CHARACTER
The Five-Star Weekendby Elin Hilderbrand

Hollis Shaw

Hollis Shaw

Quick Facts

  • Role: Protagonist and narrative anchor; creator of the food blog “Hungry with Hollis”
  • First appearance: The approachable, unvarnished “real” Hollis is introduced in the Prologue
  • Home base: “First Light,” her Nantucket house—both a stage she curates and the place where her story unravels and reforms
  • Key relationships: Late husband Matthew Madden; daughter Caroline Shaw-Madden; childhood best friend Tatum McKenzie; high-school sweetheart Jack Finigan; college friend Dru-Ann Jones; midlife friend (and unexpected rival) Gigi Ling

Who They Are

At once host, mother, and brand, Hollis Shaw is a woman whose picture-perfect life fractures after her husband’s sudden death. As the mind behind “Hungry with Hollis,” she believes beauty and order can soothe pain; as a widow and mother, she learns that messy truth is the only path forward. Her story becomes the novel’s compass for Grief and Healing and the complicated ways Friendship and Its Evolution sustain us when our narratives collapse.

Physically, Hollis leans into an “unvarnished” authenticity: wrinkles, freckles, a slight double chin, straight blond hair with a touch of gray. Her crisp blouses, flipped collar, and heirloom gold hoops telegraph continuity and care, even as her large diamond rings hint at the affluence she built with Matthew. The contrast captures her tension between the Nantucket girl she was and the “summer person” she became.

Personality & Traits

Hollis’s need to nurture dovetails with a fierce desire for control. When life spins, she produces a plan, a menu, a seating chart—anything that promises to turn chaos into comfort. The Five-Star Weekend is her grandest attempt to set a table for healing and, in doing so, to rediscover herself.

  • Nurturing hostess: She curates every detail of the weekend—meals, décor, activities—treating hospitality as a language of love. Her belief that the right ambiance can mend emotional rifts reveals both generosity and magical thinking.
  • Organized and driven: She “loved a good list,” a trait visible in the hyper-detailed itinerary and in her past success chairing a hospital gala. Order becomes her grief-management system.
  • Insecure and validation-seeking: She stalks Jack Finigan on Facebook, flinches at Caroline’s accusations, and fixates on Matthew’s final words. Her “five-star” standard is less about luxury than proof that she is worthy, seen, forgiven.
  • Nostalgic: The entire event is an act of Revisiting the Past—reassembling the girl she was with Tatum and Jack and the woman she became with Matthew, Dru-Ann, and Gigi.
  • Public self vs. private ache: Her approachable brand softens the edges of her sorrow; the weekend forces her offline, where polished content can’t substitute for confession and repair.

Character Journey

Hollis begins immobilized—unable to cook, to create, to connect with Caroline—convinced that one bad argument set the tragedy in motion. The Five-Star Weekend is her lifeline: if she can gather a friend from each era, perhaps she can stitch her broken story back together. But carefully arranged flowers don’t prevent old resentments or new shocks. Jack’s return stirs romantic memory and regret; friction between Tatum and Dru-Ann reopens insecurities Hollis thought she’d outgrown; and her “midlife friend,” Gigi, detonates Hollis’s idealized marriage by exposing its Secrets and Deception.

The turning point arrives when Hollis chooses to sit with the ugliest truths—reading the accident report, hearing Gigi out, facing her part in a marriage that drifted. She learns Matthew was coming home to her, and the knowledge blows a doorway through her guilt. The forgiveness she extends is not sentimental but exacting: she invents “five-star forgiveness,” a standard that prizes honesty and grace over perfection. By the Epilogue, she returns to Nantucket for good and allows a second chance with Jack, integrating the girl she was, the wife she became, and the woman she is now.

Key Relationships

  • Matthew Madden: Hollis’s love story with Matthew had calcified into distance before his death, a truth that weaponizes her grief. Learning he ended his affair and was on his way back to her reframes his last day and releases her from a self-punishing narrative; her healing depends on seeing both his betrayal and his intention to return.

  • Caroline Shaw-Madden: Caroline’s fury—calling her mother a “phony” and accusing her of caring more about her brand—forces Hollis to confront the rift between who she performs and who she is, pressing on the novel’s tension between Authenticity vs. Public Persona. Their reconciliation is earned: mother and daughter finally grieve together, neither managing the other’s feelings nor curating the moment.

