Wait by Gabriella Burnham (read in 2024)

Wait by Gabriella Burnham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and One World for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
----------
Elise is out dancing the night before her college graduation when her younger sister Sophie calls to tell her their mom is nowhere to be found. Elise leaves on the next flight back to her childhood home, Nantucket Island, for the first time in nearly four years. When she arrives she discovers the ways in which her whip-smart little sister has had to make do without her.

The sisters soon learn that police stopped their mother on her way home from work and deported her to São Paulo, Brazil. Intent on bringing her back, Elise stays and secures the same job she had in high school: monitoring endangered birds that have laid eggs on a remote beach. Meanwhile, her best friend from college, Sheba—a gregarious socialite and heir to a famed children's toy company—reveals that she has inherited her grandfather’s summer mansion on Nantucket. What will Elise do when the new life she created in college collides with the life she left behind on the island? As she confronts the emotional and material realities that have fractured her family, she is confronted by a world in Brazil that her mother has had to leave behind, too.
----------
I think that many of us, when we think of books set on Nantucket, think of the works of authors who bring us to the island during the summer months, when the vacation homes are open and the tourists are enjoying all that there is to offer. However, there is a year-round population to Nantucket Island, and this is the island that Burnham brings us to in this novel. She reminds us that even the shiniest of places can have a dark side, and we see an exploration of themes of sisterhood, family, and friendship, as well as the contrast between great wealth and poverty on an island that is only 14 miles long. There is an important distinction between these two versions of Nantucket, and through this work, we get to experience a coming-of-age story that is an important commentary on what happens "behind the scenes" in one of summer's affluent playgrounds.

View all my reviews