professional knowledge as an archivist.

Overall, I recommend this book. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my ARC.

I loved this novel so beautifully that I was bereft when I reached the last page. Sullivan weaves history and story together beautifully and manages to be on the right side of history without being polemical or lecturing. Kudos.

The Cliffs is a book with lots of feminist history. It was very slow for me, and I almost gave up reading it. I did end up finishing it, however it took me weeks. It probably wasn’t the right time in my life to read this one. Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I love Sullivan’s writing and I am glad I read this book, but it was an incredibly slow burn. I almost gave up 1/3 through and only stuck it out because I’ve loved her other novels so much. It did pick up in the last few chapters.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A woman, who far exceeded familial expectations, made a drunken whopper of a mistake and blew her career and marriage to bits. She returns home to settle her mother's estate and delves into mysteries of her hometown's origins.

Beautifully written. I love the historical information.

Thank you to Knopf Publishing and the author, J. Courtney Sullivan, for the opportunity to read this advanced reader's copy of The Cliffs in exchange for my honest opinion.

The Cliffs was a surprising novel with a lot of rich, feminist history. Sullivan wore her researcher hat for this one, and it shows and pays off. I enjoyed the history lesson on The Shakers and the Indian tribes of Maine, especially the women that Sullivan highlighted in her book. I immediately requested book upon book on the Shaker colonies in Maine and Kentucky. I hung onto every fact about the Wabanaki people and their spiritual traditions. This is all coming from a reader who has historically shunned and disliked historical fiction.

Sullivan interwove the past and present beautifully to bring full circle a ghostly mystery and a life in shambles. Her character development was wonderful in creating a trio of women whose lives all connect in one way or another, all very different from one another, only to connect them to the past lives of the women who had lived in the old Victorian that has drawn Jane in since the moment she saw it. We are led through a time of self-sabotage with glimpses into Jane's past destructive life with alcoholism, both her family's and her own, and carried through her present struggles and self-discovery. Though I don't think this story was especially engaging from the beginning as I believe her past novels have been, I do believe that if you stick it out you will gain so much knowledge and history from this novel.

I was instantly hooked by Sullivan’s latest novel, The Cliffs which is set on the isolated coast in Maine. Harvard archivist, Jane Flanagan returns to her childhood home to escape a job crisis and her troubled marriage. Jane meets Genevieve, a new homeowner with a cliff side mansion who offers Jane a job researching the new house. Jane welcomes the distraction and digs into the information behind this haunted Victorian home. Clues quickly unravel as stories from the Indigenous people of the area shed light on a childhood mystery.

The Cliffs is a fast moving and suspenseful read full of creepy, supernatural elements. With themes of colonialism, grief and alcoholism, this is the perfect story for fans of New England locations, history and a bit of the supernatural. Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the advanced reader’s copy.

I had high hopes for this book after seeing so many great reviews. Sadly it didnt hold my attention and i struggled with this book.

Glad that I got to read this early. I really like 'house' books. This had a lot going on. Very interesting. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

It’s rare for me not to finish an ARC, but I just could not get into this book despite picking it up several times over the course of a few weeks. It moved so slowly for me that I stopped at about 38%. Maybe it wasn’t the right book for the mood/moment? I know lots of readers who enjoyed it, but the pacing was just off for me. I think the premise is interesting but it just didn’t work for me.

I liked The Cliffs, by J Courtney Sullivan. It is about a piece of land on the coast of Maine, and the stories of the women who lived there from the earliest indigenous people to a 21st century second home resident, and the ghosts of some of the former. The narrative does jump around a bit, and the main character never lived in the Victorian house on the cliffs, but every woman whose story is told is somehow connected to that spot. Even though the book is a bit ambitious, following so many different storylines, I enjoyed how they related to each other. I think the core story is about love and family throughout generations. It did feel a bit like a history lesson when it started to describe America's treatment of American Indians and then I felt like the book just sort of ended abruptly, and I wasn't really sure if the ghosts of the former residents were ever laid to rest. The writing, as always, was compelling. Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, and Vintage Publishing for an advance reader ebook copy to review.

