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New York Times bestselling author Sarah MacLean’s first foray into contemporary fiction, with a sharp, sexy novel about a wealthy New England family's long-overdue reckoning with hidden desires, destructive secrets…and one week that threatens to tear them apart Alice isn't like the other Storm siblings. While the rest stayed to battle for their parents' approval, attention, and untold billions, she left, building her own life beyond the family’s name and influence. Nothing could induce her to come back, except the shocking death of her larger-than-life father. Now back on the family’s private island off the Rhode Island coast, she plans to keep her head down, pay the last of her respects, and leave the minute the funeral is over. Unfortunately, her father had other plans. The eccentric, manipulative patriarch left his widow and their grown children a final challenge--an inheritance game designed to humiliate, devastate, and unravel the Storm family in ways both petty and life-altering. The rules of the game are clear: stay on the island for one week, complete the tasks, receive the inheritance. One week on Storm Island is an impossible task for Alice. Every corner of the sprawling old house is bursting dysfunctional chaos: Her older sister’s secret love affair. Her brother’s incessant mansplaining. Her sister-in-law’s unapologetic greed. Her younger sister’s obsession with "vibes". Her mother’s penchant for stirring up competition between her children. And all under the stern, watchful gaze of Jack Dean, her father’s enigmatic, unfairly good-looking, second-in-command. It will be a miracle if Alice manages to escape the week unscathed. A story about the transformative power of grief, love, and family, this luscious novel is at once deliciously clever and surprisingly tender, exploring past secrets, present truths, and futures forged in the wake of wild summer storms.
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Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for a honest review. I am a big fan of Sarah MacLeans regency series so I was excited to see her wading into the work of contemporary fiction. I have to hand it to her, she managed to write something that was so complex, emotional and just different from her normal work that I had to remind myself who wrote it. That being said, the Storm family was horrible and I could not find it in me to care about them at all (except for Emily). Some of the stuff they did and said was absolutely unforgivable but by the end of the book it’s like none of that mattered and everyone’s happy. Even Alice, our MC, who had rebuffed their lifestyle was unrecognizable by the end of the book. For as heavy and emotional as this book was it got wrapped up way too pretty for me. The only reason I’m giving this 3 stars is because the writing was impressive and I did enjoy the romantic subplot with Alice/Jack.