The Publisher Says:A wildly entertaining and occasionally heartbreaking story of frustrated longing, and the lengths we will go for those we love—even if they don’t love us in return

An Ocean Without a Shore, from the bestselling, critically acclaimed author of Endless Love and Man in the Woods, is a beautifully rendered exploration of that most timeless of human dilemmas: the one in which your love is left unreturned.
Since their college days, Kip Woods has been infatuated with Thaddeus Kaufman, who, years later, is a married father of two children and desperately trying to revive a failing career. Kip’s devotion to Thaddeus has been life-defining and destiny-altering, but it has been one that Thaddeus has either failed to notice or refused to acknowledge. But over the course of this heated and mesmerizing novel, set against a background of privilege and affluence in Manhattan and the Hudson Valley, Kip will be forced to reckon with the prison of his own making and decide how much he is willing to sacrifice for a love that may never be shared.

Picking up where his most recent novel, River Under the Road, left off, but writing squarely in the vein of Endless Love, his classic novel of passion and obsession, Scott Spencer gives us an intimate, immersive, and unsettling portrait of the devastation we will wreak in the name of love, and the bitterness of a friendship ravaged by fathomless yearning.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I read this not realizing it was a sequel. That could be part of my lack of enthusiasm. The strongest reason I didn't fall all over myself to praise this novel, though, is right here:

I have learned one of the lessons of loneliness, one of its shocking side effects: when you are in a state of longing, desire goes on and on, like an ocean without a shore.
–and–
Here's something else about us torchbearers. We are possessive of the one we love and we are determined to maintain our hold on the idea of them. Our idea of them is really all we have. When you think about someone more or less constantly, you begin to believe—though you would never say so, not even to yourself—that they belong to you.

Beautiful sentences, aren't they? But what a world they paint. That's my issue...I don't want to spend much time in Kip's world because it grates on my nerve to be asked to invest in unrequired longing. It feels to me like the relationship he maintains with savvy, manipulative Thaddeus is a shield against intimacy. That isn't my own personal jam of a read.

I expect fans of Andrew Sean Greer and Peter Cameron will disagreee with me. Prioritize lovely language and fully limned characters over a story you're rooting for an exact outcome to end? This is your lucky review, here it is! I myownself just wanted it to end and wasn't invested enough to mind about how. To my saddened annoyance.

Ecco Press offers a trade paper edition for $15.99 or an ebook for $9.99. Either seems like a good buy for those intrigued. ( )

“I have learned one of the lessons of loneliness, one of its shocking side effects, desire goes on and on, like an ocean without a shore.”

A beautifully written meditation on the dangers of wasting your life wishing and hoping for someone you can never have. Kip’s story captures the self-delusion we find ourselves intwined in as we continue to believe, despite everything, that a relationship might still be possible. Many of the book’s nuances hit very near the bone for me. Can’t stop thinking about it. ( )