Beach House Rules is a charming exploration of the joy of friendship, the true meaning of family, and reclaiming the power to reshape our own destiny.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Kristy Woodson Harvey’s Beach House Rules, which is out May 27th 2025.
When Charlotte Sitterly’s husband is arrested for a white-collar crime, she and her daughter Iris are locked out of their house by the FBI and—what’s potentially even worse—thrust into the spotlight of @JuniperShoresSocialite, the town’s snarky anonymous Instagram account. Cut off from her bank accounts and feeling desperate, Charlotte takes up an acquaintance’s offer to stay at a beachfront former bed-and-breakfast that’s home to a community of single mothers and draws plenty of gossip in the small coastal North Carolina town.
Charlotte and Iris find solace and are surprised by how much fun they’re having with the other families despite their circumstances. But when the women discover a secret link between them, it changes everything they thought they knew about the unconventional family they’ve created and leaves them wondering whether their coming together was a coincidence at all. Will the skeletons in the mommune closets help Charlotte and Iris reclaim their place in the Juniper Shores community—or shatter the sisterhood forever?
Excerpted from Beach House Rules by Kristy Woodson Harvey. Gallery Books, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
The thing about my daughter was that, while so much of what she said was overdramatic, even when I pretended to brush her off, what she said stuck. Did Alice really have three dead husbands? Was that how she had gotten this house? And, even if that was true, could she actually have killed them? The minute Iris said that it all came flooding back to me. That was what I had heard about Alice. That was what Juniper Shores Socialite had meant by “the Black Widow’s fourth victim.” She meant it literally. I couldn’t shake my very, very unsettled feeling.
But for the moment, we were here. Worst-case scenario, we could pack our bags tomorrow. Since we had next to no stuff, it wouldn’t take long. Or maybe we could at least wait until I found a job? I had sent out a dozen or so résumés to investment firms in New York and North Carolina while I was in Chapel Hill, and, as I expected, crickets. No one was really thrilled about hiring a woman whose husband was in jail for suspected wire fraud, one who, sure, had been a rising star at one point, but who hadn’t worked in fourteen years. Tomorrow I would start making phone calls. It was harder to turn someone down voice to voice when you were old friends. Alice was looking out the window, onto the pool deck. Three little girls were splashing around with an older one watching them. I turned back toward the kitchen. A woman who looked vaguely familiar walked down the steps barefoot, in a pair of fitted pants that just skimmed her ankles and a sleeveless gauze top half-tucked in the way chic Instagrammers did but I could never quite—“Oh my gosh!” I said, recognizing her. “You’re Growing with Grace! That’s why you can do the cool Instagram Mom half-tuck!”
I put my hand to my mouth, immediately embarrassed. Iris was glaring at me, as well she should. That was not my finest moment. But Grace just laughed. “I think you’ll find I’m decidedly less cool than I appear on Instagram.”
I scrunched my nose. “But certainly cooler than I am. Forgive me. I lived in New York for years and never once accosted a celebrity.”
“Grace,” Alice said, saving me from myself, “this is Charlotte Sitterly and her daughter, Iris. They are going to be staying with us for a while.”
Grace shook our hands. “I can’t wait to get to know you both.” She walked over to the kitchen island and pulled a pan out of the drawer.
Trying to add some levity to the situation, I said, “And I will pretend that I don’t already know everything about you.”
She laughed. “Oh, you’ll have plenty to learn. I’ve mastered the art of showing people what they want online while very skillfully avoiding anything real.”
Grace opened the fridge and started removing ingredients, and I wondered if I was like that in my regular life, if maybe we were all a little like that.
“Grace is the most incredible vegan chef, and she has taken it upon herself to become our mommune cook,” Alice said.
“So that part is real!” I said almost gleefully. I couldn’t figure out why I was so excited. Wasn’t I cooler than this? But I loved Growing with Grace. I watched her content every single night. Had I ever tried one of her recipes? No. But she seemed to have everything so together in a way I never would. Maybe she didn’t have it as together as I thought, though. She was living at the mommune, after all. “Well, of course it’s real,” I amended. “I bought your book.”
Grace turned back to the stovetop, which was in the island and made it easy for her to interact with everyone in the house coming and going as she cooked. “The cooking part is as real as the butternut squash risotto with leeks and spinach I’m about to make,” she said. “That’s just too good to be true!” I was loving this situation more by the moment. I absolutely despised cooking.
