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.

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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.