Hawkes Harbor

Written by S. E. Hinton

Narrated by Dick Hill

Dr. Phillip McDevitt, director of Terrace View Asylum, is intrigued by his newest patient, a troubled young man recently transferred from the state hospital for the criminally insane. Jamie Sommers suffers from depression, partial amnesia, and an unaccountable fear of the dark. Dr. McDevitt is determined to help Jamie conquer his demons, but the more he probes the young man’s fractured memories, the stranger his case becomes.…

An orphan and a bastard, Jamie grew up tough enough to handle almost anything. Taking to the sea, he found danger and adventure in exotic ports all over the world. He’s survived foreign prisons, smugglers, pirates, gunrunners, and even a shark attack. But what he discovered in the quiet seaside town of Hawkes Harbor, Delaware, was enough to drive him almost insane—and change his life forever.

Hawkes Harbor is a compelling and unpredictable new novel by one of America’s most honored storytellers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: May 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543611533

S. E. Hinton

S. E. Hinton was the first author to receive the Young Adult Services Division/School Library Journal Award for Life Achievement, and has received numerous other awards and honors. Her gritty and powerful novels have also inspired four major motion pictures. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Reviews for Hawkes Harbor

[stephkaye-923485 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

What comes to mind when I say “S.E. Hinton”? The Outsiders. Pony Boy. “Nothing gold can stay.” Maybe Rumble Fish. Or Matt Dillon.

But what about…vampires?

After Susan (!) E. Hinton’s iconic books, The Outsiders (1967), That Was Then, This is Now (1971), and Rumble Fish (1975), she kept writing. And one of the novels she wrote, in 2004, was Hawkes Harbor.

I listened to this book on CD. After the first disc, I thought I’d be listening to the tale of a troubled young man, very similar to those titles I just mentioned. We get a glimpse of Jamie Sommers’ childhood, then his wild times as a sailor and smuggler. We know he has gotten into trouble because he’s telling all this to a psychiatrist in a mental institution.

However, on disc two, things get weird. The book becomes a classic tale of…boy meets vampire.

TL;DR ***SPOILER ALERT*** Boy meets vampire. Vampire enslaves boy. Boy goes crazy. Vampire commits boy to asylum. Both boy and vampire are cured. They become besties and live happily ever after.

WHAT the WHAT???

First of all, vampire gets cured? I had to make sure I hadn’t skipped a disc when this just casually came up. While Jamie is “away,” the vampire somehow meets AND IS CURED BY a doctor/historian named Louisa.

So the relationship of SLAVE to MASTER becomes just another friendly employer/employee, roommates in a big, haunted house kind of thing, with a casual mention of Stockholm syndrome. No big deal, right? The two men even go on a cruise together, where they both find romantic and sexual adventure.

My only way of processing this is to think that Ms. Hinton was somehow, consciously or unconsciously, writing an allegory about child abuse. Our vampire, Grenville Hawkes, is the abusive parent, and Jamie the child. Jamie is absolutely traumatized by Grenville’s abuse, is helpless to escape it, and therefore copes as best he can. However, when Grenville “reforms,” Jamie gradually comes to trust him, and they have a mutually respectful relationship. Is this possible in formerly abusive parent/child relationships? I don’t know if it’s common, but I’ve heard of it in my own extended family.

The attempt falls flat, though. Too much telling, not showing, especially about important relationships. For example, you can never tell if Louisa’s attitude toward Jamie on a given day will be bossy or fond. No real development happens for her, she just shifts personalities as needed for each scene.

So anyway, if you want to read a vampire tale that does not have sparkly skin or werewolves, but does have male bonding on a cruise ship, give it a try. It may be the weirdest book you’ve read all year.

[indygo88 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This one was just...odd. I don't even know where to begin to explain it. The plot was all over the place. The story would begin to take form, and then it would change direction completely. And then....vampires?? That didn't seem to even fit in with the rest of the novel. I really don't know what S.E. Hinton was trying to accomplish with this story. There were parts that were well-written, but the book as a whole was just a mess.

[bami210 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It's not that I didn't like it -- it was just okay. "The Outsiders" was one of my all-time favorite books, so I thought another of her's would be good. Don't bother with this one :-(

[russell7alynn · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I think S.E. Hinton is a fantastic writer and The Outsiders is still one of my favorite books. With that being said, I think she completely missed the mark with this book. Ultimately, I think it was meant to be a heartwarming tale of how two struggling souls come together and save one another from lives of loneliness and despair; however, there were so many strange elements mixed in that the story just seemed to fall apart midway through the book and didn’t make any sense by the end. When I began reading I started to think that it was a tale of suspense and horror. I assumed that I would figure out what tragedy had befallen Jamie, and discover the reasoning behind his being locked in an insane asylum. These assumptions forced me to keep reading, but by the middle of the book I realized that those assumptions were't correct and that the story was taking a drastic change in direction.
The supernatural element of the book vanished. When Jamie is released from the asylum we discover that Grenville Hawkes, the vampire that Jamie encounters in the cave, is suddenly no longer a vampire and is completely reformed. He no longer drinks blood, he’s able to walk in sunlight, and doesn’t abuse Jamie or treat him like a servant anymore. From that point on, I think Hinton’s true plot surfaces (two friends saving each other from lonely, miserable lives). The relationship between these two characters completely changes as they become more like father/son than vampire/servant.
If Hinton had written this story and left out the vampire aspect of it, I think I would have enjoyed this story so much more. The way that Jamie and Grenville begin to bond and share a mutual respect for each other truly is touching, but almost seems silly when you consider the fact that Grenville was a cruel, heartless vampire 40 pages before. Then again, perhaps Grenville was never REALLY vampire. Jamie is in an insane asylum when we first meet him so his point of view is probably more than skewed and completely unreliable, but I think that’s wishful thinking on my part and I don’t believe that thought even crossed Hinton’s mind when she was writing this. All in all, I would have to say read at your own risk and make your own decisions about the book. It’s a quick read and you might enjoy it if you completely ignore the vampire/supernatural aspect.

