#5BlushReview ~~ The Five Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Hotel Nantucket: After tragedy strikes, 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 hap- pens, 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.
Amazon: https://amzn.to/40WAj5U
Christina’s 5 Stars for The Five-Star Weekend
I loved this book from top to bottom. From the juicy weekend girlfriend drama, to the mouthwatering descriptions of food (is there any other fictional writer that writes food better than Hilderbrand? No, there isn’t ), to the envious retellings of Nantucket’s hottest scenes around town, The Five-Star Weekend deserves 5 Stars and MORE.
When Hollis Shad’s husband dies tragically, she invites one friend from each stage in her life to her home on Nantucket Island as a way to what….move on? Find peace? People are skeptical but as the weekend progresses and secrets are revealed, the drama is high and the tension is thick. Think Housewives of Nantucket but classy and interesting. These women lead very different but equally fascinating and fabulous lives and I absolutely adored reading about all of them. Hilderbrand’s Nantucket is front and center as it usually is, but has never been more fabulous, in my opinion.
I always say that Elin’s books deserve a coveted spot in your beach bag but THIS BOOK REALLY DESERVES A COVETED SPOT IN YOUR BEACH BAG! You’ll be laughing, crying, swooning and if you’re anything like me, googling names and places and stylish looks and designers. This novel has everything you want in a beach read and more. It’s easily top 3 EH books of all time for me (third to just The Island and Silver Girl). HIGHLY RECOMMEND!
Bravo Elin!!
About Elin Hilderbrand
Elin Hilderbrand lives on Nantucket with her husband and their three young children. She grew up in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and traveled extensively before settling on Nantucket, which has been the setting for her five previous novels. Hilderbrand is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the graduate fiction workshop at the University of Iowa.
