I always enjoy a Nancy Thayer book set in Nantucket and this is a nice summer read. Keely and Isabelle grew up together on Nantucket and were the closest of friends. As they matured through the ages, their friendship hit typical road bumps including young love, career aspirations, and adult relationships. This is the story of their friendship and growth and challenges.
To me, the prologue of the book was awkward and threw me off from the beginning. After I got done with the book, I even went back and looked at the prologue again, because I think it initially set my mind in a different direction than where the book started. I would just start with Chapter 1!

A story of friendship and betrayal and following your dreams. Keely and Isabelle dream of being writers growing up together on Nantucket but family and men get in the way. Is it possible to be friends and envy what the other has?

This lovely novel is a realistic saga of friendship between two best friends who dream as children of becoming published authors. From childhood into teen years, their lives are parallel yet opposite due to the wall wealth can build between people. As adults, the two allow envy to cause estrangement with touches of revenge when one achieves inclusion in a prestigious writer’s group while the other becomes a published author. The setting of the Nantucket beach mirrors the eternal churning turmoil between true friends whose lives remain intertwined with a piece of their hearts yearning to repair the friendship. Family ties, death, illness, career, marriage, birth—all occur causing each a range of choices and reactions. In the end, With both truly bound to the island by family and the men they love, the friends are able to reestablish their friendship with the very thing that drove a wedge between them—a local writer’s critique group. Through their love of words, they overcome the evils of jealousy and regain the strong gift of friendship between two writers that only others who share the same dream of becoming published authors truly understand.