Sea Cliff by Mary Deal

OUR READERS TO DATE: 204

Sea Cliff by Mary Deal.

Rachael Connor has great looks, money and a home of her own, but childhood abuse has left her fearful of men.

When Rachael meets Matthew, she begins to rethink her life. He falls in love with her, but Rachael rebukes him, living by the “rules” her father taught her.

She soon has an epiphany about how to overcome her father’s grip on her life. The next time she falls in love, she will know how to deal with it.

But will Matthew let her get away so easily?

5 Star Review By Grant Leishman for Readers’ Favorite: Rachael Connor, outwardly successful and a budding author, seemed to have it all. An inheritance from her father had assured her financial stability and she was able to choose when she worked for wages and when she indulged in her one true passion, writing. In Sea Cliff: A Love Story by Mary Deal, we find that Rachael has a dark secret that rules her life, even now as an adult and long after her father has died. Rachael and her brother Brandon were brought up by a tyrannical and abusive father who ruled their lives with both physical and mental abuse that Rachael still carries to this day. She is unable to form lasting relationships with men as she simply doesn’t know how, and consequently has resigned herself to a life of solitude with writing and meditation as her solaces. Enter Matthew Knight, a successful, ridiculously handsome and well-adjusted man who sets his sights on winning Rachael’s heart. True love, though, rarely runs smoothly and both Matthew and Rachael have to overcome the many barriers that life and their pasts put in their way before they can truly find each other.

Sea Cliff: A Love Story is a simple, carefully crafted romance, but what lifts it above others in the genre is its willingness to address societal issues that might otherwise be glossed over. Author Mary Deal has imbued her character of Rachael with all the angst and fear a sufferer of an abusive childhood would feel. As readers, we want to take Rachael and shake her, telling her to “get with the program.” She has a man who clearly adores her and yet she looks for and finds myriad ways to push him away. Although both of the main characters are too perfectly beautiful/handsome for my liking, there was no stopping me from enjoying the twists and turns their convoluted relationship took. The concept of combining the feelings and actions of the characters in this story with the characters in the story Rachael was writing had the potential to be trite and clichéd and yet Deal made it work well. The writing style is simple and unpretentious, which I did enjoy, and I found myself flying through this book. I can definitely recommend this story to lovers of romance.

5 Star Review By Ray Simmons for Readers’ Favorite: If you’re looking for a contemporary romance novel, something that will restore your faith in love and life, look no further. I have the perfect novel and writer for you. Sea Cliff by Mary Deal is a great read. Especially if you’ve been bruised and battered by the struggle of trying to find the real thing. The thing that will last through all the troubles that we know life will throw at us. I don’t read contemporary romance much, to be perfectly honest. I prefer the historical version. But Sea Cliff takes place in one of my favorite cities in the whole world. The city by the bay; San Francisco. I haven’t been there in years, but Mary Deal reminded me just how unique and wonderful the San Francisco Bay Area is.

Mary Deal writes about life. She writes about friendship and family relationships. Romance is something we find while navigating our way through all these other important relationships…if we’re lucky. I liked the plot in Sea Cliff. These were real modern-day characters with lives and relationships just like mine and people I know. I loved the setting. I have lived in the Bay Area and I believe Mary Deal has too. She took me back to it and I really appreciate that. The characters are great. Not perfect but very real. What I liked most about Rachael, besides her being a red-head is that she is very self-aware and constantly trying to improve herself. That’s what it takes in modern life.

4 Star Review By Amanda Rofe for Readers’ Favorite: Sea Cliff: A Love Story by Mary Deal is a contemporary fiction novel set in San Francisco. It portrays a woman called Rachael Connor who grew up in the farmlands of the Sacramento River Delta. She is someone who experienced abuse in her childhood and who is now trying to renounce the past. Her brother, Brandon, who suffered similarly, is also struggling to come to terms with adult life. While Rachael tries to help him as best, she can, she has her own demons to contend with, in particular how to form healthy relationships with men. There is one man called Matthew, who pursues her despite her obvious reluctance to get involved with anyone. In an attempt to work through her issues, she writes a novel which turns out to mirror her life in more ways than one.

Mary Deal writes a rather unusual love story, bravely tackling the difficult subject of childhood abuse and the impact it has on adults later on in life. She portrays the adult survivors, Rachael and Brandon, sympathetically and with a great deal of insight. The disparity between Matthew’s rather normal family and Rachael’s dysfunctional life has been ably portrayed, adding an edge to the story line. I thought Sea Cliff was an engaging novel which dealt with very challenging and painful issues. Both Rachael and Matthew, the main protagonists, made me feel uncomfortable at times and I like this in a book. As a point of interest, the title ‘Sea Cliff’ is a fascinating link which runs through the narrative, drawing the story threads together.

From The Author: After being rear-ended in a car accident in 1991 and being incapacitated for a while, I realized that at least my mind still worked! I could sit at my PC to write and did just that. It is said that the first book an author writes is mostly about themselves or about incidences that happen in life that leave an indelible mark on them – good or bad. Realizing that, I still had no fear of writing that first book. I managed to change much of the personal material I used so that it was not about me but about a fictional character whose life I could imbue with knowledge and some experiences I had accumulated.

The first draft of Sea Cliff was actually titled The Recluse. It remained that way while the book languished, all 135,000 words of it. After reading it I realized a lot of me was still in there. So, I left it alone and wrote and published other books. In 2018, with 11 books published (three already out of print), I decided to take another look. I had already borrowed quite a bit of Recluse to use in my first mystery. So, it was a matter of cleaning the entire Recluse manuscript and shortening the story to a salable number of words. In doing so, I realized the protagonist was no longer a recluse. I needed a new title, and it didn’t have to be about the character. Hence the title became Sea Cliff because that is where the protagonist’s life is depicted.

Ratings:
https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Cliff-Mary-Deal/dp/1983128600/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=#customerReviews

Product Details:
Print Length: 349 Pages
Publisher: Creativia; 2nd Edition (June 9, 2018)
Language: English
Romance (Contemporary)

Amazon Print:
https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Cliff-Mary-Deal/dp/1983128600/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Kindle:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DMZJ29M/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i5

Audio Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Cliff-A-Love-Story/dp/B07ZCY95KF/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Spanish Version:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08BZ4TQCH/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p2_i5

About Mary Deal: Mary Deal, a native of Walnut Grove in California’s Sacramento River Delta, now resides in Honolulu, Hawaii. She was Founder and past President of Kauai Writer’s Round table. She is also an artist, photographer and former editor of a print magazine and newspaper columnist.

She is the author of six suspense novels: “The Tropics,” an adventure/suspense trilogy, “The Ka,” a paranormal Egyptian suspense, “River Bones,” a thriller that takes place in her childhood hometown area, “Down to the Needle,” a thriller, taking place along the West coast, “Legacy of the Tropics,” a re-write and expansion of The Tropics, and “The Howling Cliffs, a Sara Mason Mystery” and 1st sequel to the award winning River Bones. She has also published “Off Center in the Attic,” a collection of over-the-top short stories and flash fiction pieces. The eBooks, “Write it Right – Tips for Authors, Vol. I and Vol. II are nonfiction references for writers. Write It Right – Tips for Authors – The Big Book (a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Book Awards) brings both of the Write It Write eBooks together in paperback.

“River Bones” was a winner in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards competition and a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Books Awards. Her short story, “The Last This I Do” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Awards and Special Recognition: