Opening
Arrivals collide with old wounds. As the Five-Star Weekend begins, public image and private pain tangle: meticulous plans fray, past lovers resurface, and a hidden mistress steps onto a collision course with the grieving host. By the end of these chapters, every invitation doubles as a threat to the perfect story Hollis Shaw wants to tell—and the truth she can no longer control.
What Happens
Chapter 11: Provisions
Molly Beardsley, a devoted fan, refreshes the Nantucket forecast for Hollis’s Five-Star Weekend, underscoring how public Hollis’s life has become. Hollis races through provisions—Bartlett’s Farm, 167 Raw—fielding recognition from employees who know her brand better than her boundaries. She’s aware of the online debate about whether it’s too soon after Matthew’s death to host a party, but she presses forward, casting the weekend as part of her path through Grief and Healing.
At Hatch’s liquor store, the owner—Ethan, whose wife played softball with Hollis—asks after Matthew Madden. Hollis answers flatly: “Matthew died in December.” Ethan, stricken, shares how his wife called Matthew “Mr. Wonderful,” sending Hollis into a crystalline memory of a gala night when Matthew praised her successes. The flashback burnishes the glow of a near-perfect marriage and sharpens the ache of Revisiting the Past.
Back at “First Light,” Hollis channels anxiety into control: fluffed duvets, perfect flowers, TikTok hacks. The illusion cracks when she mixes up the airport pickup for Caroline Shaw-Madden. Caroline storms in, furious, convinced her mother prioritizes her “brand” over family, reigniting raw Mother-Daughter Relationships. She shoves her phone at Hollis—a video showing that Hollis’s friend, Dru-Ann Jones, has just been “canceled.” Tires crunch in the drive. Dru-Ann arrives.
Chapter 12: Blowout
Tatum McKenzie treats herself to a salon blowout, a glossy mask over a churning dread: a voicemail about a biopsy, neutral and unreadable, means waiting through the weekend. Her husband Kyle tries to help, but fear sits “hanging over her head.”
She returns home to find Kyle drinking with a surprise guest: Jack Finigan, Hollis’s high school boyfriend. Annoyed, Tatum realizes they coordinated this to coincide with Hollis’s event. The reunion promises drama—and leverage. Tatum frets about a hostess gift she can’t afford, a reminder of the class divide between her and Hollis. With gallows humor, she snags a bottle of her favorite wine for Hollis and a gag toy for Dru-Ann, then invites Jack to ride along when Kyle drops her at “First Light,” ensuring Hollis’s past arrives unannounced.
Chapter 13: Happy Hour I
Brooke Kirtley steps off the ferry already rattled, only to collide with Electra Undergrove, the Wellesley “queen bee” who once exiled her. Electra—slim, polished, and magnetic—lures Brooke to a drink. Hungry to belong, Brooke goes.
Under Electra’s gaze and a blush of rosé, Brooke makes a ruinous mistake: she shows the entire Five-Star Weekend itinerary. Electra scans it with amused precision and tucks away the details. Then she casually mentions seeing Matthew in Atlanta last fall—odd encounter, hints of something off—planting doubt about Hollis’s perfect marriage and seeding Secrets and Deception. Brooke tries to leave; Electra dangles a party invitation as a reward. Brooke accepts, ashamed, aware she’s traded Hollis’s privacy for the thinnest promise of acceptance. Electra’s parting barb—“congrats on being chosen as a star”—lands with a sting.
Chapter 14: On-Time Arrivals
Dru-Ann pulls up to “First Light” mid-firestorm, tweets a defiant defense, and steps into silence until Hollis appears. Their hug is fierce—proof that showing up defines the weekend’s promise of Friendship and Connection. Brooke arrives moments later; Dru-Ann jokes by closing the door in her face before welcoming her with a smirk that sets their bantering rhythm.
Hollis’s house tour dazzles Brooke—sunlight, curated rooms, the feeling of being chosen—until a text from Tatum announces her arrival and a “surprise.” Outside, Caroline films, camera poised, as Tatum and Kyle pull up. The backseat opens. Jack steps out. Hollis freezes. “Holly berry,” he says, pulling her close. Caroline’s face flames; through her lens, the embrace feels like a betrayal of her father.
From the guesthouse, Dru-Ann flashes back to college, when Jack once drove hundreds of miles for Hollis only to be hurt again. Jack’s return reclaims him as an unresolved chapter, not a footnote. Irritated by the male incursion on a women’s weekend, Dru-Ann orders the “boys” out. With Kyle and Jack gone, Hollis, Dru-Ann, Tatum, and Brooke stand together at last—already ringed by secrets, history, and friction.
