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    Off Season
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    Off Season
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    Off Season
    Audiobook11 hours

    Off Season

    Written by Anne Rivers Siddons

    Narrated by Jane Alexander

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Acclaimed novelist Anne Rivers Siddons's new novel is a stunning tale of love and loss.

    For as long as she can remember, they were Cam and Lilly--happily married, totally in love with each other, parents of a beautiful family, and partners in life. Then, after decades of marriage, it ended as every great love story does...in loss. After Cam's death, Lilly takes a lone road trip to her and Cam's favorite spot on the remote coast of Maine, the place where they fell in love over and over again, where their ghosts still dance. There, she looks hard to her past--to a first love that ended in tragedy; to falling in love with Cam; to a marriage filled with exuberance, sheer life, and safety-- to try to figure out her future.

    It is a journey begun with tender memories and culminating in a revelation that will make Lilly re-evaluate everything she thought was true about her husband and her marriage.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateAug 13, 2008
    ISBN9781600241710
    Unavailable
    Off Season
    Author

    Anne Rivers Siddons

    Anne Rivers Siddons is the New York Times bestselling author of 19 novels that include Nora, Nora, Sweetwater Creek, Islands, Peachtree Road, and Outer Banks. She is also the author of the nonfiction work John Chancellor Makes Me Cry.

