On paper this was one I thought I would really like: a family drama set in Cape Cod and with a blurb from Chole Benjamin (The Immortalists) on the back. But in reality, I struggled with this one.

The book begins when the Gordon children are teenagers, over the course of a couple of summers at their Cape house. A tragic series of events drives them apart, changing everyone's lives. Fast forward to fifteen years later, and Ann, one of the siblings, has returned to the Cape to sell the house. But what follows is a conflict over who truly has claim to the estate and who doesn't.

One of my biggest pet peeves in books is where conflict could be solved by the characters having a simple conversation. The inability of anyone in this family to say anything of substance to each other drove me crazy! Pretty much everything in this book could have been solved by one conversation early on. When the conflict was eventually solved in the end of the book, it wrapped up so quickly and neatly because of this; everyone's resentment of one another seemed to vanish in thin air. Other twists in the plot just felt contrived.

I enjoyed each of the characters, though they often read as caricatures of people. Poppy initially did not feel necessary to the story, but I liked how she eventually played her role later on in the story.

Semi-spoiler, but there is a sexual assault scene at one point in the book that was unnecessarily graphic and I almost put the book down after it.

I think that I am not the right audience for this book, and others might really enjoy the plot and characters here. It certainly feels like a good book to bring with you to the beach (maybe even the Cape!) and read there.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

TW: sexual assault; suicide; death of a parent; unwanted pregnancy

2.75-3 stars