Grace nodded. “Sure, but you repay me in football pickup or something.”
“I wasn’t vegan before Grace,” Alice said. “But I feel so fantastic, I doubt I’ll ever go back to bacon.”
I laughed, but I had to wonder again what Grace was doing here. I didn’t know her situation with her ex, but I was 100 percent sure that she was popular enough that she could support her family on her career alone. “That’s great,” I said, already (unlike Alice) missing bacon and being 99 percent sure I was still going to eat cheeseburgers outside the house. Iris was glaring at me again. That girl loved a chicken nugget. I gave her a you’re fine look.
“You’ll love it here,” Grace said, pouring olive oil out of a chic bottle with a silver spout with the same flourish I had seen her use about a million times on Growing with Grace. “I didn’t want to raise my children alone, and Alice and Julie have been such a godsend.” Grace and Alice shared a look I couldn’t quite decipher.
“I can’t wait for you to meet my kids. Emma is twelve and Merit is sixteen.”
Iris stopped, the smile frozen on her face. “Like, Merit McDonald?”
“The very one,” Grace said, winking at me.
“Oh, wow,” she said.
“Well, I can’t wait to meet Julie,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sure you have,” Grace said. “At least at school.”
At that moment, three soaking-wet girls, and the older one, who I now assumed was Emma, came tearing through the house. “Mommy’s home! We heard the garage door!”
I heard footsteps up the stairs from the garage and mudroom, and a woman in a dark suit didn’t flinch as those drenched children practically attacked her on the landing right below the kitchen.
I was smiling at how sweet the whole scene was, missing for a moment the exuberance of Iris’s youth. I loved Iris’s current stage, but sometimes I missed having a little one who ran to me with relief and excitement.
Julie looked up and caught my eye, and I froze. The Julie in question was none other than Julie Dartmouth, the Julie who had seemed to absolutely revel in writing about Bill’s arrest, our fall from grace, everything salacious she could get her hands on. I refused to talk to her for her articles for the Juniper Shores Sun, obviously, and I soothed myself with the notion that it was a paper in a town of ten thousand people. How much damage could it do? But still. That woman was not who I wanted to live with.
Julie walked up the few stairs into the kitchen. “Charlotte Sitterly?” she asked, confused. She pointed toward what I assumed was a private room and said, “If you want to talk, we can—”
“Julie!” Alice interrupted her. “Charlotte and her daughter, Iris, are going to be staying with us for a while.”
Julie’s face lit up, and I started to feel sick. “That is amazing news! Welcome to the mommune!”
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t stay here with her. After all the things she had written about Bill, about my family, after how relentlessly she’d badgered me to talk to her for her articles . . .
“Hi, Iris,” Julie said.
“Hi, Mrs. Dartmouth,” Iris said back. Julie knew my daughter?
I wasn’t sure I could stay here, that I could put myself and my daughter in the situation of living with the local reporter who seemed hell-bent on making our lives harder. I needed some quiet; I needed to think.
“All right, girls,” Alice said. “Let’s go get your things put away and get some laundry started. I’m sure you have plenty.”
“Great,” I said. My usually quick mind felt stuck, unmoving. It was unsettling.
For the second time today, I followed Alice. I had plenty of reasons not to trust her. But for tonight, my daughter and I had a place to stay. And for that small mercy I couldn’t help but feel grateful.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kristy Woodson Harvey is the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including The Wedding Veil, Under the Southern Sky, and The Peachtree Bluff series. Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s school of journalism, her writing has appeared in numerous online and print publications, including Southern Living, Traditional Home, USA TODAY, Domino, and O. Henry. Kristy is the winner of the Lucy Bramlette Patterson Award for Excellence in Creative Writing and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. Her books have received numerous accolades, including Southern Living’s Most Anticipated Beach Reads, Parade’s Big Fiction Reads, and Entertainment Weekly’s Spring Reading Picks. Kristy is the cocreator and cohost of the weekly web show and podcast Friends & Fiction. She blogs with her mom, Beth Woodson, on Design Chic, and loves connecting with fans on KristyWoodsonHarvey.com. She lives on the North Carolina coast with her husband and son where she is (always!) working on her next novel.
