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Cover of The Five-Star Weekend

The Five-Star Weekend

Elin Hilderbrand

512 pages

A sun-drenched, bittersweet exploration of friendship and grief, served with a side of coastal glamour and culinary delight.

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What it feels like

Reading this feels like stepping off a ferry onto a sun-warmed island, where the ocean breeze carries both the scent of gourmet meals and the sting of long-buried secrets. It is a masterclass in the complicated, beautiful, and sometimes sharp-edged dynamics of female friendship. The narrative moves at a brisk, engaging clip, effortlessly balancing the heavy weight of sudden grief with the sparkling escapism of a luxurious coastal retreat. You are invited to sit on the porch with these women, sipping chilled wine while untangling their messy lives, resentments, and hopes. It will delight anyone who loves a smart, immersive beach read that doesn't shy away from the painful realities of loss, yet ultimately leaves you feeling hopeful, nourished, and deeply satisfied.

Mood
  • sun-drenched
  • bittersweet
  • luxurious
  • breezy
Tone
  • warm
  • observant
  • empathetic
  • gossipy
Pace
brisk
Themes
female friendship dynamics · navigating sudden grief · midlife reinvention · the facade of perfection · second chances
The writing
Crisp, sensory-rich, and effortlessly readable, lingering on mouth-watering culinary details and the salty breeze of coastal living.
The arc
Begins in the shock of sudden loss and navigates through messy, long-held resentments toward a warm, hopeful horizon.
Who it's for
Readers who crave smart, immersive beach reads that balance luxurious escapism with genuine emotional depth and messy female friendships.
Content notes
  • sudden death of a spouse
  • grief
  • infidelity

About the book

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.

Description from Open Library.

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