  • Tatum McKenzie: Tatum embodies Hollis’s Nantucket root system—plainspoken loyalty, shared history, and a standard of truth-telling that doesn’t flatter. As their friendship steadies, especially amid Tatum’s health scare, Hollis remembers that identity is less a brand than the people who have known you longest.

  • Jack Finigan: Jack represents the untaken path: an earlier self, an easier language of love. Breakfasts and beach walks don’t just reignite chemistry; they test Hollis’s readiness to love without hiding behind performative competence. Choosing Jack at the end is less about romance than about claiming a whole, uncurated life.

  • Gigi Ling: Gigi arrives as a flattering fan and exits as the person who knows the worst and still stays in the room. Their dynamic evolves from betrayal to recognition: two women in the blast radius of the same man, negotiating anger, sorrow, and a radical act of mercy. Hollis’s decision to forgive Gigi is the novel’s most demanding proof of growth.

Defining Moments

Even Hollis’s most careful plans can’t choreograph the truth. These moments force her out of performance and into transformation:

  • The decision to host the Five-Star Weekend: After reading about another widow’s gathering, Hollis seizes the idea as structure against despair. Why it matters: It converts her grief into action and sets the test—can a curated space hold unruly feelings?

  • The confrontation with Electra Undergrove at the Galley: Electra publicly outes Gigi’s connection to Matthew, tearing the veil off Hollis’s event. Why it matters: Exposure replaces control; Hollis must deal with audiences she didn’t invite and stories she didn’t author.

  • Gigi’s confession in the home theater: In the dark, Gigi tells the truth about the affair and Matthew’s decision to return. Why it matters: The theater—a room of narratives—becomes the site where Hollis chooses reality over the story she preferred.

  • Reading the accident report: Hollis confirms Matthew was driving away from the airport, validating Gigi’s account. Why it matters: Facts puncture self-blame; evidence gives Hollis permission to forgive without forgetting.

  • Reconciling with Caroline: Caroline finds Hollis shattered, apologizes, and allows herself to be mothered again. Why it matters: Their embrace moves grief from private silos into shared space—the hardest and most necessary hospitality Hollis offers all weekend.

Essential Quotes

“You’ve changed,” he said, then sighed. “And we’ve changed.
— Matthew Madden to Hollis, their final conversation (Chapter 1-5 Summary)

This quiet indictment becomes the splinter Hollis can’t stop worrying. It captures the drift in their marriage and seeds both her guilt and her need to reconstruct a version of “them” that could have survived.

I confronted him about my unhappiness as he was walking out the door... What I do know is that I made him late. He was speeding on Dover Street because he had a flight to catch. I feel guilty. I feel… responsible.
— Hollis’s confession to Gigi via text (Chapter 1-5 Summary)

Hollis names the fear beneath the brand: that she caused the catastrophe. By articulating responsibility, she positions herself for the later moral pivot—replacing blame with accountability and compassion.

Hollis isn’t naive enough to imagine this will be a Hallmark-movie experience where her guilt, her melancholy, and her loneliness will all magically disappear once she’s surrounded by her friends. But yes, that is sort of what she imagines.
— Hollis’s internal thoughts on planning the weekend (Chapter 1-5 Summary)

The line skewers her own optimism, exposing the distance between curated hope and real healing. It also redefines “five-star”: not flawless execution, but the courage to sit with imperfection.

“I’m not moving on,” Hollis says. “Jack is an old friend.”
— Hollis defending her breakfast with Jack to Caroline (Chapter 21-25 Summary)

Hollis resists the binary of widowhood—stasis or betrayal. Calling Jack an “old friend” is both true and evasive, signaling her tentative reentry into intimacy and Caroline’s challenge to it.

Is there such a thing as five-star forgiveness? If not, can Hollis invent it now?
— Hollis’s thoughts before forgiving Gigi (Chapter 46-50 Summary)

Here the vocabulary of her brand is repurposed as an ethic. “Five-star forgiveness” reframes excellence as radical grace, proving Hollis’s growth is less about control and more about mercy.