Chapter 15: Airport Drinking
Gigi Ling drinks alone at Logan, her resolve buckling. She’s en route to meet the wife of her dead lover—Matthew. A flashback reveals how her grief begins: she learns of Matthew’s death not from him but from Hollis’s post on Hungry with Hollis, mere hours after he ended the affair. In the numb aftermath, Gigi texts an anonymous lifeline—“I’m here to listen”—igniting a clandestine friendship built on Secrets, Deception, and Truth.
Now, guilt roars. After two hopeful texts from Hollis, Gigi deliberately misses her flight. A third message—concern, not expectation—pulls her back. When every later seat seems sold out, a gate agent who watched her let the flight go offers one last spot. Gigi takes it. She will come, late, to face the woman whose life is bound to hers in ways neither of them can safely confess.
Character Development
The arrivals expose fault lines: grief curdles into control, loyalty collides with ego, and need—romantic, social, maternal—drives risky choices.
- Hollis: The consummate planner uses perfection to buffer pain. Forgetting Caroline’s pickup punctures her control, while Jack’s arrival unearths a romantic self she thought she’d buried.
- Caroline: Angry, vigilant, and filming, she sees her mother’s brand as betrayal—and Jack’s hug as a disloyalty to her father.
- Tatum: Tough and practical yet shadowed by a health scare, she meddles by importing Jack, believing chaos might jump-start Hollis’s happiness.
- Dru-Ann: Canceled and combative online, unwavering and protective in person. Her memory of Hollis and Jack signals deep history and a willingness to police boundaries.
- Brooke: Validation-starved, she trades Hollis’s itinerary for social oxygen, then hates herself for it.
- Gigi: Not just a mistress but a mourner. She moves from avoidance to accountability as she boards the later flight.
- Jack: The past embodied—charming, disruptive, and a test of Hollis’s identity as widow, mother, and brand.
Themes & Symbols
These chapters braid Revisiting the Past with the precarious choreography of image management. Jack’s reappearance drags college love into a widow’s present; Hollis’s “Mr. Wonderful” memory shows how nostalgia polishes what grief fractures. Meanwhile, Secrets and Deception power the plot: Brooke leaks the itinerary; Electra hints at infidelity; Tatum smuggles in Jack; Gigi writes from the shadows. Every deception sharpens suspense and multiplies perspectives the reader knows but Hollis doesn’t.
Friendship’s texture shifts under pressure. Public solidarity—Dru-Ann’s arrival despite cancellation—coexists with private competition and class tension, complicating Friendship and Its Evolution and sustaining Friendship and Connection. And as Hollis tries to steer her mourning into the neat lanes of Grief and Healing, reality resists.
- Symbol: The Itinerary — Hollis’s schedule is a talisman of control and a content strategy for her brand. When Brooke hands it to Electra, control slips into the sea, signaling that no plan can defend against truth or chance.
Key Quotes
“Matthew died in December.”
Hollis’s blunt correction in Hatch’s liquor store punctures small-talk politeness and collapses the distance between public persona and private loss. It also reasserts her control over the narrative—she names the fact, even as the memory undoes her.
“Mr. Wonderful.”
Ethan’s memory of how his wife referred to Matthew crystallizes Hollis’s flashback. The nickname embodies the idealized marriage Hollis curated—affectionate, admiring, immaculate—and hints at how that ideal may not survive scrutiny.
“Holly berry.”
Jack’s nickname reanimates a younger Hollis in an instant. The line is intimate and proprietary, disrupting the weekend’s women-only premise and tempting Hollis to revisit a self that predates both her marriage and her grief.
“Congrats on being chosen as a star.”
Electra’s faux-compliment needles Brooke’s insecurity and mocks the performative nature of the Five-Star Weekend. The sarcasm exposes how envy and status anxieties threaten friendship from the outside.
“I’m here to listen.”
Gigi’s anonymous message to Hollis bridges two incompatible truths: lover and widow, betrayal and solace. The line births a secret friendship that sits at the heart of the book’s moral and emotional knot.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
Chapters 11–15 assemble the cast and wire the tension. Hollis’s pristine stage—house, schedule, content plan—can’t contain the forces gathering at its edges: Jack’s arrival complicates her widowhood and destabilizes Caroline; Brooke’s leak invites external sabotage; Dru-Ann’s scandal imports the internet’s fury; Gigi’s flight commits the most dangerous truth to the same island. The multi-perspective structure ensures the reader stands one beat ahead of Hollis, feeling the inevitability of impact as grief, desire, and deception converge. The weekend is officially underway—and already coming apart.