The Five Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s Synopsis: 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.

HerKentucky Review: The Five-Star Weekend is built around an interesting premise: Can you build a successful girls’ weekend around the women who knew you best during the distinct decades of your adult life? It’s an idea that most of us find both intriguing and, at the same time, a bit cringeworthy. Could your high school bestie and your current confidante find common ground? Could your friend from the college bar hang with your friend from barre class? It could be the time of your life or your worst nightmare. For Hollis Shaw, Elin Hilderbrand’s latest Nantucket-based protagonist, the Five-Star Weekend is a little bit of both.

In her latest novel of summertime drama, Ms. Hilderbrand introduces us to Hollis, a Nantucket native turned food blogger who plans the titular weekend in the wake of her husband’s death. Tempers flare and secrets are spilled as the weekend’s schedule of nostalgia and bonding unfolds. Decades-old grudges are rehashed, more than a few secrets surface and Hollis learns that her friends aren’t necessarily who they seem to be. The Five-Star Weekend intertwines Ms. Hilderbrand’s signature views of Nantucket boutiques, bars and restaurants with sharp social commentary on cancel culture, influencers and the reality behind social media friendships and the socioeconomic divides that often fragment friend groups. It’s a fun and compelling summertime read that’ll have you texting long-lost sorority sisters and spin class friends to catch up.

Purchase a copy of The Five Star-Weekend via Bookshop.org or Amazon.

Please note that I received an Advanced Review Copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review of this work. This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

The London Seance Society by Sarah Penner

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: From the author of the sensational bestseller The Lost Apothecary comes a spellbinding tale about two daring women who hunt for truth and justice in the perilous art of conjuring the dead.

1873. At an abandoned château on the outskirts of Paris, a dark séance is about to take place, led by acclaimed spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire. Known worldwide for her talent in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identities of the people who killed them, she is highly sought after by widows and investigators alike.

Lenna Wickes has come to Paris to find answers about her sister’s death, but to do so, she must embrace the unknown and overcome her own logic-driven bias against the occult. When Vaudeline is beckoned to England to solve a high-profile murder, Lenna accompanies her as an understudy. But as the women team up with the powerful men of London’s exclusive Séance Society to solve the mystery, they begin to suspect that they are not merely out to solve a crime, but perhaps entangled in one themselves…

HerKentucky Review: I really wanted to like this book. I adored Ms. Penner’s debut novel, The Lost Apothecary. The earlier novel was fast-paced and fun, but this one simply falls flat. The plot feels very convoluted, with obvious red herrings and partially-reliable narrators. The setting was potentially fascinating, but the narrative kept getting bogged down in cliches, like the “scientific minded” protagonist who couldn’t possibly believe in ghosts — until, predictably, she does. I’d recommend re-reading The Lost Apothecary and skipping this one altogether.

Pre-order The London Séance Society on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

Please note that I received an Advanced Review Copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review of this work. This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

The Mitford Affair by Marie Benedict

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Editor’s note: This book review and its source material may contain triggering content for some readers. The real-life events that are described in this book center around the European political climate of the 1930s — many of the people in this book were swept up in fascist and communist political actions. Please note that, in reading and reviewing this book, I am in no way advocating the vicious and atrocious political viewpoints held by members of the Mitford family. This book contains content warnings for Nazism, anti-Semitism, Fascism and suicide.

Publisher’s Synopsis: From New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict comes an explosive novel of history's most notorious sisters, one of whom will have to choose: her country or her family?

Between the World Wars, the six Mitford sisters — each more beautiful, brilliant, and eccentric than the next — dominate the English political, literary, and social scenes. Though they've weathered scandals before, the family falls into disarray when Diana divorces her wealthy husband to marry a fascist leader and Unity follows her sister's lead all the way to Munich, inciting rumors that she's become Hitler's mistress.

As the Nazis rise in power, novelist Nancy Mitford grows suspicious of her sisters' constant visits to Germany and the high-ranking fascist company they keep. When she overhears alarming conversations and uncovers disquieting documents, Nancy must make excruciating choices as Great Britain goes to war with Germany.

Probing the torrid political climate in the lead-up to World War II and the ways that seemingly sensible people can be sucked into radical action, The Mitford Affair follows Nancy's valiant efforts to stop the Nazis from taking over Great Britain, and the complicated choices she must make between the personal and the political.

HerKentucky Review: Oh, wow. There is so much to unpack with The Mitford Affair. These women (and their ill-fated brother, Tom) were celebrity socialites of 1930s England. They were beautiful, and brilliant, and witty, and they garnered plenty of media attention. Their novels and memoirs were full of nicknames and bon mots and secret languages and in-jokes. Their father held a peerage title and they were cousins-by-marriage to Winston Churchill. It’s quite easy to get caught up in their mystique and mythology; one feels a little more clever simply by reading of their adventures. And yet…

And yet you can’t deny the fact that three of the six sisters were political fanatics. Diana and Unity were caught up in Europe’s burgeoning fascist movement. Diana actively fought to bring fascist rule to England, and Unity literally stalked Hitler. Jessica chose communism over her family. As the narrative of The Mitford Affair unfolds, we learn that Nancy chooses to turn Diana’s political documents over to the British authorities. As I read Ms. Benedict’s account of the Mitford sisters’ political conflicts, I couldn’t help thinking of the political climate of modern America, and the ways that so many people are getting caught up in often-dangerous political rhetoric. If I learned anything in four years of undergraduate political science studies, it’s that there will always be dangerous ideologies to adopt, and there will always be people who find these ideologies thrilling and fascinating.

The Mitford Affair is a fantastic introduction to the famed Mitford sisters, presenting the reader with a concise understanding of the socioeconomic and political dynamics of the day. Ms. Benedict does tend to present Diana somewhat as a victim of infatuation more than a political entity in her own right; I honestly don’t know if this is a true depiction. The same could be said of the author’s treatment of Unity — was she an impressionable young woman who fell blindly into Hitler-worship or was she truly a believer in the Nazi cause? Ms. Benedict does a nice job of writing about these women in a way that both captures their charms and looks unflinchingly at their reprehensible actions. I definitely recommend this book — with strong consideration to content warnings — to anyone who’s interested in learning more about the storied Mitford family.

Purchase The Mitford Affair on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

Please note that I received an Advanced Review Copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review of this work. This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.