[elca0720 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This story about Jamie the orphan is kind of confusing. He keeps switching from present day to stroies of the past. I didn't really enjoy it that much.

[julienne_preacher · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book started as one thing and turned into another halfway. It's almost as if the author had been sketching lots of different stories and then had a not so brilliant idea to put them together. There's some adventuring at the sea, a pinch of psychological horror with a young man in a mental institution and all leads to a weird combination of relationship drama, coming of age story and vampires. The outcome is incoherent and a bit pointless. The most interesting things are happening off-screen, like a vampire being cured from vampirism. In my opinion the author focused on the wrong story and protagonist.

[cailin_2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

As a teenager I loved all of SE Hinton's books. I liked this book but something was definitely missing. The characters seemed to make a complete change midway through the book and I never quite got the point of the book. It may just be me....

[exlibrismcp · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I bought this book because I remembered reading The Outsiders and Rumble Fish in my teens and truly enjoying them. Yet, I was not that impressed by this book. The scenes jumbed back and forth in time making it difficult to keep up with the many storylines within it. I stuck with it initially to see what the mystery and horror hype was suppose to be all about. But, Hinton did not do such a good job of keeping it hidden - it was quite easy to discover the mystery before it was truly revealed. Additionally, the plot never did resolve itself - there were too many things left hanging in the air.

[bookwhisperer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Story of a man that is living with a mental illness. He is found by a vampire that takes a liking to him. It tells the story of his life before and after the onset of mental illness. Address love lost, friends death, and loyalt to a friend taht may not always happen to be his friend.

[whimsicalkitten · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this book on CD and had to force myself to keep going past the first couple of disks, since I was finding it not to my taste. But I persisted - moving from boredom through dismayed surprise at the turn that the plot took midway through, when the main character opened up a casket to find a vampire in it! - and finally, to real enjoyment of the way that the lives of the main character and his employer changed, grew, and interwined. I continue to be surprised at the plot device that the author uses that somehow turns the vampire back into a human being, but I guess that's just an acceptable fictional device?

[kawika_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is SE Hinton's first novel in over fifteen years, according to the blurb on the back. As such, there are many expectations that can come regarding the author of such works as The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, and That was Then, This is Now. Almost inevitably, Hawkes Harbor will be compared to those works that most of us will remember fondly from our younger years.Unfortunately, Hawkes Harbor just doesn't live up to The Outsiders, which is unfair to Hawkes Harbor. On its own, Hawkes Harbor actually ends up being a very nice story. However, it does suffer on a couple of points. There is a lot of jumping back and forth in time as the main character, Jamie, struggles to remember his past while in a mental institution. Whether or not the feeling is on purpose, the disjointedness of the piecemeal recall can be disorienting and disheartening.Also, as with the expectation of Rumble Fish quality, the reader may be confounded by expectation of plot and/or genre. Due to some of the reviews and blurbs on the covers, some people will come in with the expectation of a supernatural thriller, but the book doesn't start out like one, instead choosing to set the stage through the flashback scenes. Once involved in the book, it doesn't read like a normal supernatural thriller or romance in the vein of an Anita Blake novel. What the novel truly ends up focused on are relationships between Jamie and other characters and how those relationships change. There are certainly some exciting and terrifying moments, but more importance is placed on how people change and the evolution of their interpersonal relationships. In this exploration of perception and misperception is where there is some common ground with Hinton's previous, more well known works.In the final analysis, I found the book very rewarding. I was ready to put it down in the middle due to the disjointed recollection of past events, but wanted to stay with it due to the book's relatively short length. In staying the course, I found the exploration of different relationships ultimately very satisfying. The jumping back and forth will kill off some readers' enthusiasm as will false expectations of what the book is supposed to be about. In the end, the enjoyment each person will derive from Hawkes Harbor will ultimately be up to that individual's taste. Your reaction will be a very personal thing.

[sharonu_7 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I really tried hard to read this one but got lost by the past and present tooing and throwing.

[francescadefreitas · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The quote from the new York Times on the cover ('Vampires, pirates and lusty French socialites') led me to expect something very different. I found the beginning with it's disjointed flashbacks a bit forced. But once the action moved to Hawkes Harbour, I was enthralled by the story. An interesting new take on the relationship between a vampire and his prey.