In this satisfying page-turner from "the queen of beach reads" (New York Magazine), a Nantucket novelist has one final summer to protect her secrets while her loved ones on earth learn to live without their golden girl. Signed by author in ink to front free endpaper. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2021. Please try my blog and/or my new book, Love, Loss, and Moving On. If you like the way I wrote this story, you will like other things I have written. So, if that’s what you are looking for, this is a good one.
If there is a genre of books called “Beach Read,” this is the epitome of that style. Ultimately, the person who killed Vivi is found, and all of the characters go off into their own brand of happily ever after. There is also a Greek chorus of sorts, and some chapters are told from “Nantucket’s” point of view. Thus, the reader gets into the heads of many of the above-mentioned characters as the plot advances. The book is set out in short chapters with alternating points of view. He’s the one trying to figure out who hit Vivi and why. Oh, and let’s not forget Ed Kapenash, the chief of police in Nantucket. Vivi has a love interest too, well actually, he is her “almost-ex-boyfriend.” And if this is not enough characters to juggle, Willa’s in-laws play a part in the tale. Vivi’s best friend is often in the story, as is Vivi’s ex-husband and the much younger woman for whom he left Vivi. But wait, we aren’t finished with the cast of characters yet. Interestingly, this young person, Cruz, is a suspect in her death. Of course, they each have romantic partners for us to follow, and Leo also has a dear friend who was practically raised by Vivi. The oldest is married and the youngest is about to go off to college. They are in various stages of being all grown up. We have Vivi’s three children, Willa, Carson, and Leo. She is also granted three nudges, which allow her to influence the outcome of situations she witnesses as she watches her family. When she gets to the great beyond, she is granted a seventy-five-day viewing window to watch over her still-living loved ones. She is a writer whose thirteen novels are beach reads set on Nantucket.
The book opens with a hit and run accident in which Vivi Howe is killed. It was everything the The New York Post and The New York Times promised.
In 2014, The New York Post called her, “the queen of the easy-breezy summer read.” Recently, The New York Times called her, “the bard of Nantucket and the doyenne of flip-flops, outdoor showers, and pink sunsets.” This is the first of her books that I have read. Her first novel was published in 2008, so twenty-seven books in thirteen years is quite a feat. She lives in – and writes mostly about – Nantucket Island. This book is Elin Hilderbrand’s twenty-seventh novel.
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