The Five-Star Weekend
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Hotel Nantucket: After tragedy strikes, food blogger Hollis Shaw gathers four friends from different stages in her life to spend an unforgettable weekend on Nantucket.
Hollis Shaw’s life seems picture-perfect. She’s the creator of the popular food blog Hungry with Hollis and is married to Matthew, a dreamy heart surgeon. But after she and Matthew get into a heated argument one snowy morning, he leaves for the airport and is killed in a car accident. The cracks in Hollis’s perfect life—her strained marriage and her complicated relationship with her daughter, Caroline—grow deeper.
So when Hollis hears about something called a “Five-Star Weekend”—one woman organizes a trip for her best friend from each phase of her life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlife—she decides to host her own Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket. But the weekend doesn’t turn out to be a joyful Hallmark movie.
The husband of Hollis’s childhood friend Tatum arranges for Hollis’s first love, Jack Finigan, to spend time with them, stirring up old feelings. Meanwhile, Tatum is forced to play nice with abrasive and elitist Dru-Ann, Hollis’s best friend from UNC Chapel Hill. Dru-Ann’s career as a prominent Chicago sports agent is on the line after her comments about a client’s mental health issues are misconstrued online. Brooke, Hollis’s friend from their thirties, has just discovered that her husband is having an inappropriate relationship with a woman at work. Again! And then there’s Gigi, a stranger to everyone (including Hollis) who reached out to Hollis through her blog. Gigi embodies an unusual grace and, as it happens, has many secrets.
The Five-Star Weekend is a surprising and captivating story about friendship, love, and self-discovery set on Nantucket. It will be a weekend like no other.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
It isn’t truly summer vacation without a bittersweet beach read from Elin Hilderbrand. After suffering a sudden and devastating loss, fiftysomething food blogger Hollis Shaw invites four very different women—her best friends from her teens, twenties, thirties, and now—to her gorgeous Nantucket beach home for an all-girls weekend. With her grieving film-student daughter back home to document, Hollis and her support circle bond, process their emotions, and open up old wounds. Each of Hilderbrand’s well-rounded characters carries her own emotional baggage, not to mention a closely guarded secret or two. We devoured this tragicomic story of forgiveness, love, and second chances amidst the sea glass and Lilly Pulitzer skirts.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this stunning, sun-drenched mix of romance and women's fiction from bestseller Hilderbrand (The Hotel Nantucket), famous food blogger Hollis Shaw gathers one important woman from each decade of her life for an unforgettable girls' trip to Nantucket. Reeling from her husband's sudden death in a car accident, Hollis is trying to make sense of their marriage, which had been failing; cope with her teen daughter's resentment; and figure out plans for her upended future when she stumbles across the idea for a "five-star weekend" online and sets about recruiting friends. Her best friend from childhood, Tatum, who still lives on Nantucket, is reluctant to renew their friendship, particularly when she knows that Hollis's college roommate, Dru Ann, a high-powered sports agent whom she fought with at Hollis's wedding, will be in attendance. Meanwhile, Hollis's friend from her 30s, Brooke, always tries too hard to fit in, filling her with anxiety that colors her interactions with the other, seemingly more self-confident women. Hollis also invites an internet friend whom she connected with through her blog and has never met in person. Hilderbrand makes the most of gathering these big personalities in Hollis's small, photograph-ready abode; as they navigate their differences, the women discover things about themselves—and may even find love along the way. This should become a beach bag staple.
Customer Reviews
A charmer!
Thoroughly entertaining! My first by this author. Will check out more.
Bravo
Awesome book! So sad the Nantucket books are ending. You’ve taken me away many times and I appreciate it. You’ve made me know and feel the Island of Nantucket and I’ve never been. Some day,,,,
Great Read
Probably my favorite book of hers. And I’ve read a lot. Very well written. Great story.