The 1950s setting, the pellucid prose, and the propulsive plot make this very steamy debut novel about morality and desire feel like a classic. soon reveals itself as a swirling vortex of psychological suspense with insights about marriage that recall writers like Margot Livesey and Alice Munro. The book has superb prose, acute psychological insights, and a riveting narrative though it’s impossible to put down once you’ve started, to call it a “summer read” is dismissive of Cheek’s carefully wrought artfulness.ĭeceptively relaxed and simple at first.

Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Corpus Christi and internationally bestselling Remember Me Like ThisĬhip Cheek’s Cape May is a debut novel about a young, virginal Southern couple on their off-season honeymoon in 1957 to the titular seaside community in New Jersey, where they come under the spell of a sophisticated older couple. In his gorgeous debut novel, Chip Cheek offers his readers a portrait of mid-century America and the timeless allure of love on the rocks. Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of LightĬape May is a perfectly mixed cocktail of beauty, desire, and heady desperation. Cheek’s virtuosic prose reads like a modern classic, piercing through the veneer of male sexual fantasies of the 1950s and rendering a heartbreaking portrait of a man-and a marriage-undone by betrayal.

Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the TrainĮarthy and sensual, raw and real, Cape May is an exquisitely crafted exploration of young love, the power of desire, and the lifelong ramifications of choices made in an instant.

Brilliantly unsettling-one of those books that stays with you.” Glamorous and nostalgic and very sexy, Cape May is a novel about marriage, lust, shabby seaside towns and lots of gin. Cape May does something better than critique or satirize: It seduces.

A dozy, luxurious sense of enchantment comes over the story, until the rude awakening at its finale. Henry and Effie’s honeymoon is meant to be their introduction to the pleasures of the body, but in the company of Clara and her promiscuous cohort they lose all track of boundaries. Cheek’s sensual first novel leaves you wanting more. Then they meet Clara and Max, hard-partying lovers who dazzle the innocent pair until they’ve lost more than their virginity. Inside this mesmerizing tale of sexual desire and discovery, naive newlyweds Henry and Effie are honeymooning in Cape May, N.J., in 1957, tentatively navigating intimacy.

Cape May by Chip Cheek