Review by Booklist Review
Over the course of a summer, seven women gather in a sprawling bed and breakfast in Provincetown to reconcile their complicated family relationships. Marin Bishop's perfect life has fallen apart all at once with the appearance of a surprise half-sister, Rachel, and the loss of her prestigious job. She and Rachel leave Manhattan to meet their grandmother Amelia on Cape Cod, stay for a few days at her inn, and forge connections neither knew they needed. As they gradually extend their stay week by week to the entire summer, Marin's parents, boyfriend, aunt Amelia, and Amelia's wife, Kelly and seemingly all the other residents of Provincetown variously participate in their journey. Kelly teaches Marin the family craft of mosaic construction, and Marin's completion of a long-planned gift wraps up her visit and sets her on her course, while great changes also come to the lives of Marin's mother, Amelia, and Rachel. An engaging and emotional read with characters who stay with you, this is a good fit for fans of Elin Hilderbrand, beach reads, and women's stories.--Moroni, Alene Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Clunky characterizations mar Brenner's (The Wedding Sisters) novel about three generations of women linked by a DNA test. When 22-year-old Rachel Moscowitz contacts 30-year-old second-generation attorney Marin Bishop with news that they may be half-sisters, Marin's life is in disarray. She's facing a broken engagement, being fired for a workplace affair, her parents' separation, and now the discovery that the man she calls Dad is not her biological father is simply too much. Why did her mom, Blythe, keep it a secret, and why does she insist on joining the two younger women on a trip to Provincetown to meet their grandmother Amelia? This is a summer of revelations about infidelity and of change: for Amelia and her partner Kelly's long relationship, for Rachel as she tries to grow up and falls in love for the first time, for Marin, whose life turns upside down; and for two very different half-sisters forging a connection. Brenner tells these messy personal stories well, but some characters lack complexity. Only Amelia and Kelly emerge fully-fleshed. Too often, Rachel resembles a lovestruck teen and Marin a conceited adolescent, while Blythe tends toward the pathetic rather than the sympathetic. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Brenner's (The Wedding Sisters) sunny, escapist romp nevertheless takes a spin through several stormy themes: uncovering family secrets via gene mapping, terminal illness, and suicide, to name a few. Marin, a thirtysomething lawyer in New York, has left her businessman fiancé for a handsome partner at her firm, but is devastated when both she and her lover are fired for fraternization. That's when an email from a mysterious person claiming to be her half sister appears in her inbox. Feeling as if she has nothing to lose, Marin agrees to accompany her newfound sibling to sunny Provincetown, MA, where the woman who is their grandmother owns a B&B with her wife on the quirky tourist town's main drag. This intriguing setup blossoms into a whirlwind of romance, family secrets, and tragedy, involving an ever-expanding cast of characters, many of whom are related to the sisters and their grandmother. VERDICT Readers looking for a light, soap-operatic plot with trendy themes in a beach setting will not be disappointed. Most will want to hang on through the drawn-out middle section until they learn the results of Marin's latest genetic test.-Erin O. Romanyshyn, Saskatoon P.L., Sask. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Four women find themselves in a tangled family web that they work to unravel over a Provincetown summer in this new novel by Brenner (The Wedding Sisters, 2016, etc.).When Marin Bishop breaks off her perfect-seeming engagement to pursue a passionate affair with her boss at a Manhattan law firm, she believes it's the most dramatic thing that will happen to her as the summer begins. But when her firm finds out, she and her lover are summarily fired, right after she learns from her Philadelphia society parents that they're getting a divorce (something her mother, Blythe, is struggling to accept herself). In the wake of all this, Marin is thrown for an additional loop: while she's a daddy's girl at heart, she finds out that she's not her father's biological child. Indeed, she has a half sister neither she nor her mother knew about, a young Californian named Rachel who comes to New York to see Marin before continuing to Provincetown to meet her newly discovered grandmother Amelia. The biological father of both girls, Amelia's son, died many years ago. On a whim, Marin joins Rachel, and, out of desperation, Blythe tags along. They all find themselves at Amelia's beachfront guesthouseclosed for this summer but open to a new, blended family. As the summer unfolds, each of these women must process the information they've gained and the new people they've encountered, relearning how they fit in the world and what it means to be family. Soap-opera twists and turns are tempered with the believable goodness of the characters, the messiness of their journeys, and just a hint of unpredictability as events unfold. Not all the endings are happy, but most are. Engaging and not too fluffy, an excellent choice for summer vacation reading. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
