Skip to main content

Critical Praise

"Barbieri does such a wonderful job setting up the beauty and mystery of the island and its rich Gaelic roots that it is not a stretch to ask the reader to imagine that the place is also magical. A wonderful, subtle, transporting story."

— Susan Maguire, Booklist (starred review)

"In the enchanting world of Maine’s Burke’s Island, fanciful stories - of captured selkies becoming dutiful wives and tears cried in the sea beckoning lovers to shore - are gracefully woven into modern reality."

— Publishers Weekly

"Heather Barbieri’s The Cottage at Glass Beach is a moving, heartfelt story told with vivid description. Open the book and listen --- you’ll hear the waves crashing onto the shore."

— Sarah Jio, author of The Bungalow and The Violets of March

"Part seaside fairytale, part exploration of real-world tensions....Let yourself be transported to Burke’s Island, a salt-tinged place steeped in legends of selkies and shipwrecks, but also full of bruised and hopeful people making their wayward, human ways toward happiness."

— Marisa de los Santos, author of Falling Togetherand Belong to Me

"The Cottage at Glass Beach, an enchanting novel about mothers and daughters on an isolated island, is a romantic, delicious read. Barbieri’s beautiful writing and beguiling world view revel in the realities and the mysteries of the sea and of life itself."

— Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of Heat Wave