The Cliffs (2024)
By J. Courtney Sullivan
Alfred A. Knopf, 384 pages.
★★★

Novelists and editors routinely remind readers that the work before our eyes is a work of fiction in which locations, situations, and people are imaginary. But if you know southern Maine you will recognize in a nanosecond that the place J. Courtney Sullivan calls Awadapquit is Ogunquit with a small splatter of York thrown in. (Sullivan credits a history of Ogunquit in her afterward.)

The Cliffs is Sullivan's sprawling tale of secrets, lies, self-deception, tragedy, and redemption in a small coastal village. (Ogunquit has 1,500 residents.) Although most of the story takes place in 2005 and again in 2015-17, the roots of recent trauma grew from seedlings planted in the Colonial era. The modern day protagonist is Jane Flanagan, who grew up in Maine, couldn't wait to escape, went away to college, and landed at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library. Jane loves archives and her boss Melissa values Jane. Melissa even introduces Jane to David, a wounded divorcee who eventually marries her. If only Jane didn't love booze more than she loves her work or her husband!

Various circumstances, including her mother's death, lead Jane back to Awadapquit, where her sister Holly still resides. Holly is Jane's opposite–content to be a blue-collar gal, non-intellectual, and a collector close to the edge of becoming a hoarder. She is as comfortable with chaos as Jane is obsessed with being fastidious and pragmatic. Jane plans to go back to the city as soon as she and Holly sort through their mother’s effects and sell the house that belonged to her beloved grandmother before her mother moved in. Jane is, however, glad to be near her closest friend Allison who runs an Awadapquit inn with her husband Chris. With two children as well as high-season visitors, Allison is also at home with chaos.

As you might imagine, any novel whose protagonist wants to leave ASAP is a setup for circumstances that don't allow that to happen. It is these that both drive and occasionally bog down Sullivan's novel. Among the complications are Paul and Genevieve. They are the kind of people that long-time coastal residents love to hate. They are filthy rich, haughty, high questionable taste, and are unaware of local customs, but they dump lots of money into the local economy. That too is a mixed blessing; it brings opportunity but also leads to soaring home prices. They purchase a rundown but once-grand property on a promontory with a spectacular ocean view. It just happens to be a purplish Victorian where Jane and Ellison used to hang out in high school when it was a boarded up wreck. It is said that it once belonged to a seafaring man responsible for white settlement in Awadapquit.

In architectural theories of Mies van der Rohe, “less is more.” I'm not a fan of austere modern architecture and like a bit of flash and gingerbread, but some readers are likely to find The Cliffs overstuffed. It is to Sullivan's credit that she expertly connects most of the dots, but allow me to be unorthodox in this review and bullet-point some of the ingredients that go into her novel.

• Several generations of Genevieve-like insensitivity to those with diminished resources
• The Wabanaki peoples who settled long before the English
• A mysterious cemetery with a stone burying a single initial
• Real and metaphorical ghosts
• A modern medium
• The Shakers
• The U.S. Civil War
• Spiritualism
• A lake that isn't a lake

All of this is in addition to alcoholism, various tales of marital strain, a crooked antiquities dealer, unexpected children, job loss, the internal truth behind romantic exteriors, dementia patients, reinvention, and taking small steps to correct inherited harm. The Cliffs is, at heart, a deep dive into shifting from arrogance to humility and from fast-track living to dialed back contentment.

Again, though, The Cliffs takes a circuitous route to get there. I liked the novel, but I also wondered if Sullivan could have pared her novel to arrive by the main road rather than so many unpaved ones. It would not surprise me if some readers get lost and never arrive at the destination. Less isn’t more, but more can be too much.

Rob Weir