One hates to see Kayla, a good Nantucketer, take it on the chin like this. But, well, for a good story? Hey.
Follow-up to Hilderbrand’s debut, The Beach Club (2000), that summons up stronger plotting but is still sheer as a see-through bikini.
Hilderbrand’s steady flow of island detail impresses as a kind of consumer’s guide to Nantucket even as one’s hunger deepens for a Bret Eaton Ellis psycho amid the glitter or even an ax-wielding Russian student of Nietzsche out to murder a Monomoy millionaire. Can one really read 200-plus pages of this chicken salad? Three women in their 40s have met for 19 years on the Friday of Labor Day weekend for moonlit Champagne-and-lobster-tails, all-night nude swim, and heartfest. Kayla Montero, with four kids, fights her weight while married to her gorgeously handsome Brazilian husband, Raoul, a contractor with a ten-million-dollar house to build—and quite possibly mistresses to service. Antoinette Riley, who has been “having crazy sex,” is “dark-skinned like an Egyptian priestess” and has “the sexiest voice on the planet. . . dark and exotic, like sandalwood, like expensive chocolate.” A daughter, Lindsey, “the color of a wine cork” and given up for adoption as a baby, has tracked Antoinette (who has $30 million from Microsoft investments) down and wants to meet her the day after the swim party. Married Valerie Gluckstern, Nantucket’s top lawyer, has been having an affair “with someone they all know” and will tell all at the swim. Valerie brings a Methuselah of Laurent-Perrier Champagne to the swim, Antoinette a tub of lobster tails, Kayla a quart of raspberries and pale creamy Saint André cheese. Then Antoinette swims out, never returning. Police, coast guard, no Antoinette. Next day Kayla meets Lindsey, gives her the bad news, escorts her about. As it happens, Antoinette was pregnant by Kayla’s 18-year-old son, Theo! From there, everything dips deep into Peyton Place country, with Kayla turning adulteress as the muck rises.
One hates to see Kayla, a good Nantucketer, take it on the chin like this. But, well, for a good story? Hey.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-28335-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
An engaging tale about how childhood expectations can be transformed on the journey through adulthood.
Longtime best friends struggle to remain connected when their lives take divergent paths.
Keely Green and Isabelle Maxwell have been attached at the hip since preschool. Although they are both natives of Nantucket, they have always had very different lifestyles. Where Keely resides in a modest home, Isabelle’s attorney father is able to provide his family with every luxury. Even so, the girls bond over their love of Nantucket and shared dreams of becoming writers. As they grow and end up at different colleges, they see that life can often complicate friendships, and they begin to gradually grow apart. When Isabelle declares she has found the perfect man, Keely begins dating Isabelle’s long-ago boyfriend, Tommy. Tension over Tommy causes the young women’s relationship to grow increasingly strained. Adding drama to this now-fraught relationship is the moment when Keely makes it as a bestselling novelist and moves to New York, while Isabelle, who was always the more cosmopolitan of the pair, is still living on the island, with no professional prospects in sight. Despite her success, Keely feels empty without Isabelle at her side. As these young women see their lives unfolding in ways they never expected, the biggest question they face is whether they will ever find a way back to each other. Offering details about life on Nantucket—both during the winter months, when only true islanders are present, and in summer, when the town is overrun with vacationers—Thayer (A Nantucket Wedding, 2018, etc.) brings the island to life so vividly that Nantucket becomes its own character. Told in the third person, the novel follows Keely as she navigates coming-of-age, changing friendships, romance, and caring for an ailing parent. The author also sheds a bright light on some of the difficulties inherent in the writer’s life, including loneliness and constant self-doubt. Told in a plot-focused, accessible prose, the novel appears at first to be a light read, but it deals artfully with heavier issues, including guilt, envy, and forgiveness.
An engaging tale about how childhood expectations can be transformed on the journey through adulthood.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9872-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
A fun, sexy, and heartfelt love story that’s equal parts romance and bromance.
A baseball player attempts to heal his marriage with the help of his team’s romance-novel book club.
Gavin Scott has it all—a killer baseball career, twin daughters, and a devoted wife. But when Gavin discovers that Thea has been faking it in the bedroom, he’s distraught. The two have a blowup fight that ends with Gavin moving out and Thea asking for a divorce. Thea, however, has been faking it in more ways than one—even though she’s painting the picture of a happy baseball wife, she’s actually miserable in that role and wishes she could go back to school and pursue art. Between Gavin’s busy career and their young children, he hasn’t even noticed how unhappy she is, and she has no plans to tell him. When Gavin confides in his teammates that his marriage is in trouble, their advice comes from an unconventional source: romance novels, specifically Regency romances full of lords and countesses. Gavin is skeptical, but his teammates persist—the books help them understand what their wives are thinking and learn how to verbalize their feelings. Feeling desperate, Gavin decides to give them a chance, starting with a book called Courting the Countess. Surprisingly, the advice from his friends works—but what will Gavin do when he has to stop using the romance novel’s words and start using his own? Adams creates a refreshingly open group of male friends who talk about emotional labor, toxic masculinity, and how pumpkin spice lattes and romance novels are mocked because women like them. They’re also, however, hilariously and believably crude (case in point: a running joke involves one of Gavin’s teammate’s “digestive problems”). Alternating between Gavin's and Thea’s points of view, Adams never paints either character as the villain, instead pointing out how both spouses' lack of communication led to their current predicament. Also included are passages from Courting the Countess, a detail sure to please historical romance fans. Gavin and Thea’s story begins at such a low point that it’s hard to imagine how they’ll ever fall back in love, but their reconciliation is built so slowly and realistically that readers will be rooting for their happily-ever-after.
A fun, sexy, and heartfelt love story that’s equal parts romance and bromance.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0609-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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