Would You Spend the Weekend with Your Co-workers?? (Book Review- The Beach House by Kenny Blue)

Would you spend a weekend with your co-workers at a secluded beach house and work on a special project in order to meet a set deadline?

That's the question that's asked (and answered) in a novel titled the Beach House by Kenny Blue. I bought this book at the National Book Club Conference in early August of this year. The author was there hustling this novel. I liked the cover and the subject matter, so I decided to buy the book.

Let me gently rephrase the question that I asked earlier: What happens when coworkers, most of whom don't associate with each other outside of the workplace, all having very different personalities, hangups, and/or deep rooted personal problems, spend a whole weekend together in a beach house for work and a little relaxation? Drama. That's what happens. Pure unadulterated drama. And a whole lot of drama at that.

There were several characters/coworkers, who happen to be Atlanta Marketing Associates, that spent the weekend at the beach house working together on a special project for their company: Felicia, the white-collar superwoman mother and wife; Stacey, the wanna-be model; Kym, the interracial woman with a bit of a inferiority complex; Antoine, the troubled Christian; Leslie, the somewhat militant black woman; and Damien, the ladies man. And to top it off, Felicia brings along her blue collar worker husband, Kelvin. As you can see, this is a funky mix of people to throw together for a weekend.

This was a pretty interesting book. It was a very quick read. All kinds of secrets come out into the open. Sexual harrasment issues, class issues, and inferiorty issues present themselves. It becomes real apparent really quickly who likes and dislikes who. Kenny Blue packed all these issues into a short read. Some of the climatic scenes made me gasp aloud! Oh my!

All the characters were interesting, but that was something that troubled me about the book: too many main characters. As a result, this felt like a very long short story, if there is such a thing. This book was a little over two hundred pages, and the author could have easily worked on more character development. It could have easily been a four hundred page book. I felt all the flashbacks and backstories were a bit abrupt and rushed, but however, they were good. I just wanted more, that's all. I wanted to know more about this diverse group of characters.

Overall, this was a pretty good book, well worth my cash!

Me? Would I spend that a whole weekend of my time with my coworkers working on a special project? Hmm... I don't know. It all depends on how much money would be involved. I don't want to hear all that craziness that government does (giving comp time instead of money). In that case... Heck no!! My weekends are precious to me! And it also depends on whether my supervisor, Sister T, is forcing me into it.

And it would be an issue of brute force indeed....