0°C | Thursday November 13, 2025 
21 June 2023
By James Mullan
After the success of her debut novel series, McMahons Point author Amber Jakeman has released the first book of her new ‘Escape to the Coast’ series: Summer Beach.
As long as Jakeman can remember books and literature have been a strong part of her life. “I have always been passionate about books from the first picture books I saw. They took me away to another world and I afforded them. I loved learning to read and write, composition time at school was my favourite!”
This naturally led her into a career in journalism which included time at the Sydney Morning Herald, The Sydney Sun and suburban newspapers. As her children grew up, she obtained a Masters in Professional Communications which led into roles writing for universities and schools. Yet there was something missing, as this path had Jakeman dealing mainly in the non-fiction world: “I found I was particularly interested in stories especially after a career in journalism. I really wanted to read and write stories with positive resolutions.”
It’s fair to say Jakeman isn’t a fan of writing horror, taking inspiration more from authors like JoJo Moyes, Beth O’Leahry and Jane Austin, describing her style as ‘feel good fiction.’
After a long career in journalism, Jakeman had a strong desire to write more creatively, so began to take an interest in fiction writing.
“I just realised that life was going by. It’s a bit of a cliche but it’s not a rehearsal, if you want to do something you should just do it.”
Early on, she had discovered the ‘5am writers club’ on Twitter which had the author writing with the sunrise where she found it was the best time for undisturbed, creative writing. After writing five books, Jakeman was ready to publish her debut work ‘House of Diamonds’ which is an “enemies to lovers” tale about sassy indie jeweller stallholder Stella Rhys taking on an infamous diamond store.
This was followed with the release of a full series which included Hearts, Spades, Clubs and finally Full House. The series followed the tales of the Huntley jewellery family and was very well received by readers not just in Australia, but around the world. All were launched last year.
With the momentum from her debut books, Amber began to work on a new series titled ‘Escape to the Coast’, starting with her latest release; Summer Beach.
For Jakeman, a story always begins with character development. “The key character in this one is Sam, she’s a workaholic who is Australian but lived in the US for most of her working life.” Sam is a computer coder who takes her work very seriously. When her father dies, she returns to Australia to settle his beach side property. While in the “back water” place, Sam meets neighbour Jake. “He comes across as gruff and quite difficult person.”
The two clash on a lot of things from petty to big picture. After some time, they begin to get along but Sam slowly finds out more about some of Jake’s skeletons in the closet.
That’s all we can tell you! You’ll have to pick up a copy to find out what happens.
Stylistically, Summer Beach is slightly different to the House of Diamonds series yet Jakeman says “the main bones of it are similar: serious themes, positive resolution and hopefully with characters that readers will be barracking for.”
Inspiration for the ‘Escape to the Coast’ series comes from the author’s time spent living and working as a journalist on the Central Coast.
Jakeman said that themes from news stories she had written at this time fed into many elements of Summer Beach and the trilogy. As for the next two books, Sunset Beach and Midnight Beach, she has begun to plot out the stories however prefers to go along with her imagination and the feel of the story instead of rigorously planning an arc.
Sunset Beach will officially be launched at 3PM on Sunday 25 June at Better Read than Dead in Newtown. For those who can’t wait, you can now order the book online through Amazon.