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    Reviews for Off Season

    3.5/5

    181 ratings28 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      A very typical ARS book. Mentions of Lilly Pulitzer and exclusive clubs. The tidewater and sailing. Kitten smiles and staring into the abyss. We have an outsider marrying into a family who closes ranks. I thought it would take place in its present timeframe more, but it dwells in the past. She describes Lilly's growing up and time in Maine. It's sweet and heartbreaking in that special way ARS does it. Lilly is a real character, too, flaws and all and when she met Cam it was a little Hollywood Movie, but I didn't mind. There are some secrets revealed at the end, but nothing too earth shattering. Comfort reading!!
    • 1/5
      Just unable to get into the book. Wrong timing and genre I think
    • 4/5
      As with all of her books I find them hard to get into but once I'm there I don't want to let go of the people I've met and loved within the pages of her stories.
    • 5/5
      I have enjoyed lots of Siddons' other novels and just the way she writes. The ending to this, however, left me perplexed??? I was totally unprepared for the ending but maybe I should have been expecting something like this. The audio had a completely different cover---a large house on a rocky beach. Jane Alexander as the reader was part of what made this such good listening material. Okay, just checked some other reviews after writing mine---looks like a lot of us agree about the ending and about a couple of holes that didn't get touched beyond a mention.
    • 5/5
      Wow! My first encounter with Siddons certainly won't be my last! He story of a woman who returns to the scene of her formative years (on the Maine coast) following the death of her husband was a treat.
    • 3/5
      Finished this one last night. It is not Siddons's best work but it kept me interested throughout. It was only after finishing it and starting to think about the overall book that I started to see holes in it. It's difficult to point out the holes without giving spoilers. Suffice it to say, some of the characters' motivations were a little unclear. One who is deathly afraid of being separated from the one they love ends up having an affair ("love the one you're with," I guess), and another seems to just be mean and manipulative (suppose that's a clear enough motivation for mean and manipulative actions?).The writing is beautiful, and the author's descriptions of place are, as usual, very evocative. The reader can tell Siddons loves coastal Maine, and she draws a magical picture of it. Her descriptions of grief are also spot-on.If you're a Siddons fan, you could do worse than spend some time with this book, but if you have not read her work, I'd recommend that you start with an older title, such as Colony, which is a better story.
    • 2/5
      Liked this book until the final chapters. Read the final chapters three times--still didn't get it or like it all. Very disappointing.
    • 2/5
      I loved this book until the last 10 pages or so. Then I think Siddons lost her mind and reached to put some sort of twist into the book. If I read and understood this correctly, Cam had a child with Peaches. There was nothing to indicate to the reader that this was a possibility, ever. It didn't make sense. And then when Lilly dies, she is reunited with Jon, and not Cam? This ruined the whole book for me- the "twist" was unnecessary.
    • 4/5
      Listened to talking book. I read Siddons many years ago and had forgotten her. Really liked this. Slight paranormal side with communication with dead people. All is not what it seems in a marriage. A "nice" story.
    • 3/5
      Loved the voice of this book until the very end.
    • 3/5
      I have read a great many of Siddons' novels. You don't have to give them a lot of thought and you can go through them fairly quickly. I am not sure what to make of Off-Season. The first part of the book detailing the summer when the main character was eleven was the best writing I've ever read by Siddons. What a disappointment when it turns into a Lifetime movie. At times the story read like a re-tread of her earlier work Colony, especially the ending. Siddons had a tiger by the tail here, but she let it go.
    • 5/5
      This book was unforgettable. It follows the life of one girl from childhood to the end. It is a very believable story that goes through sad, happy, and shocking times in an overall good life. It makes you want to rethink your relationships and be truthful to everyone because the secrets are what winds up hurting the most.
    • 3/5
      Oh gosh....I've always loved Siddons' books and I loved this one about 99% of the way through, too -- especially the first half about Lilly's childhood and summers at Edgewater in Maine, the descriptions of her family especially were lovely, very sympathetic and interesting people, a lovely, warm family. So much was evocative of my own summers when I was a child, the feel of the days and nights, the smells -- even the fact Lilly believed she could fly at one time -- I understood it all and loved it. It seemed idyllic and of course we know that doesn't really last even in our own lives. Lilly's first love, first kiss -- and then the tragedies, the years hiding from the world -- it was heart wrenching and sad and I had some tearful moments, that's for sure -- but it all made sense, I could understand it. Then after Lilly meets Cam, too little was said of the years of Lilly's marriage to Cam, and on reflection it was sketchy and didn't seem to hang together with the intense emotion of the early part of the story -- I'm still trying to piece it together to make sense of what followed. I was also waiting for a bit of revenge somewhere in regard to the horrid Peaches from childhood - felt sure it would come in some way, at some point. The last pages totally shocked me -- not only was there no revenge but I felt Lilly had been completely betrayed -- and that I, the reader, had been too. I was first shocked, upset enough to cry, and then I got very mad. I am still trying to figure this out and what Siddons was trying to say. What Cam did was so very cruel and there was never any indication that he was a cruel person -- he seemed to be a pretty sensitive and understanding guy. There were a couple of other things that made no sense and I had hoped for a wee bit of enlightenment -- the letters sent to Cam that Lilly has thrown away by the post office, and why the boy David went to his mother's house "only when he had to" -- what? why? I may change my review later, might have an ah-ha moment, but right now I don't know quite how I feel about this book, aside from anger!
    • 4/5
      Lilly returns to her beloved summer home in Maine to mourn the death of her husband Cam. Memories of her early live make up the story including the tale of Jon, her first love at 12 years, who died tragically. How she met and married Cam, and raised a family are all included. The house feels as though it is filling up with ghosts as the summer ends and a northeaster approaches making for a stunning ending.
    • 5/5
