The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand
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.
Review: Hollis Shaw seems to have the perfect life running the popular food blog Hungry with Hollis and married to heart surgeon, Matthew. But after Matthew dies in a car accident, Hollis is left bereft, questioning the cracks that were in her marriage and with a complicated relationship with her only child, Caroline. Over the summer, she decides to host a Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket. with one best friend from each phase of her life and invites her childhood friend Tatum, college friend Dru-Ann, friend from her thirties Brooke, and Gigi, who she has met through her online blog.
I really loved that this focuses on female friendship and a group of women who are in their 50s. So few books focus on older female characters, and I loved the representation and how this demonstrates how full and rich life still is at every age. I also loved the Nantucket setting. This has great beach and summertime vibes, and it was fun to travel along with the ladies for a dream weekend with all expenses paid by Hollis.
However, I really struggled to enjoy this one. I do think a large part of it was the narration of the audiobook, which was not my favorite. It also felt like a lot of character threads to keep up with on audio. The lives and drama of so many different ladies were a lot to keep track of and I honestly struggled to keep it all straight.
I also just felt sort of bored by the story. There is a lot of drama and misunderstanding between the ladies, personal revelations and discoveries, but it was all just a lot of women enjoying a very boujee weekend in a luxe setting.
Stars: 3
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