      When I first received the book, I thought "Oh no, it's so long" (358 pages). I really like to read shorter books. But as soon as I started reading I loved the characters and the descriptions of Edgewater made me feel as if I was there with them at the sea, smelling the food from the kitchen, feeling the excitement at being a child in the summertime. The only down side was I felt the book should have concentrated more on Lilly and Cam's life together, since there are missing years we know nothing about. I felt Lilly's pain at losing her loved one and loved that she talked to him and "heard" him talk to her. I've read mixed reviews about the ending, but if you read carefully and pay attention to what comes before, you might have an idea of what is coming. I did, and loved it from a readers point of view, but hated it for Lilly. This will definitely not be my last Anne Rivers Siddons book!
    • 2/5
      This is a book I would have never normally pick up and read but I thought, what the hey...it's summer, it's a summer book...why not. All in all, it's not my type of book. But it's not horrible and I did finish it.Recently widowed, Lilly is going back (with her husband Cam's ashes) to their summer house on the coast of Maine. She needs some time alone, away from her daughters and grandchildren, to reminisce and remember.Flashback to Lilly as an eleven year-old and all the events that happened in that summer of 1962, including a first love with a boy named John. What proceeds is young Lilly going through loves and losses and how that defines who she is. Then it flashes forward a bit to when she met Cam.Honestly, the book was a bit rambling and I wasn't sure of the point of the whole thing. I did like the story of eleven-year old Lilly. But then everything after that, including the ending (which was the worst ending I've ever read) just put me off of the whole thing. I wish she had stuck to the young Lilly part and then stopped. On a side note: she is a good writer. I really loved her description of the ocean and how connected young Lilly was to the whole summer place.
    • 1/5
      I have read other books by this author and enjoyed them. Not so with this one. This is the life story of Lilly. She falls in love at 12 (?!) with Jon, who is 13, after knowing him for a few weeks. Lilly's arch enemy Peaches tells Jon that, unbeknownst to him, he is Jewish. He takes off in a sailboat in bad weather and is presumably lost at sea. Lilly is so devastated that she retreats into a shell for the next 6 years. Come on. Then she meets her future husband at 18, and there is more unbelievable drama culminating in one of the most bizarre and ridiculous endings I have ever read. This is a real stinker.
    • 4/5
      Siddons can be a good storyteller. The reader is drawn into Lily's idyllic summer home on the Maine coast, her beautiful mother and devoted father and then her first love, Jon, and enemy, Peaches. That summer changes Lily and the loss of her mother follows soon after and the family never returns to Maine. The strength of the book was the early part, Lily's adolescence, how she found solace in water and her retreat from the world at large along with her father. Then, she met Cam and married. At this point in the book, Siddons stopped revealing Lily's inner life and instead goes on a superficial journey through the next 30 years or so, all of which ends with Cam's unexpected death. What is revealed after Cam's death felt like a cheap shot to me. None of that jibed with Siddons' portrayal of Lily and Cam and then, it was over.
    • 4/5
      Lily loves the summers she and her family spend at their summer house on the Maine coast. The summer of her 11th year, though, changed her life forever. Then, she met 12-year-old John and fell instantly in love. She also met spoiled Peaches, who was jealous of Lily's happy existence. This jealousy led to John's death and Lily not returning to her beloved summer house for many years.Now in her 60's, Lily is in Maine in the wake of the sudden death of her husband, Cam, whom she married here in Maine at eighteen. Lily thinks back through her life as she tries to make sense, not of Cam's death, but why he was where he was when he died. Lily muses with the ghosts of her past and finally figures it out.A great story of love and loss with a bit of a mystery running though it. If you are a long-time Siddons reader, you may find this book reminiscent of [Colony]. If, in you youth, you had a summer love and have wondered what life would have been like had you spent it with this young love, you will definately enjoy [Off Season].
    • 2/5
      Siddon's latest rich-people-in-a-beautiful-setting novel (this time, it's set mostly in Maine) has been incredibly popular at the Library... but a unintelligible, confusing ending makes what was an okay story into a train wreck.
    • 3/5
      After losing her beloved husband, Cam, Lilly returns to her family's beach house in Maine to spread his ashes and remember not only her husband, but her first love, Jon. Siddons lulls you along to the final chapter where the truth is revealed - and - SPOILER - yuck, the mean girl wins in the end. Was I ever completely bummed out after finishing - all that melodrama and then the evil one triumphs big time. Probably happens more than we'd like to admit.
    • 5/5
      This author has an incredible talent for describing place in a way that you can feel it, smell it, and breathe it while you read. The characters were honest and fascinating. And while I figured out one surprise before the end, another one took my breath away. A fantastic read!
    • 3/5
      The cover grabbed me and I was hoping for a great book. At first, I had a difficult time getting into this story. Once I got a little further into the book, I was really enjoying the characters and the relationship between Lilly and John. Then once again towards the last 1/4 of the story, I was finding myself re-reading sentences. I did not like the ending. I felt it was rushed. I wanted something more in the end.
    • 3/5
      Not one of my favorites. After Cam's death, Lily retreats to the old family vacation home on the coast of Maine. There she (and the reader) exam her life and her marriage.
    • 3/5
      A detailed love story with life tragedy mixed in but makes you believe that your true love does exist.
    • 2/5
      Despite the attractive cover and the reputation of the author, this book was a disappointment. The book starts out well with the story of Lilly Davenport's life during the summer of 1962 and how she deals with multiple tragedies very early in her life.The latter portions of the novel are difficult to follow - especially when you have to deal with a talking cat. I don't know if the ending of the novel was meant to be unclear, but I found myself re-reading the final pages and wondering what happened. It also led me to believe that I totally mis-understood Lilly's relationship with her husband. Cam.Somewhere the story line was lost and ended as a disappointment.
    • 3/5
      I thought this would become one of my favorites. The storyline was great but the last chapters seemed to be written by someone else completely. It lost it when the cat started talking.
    • 4/5
      I love Anne Rivers Siddons’ books; I have read most of them.I really liked this book, Off Season, but I did not love it. I loved the way she developed the characters and the descriptions, as one reviewer said the location was as much a character in the book as the people. Her descriptions of the ocean, the wild life were wonderful. I loved the first part (actually all but the last 2 or 3 pages). I hated the end, I wasn’t sure what happened, it was very confusing. There were several loose ends, and as one review said it ended “abruptly and left the reader slightly out of kilter” The end alone is enough for a book discussion group. Then again as much as I disliked the end, I am still trying to figure it out 3 days later. If you like, southern authors, chick lit, and a good light summer read, try this book.