I admit it. The phrase “women’s fiction” generally makes me shudder. I don’t quite equate it with the phrase “bodice ripper,” but almost. Maybe it’s because I took over as manager of a nice suburban branch library from a woman who had done everything she could to run it into the ground (like getting rid of all Spanish language books — in a California county. With a huge Spanish-speaking population, which seemed to bother her.) She read only “women’s fiction,”  mostly paperbacks with Fabio on the cover, and I disliked her so much I came to dislike the genre. Unfair? OK, I’ll admit it. But still. In my effort to read in the genre to broaden my awareness of popular fiction, years ago I did read Nancy Thayer’s Three Women At The Water’s Edge, and I found it to be like cotton candy: soft, fluffy, designed to satisfy without offending and to make the reader feel comfortable.  When I recently had the chance to read Thayer’s 2021 offering, Family Reunion (thanks to Random House/Ballantine and NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review, I jumped at it, thinking it might be perfect to brush off pandemic fatigue?  

The protagonist, Eleanor Sunderland, lives on Nantucket Island year-round (as does Ms. Thayer).She is rattling around alone in her huge old cliffside home three years after the death of her husband.   The home has been in her family forever, and she has loved it — it is now her permanent home, and it is where her family has gathered summers and holidays for generations. As the book opens, her best friend has skipped town, leaving Eleanor lonely and nostalgic . Her children contact her sporadically, mostly to complain and to beg her to sell the house so they can begin to enjoy their inheritance. She’s only 70, but they treat her like she is senile and incapable of living alone. Eleanor knows they want to persuade her that selling her home is a good idea, and she decides her seventieth birthday is the perfect occasion for a family reunion and discussion of her options.

Eleanor’s family members  include her son Cliff, an unmarried uber-successful Boston realtor, her daughter Alicia and her husband (generally referred to as “Ari’s father”), and Eleanor’s beloved granddaughter Ari.  Ari has just ended her engagement with Peter, shocking her mother Alicia, who is a truly unlikeable woman for whom money and appearances are paramount. Ari and Alicia aren’t exactly close, as Ari “… reminded herself to thank her, if she ever found a moment in her life when she wasn’t mad at her.”  Ari is well aware that she isn’t the  daughter Alicia wanted: “You wanted Janis Joplin  and you got Jane Austen.” 

Ari moves in with her grandmother for the summer before grad school, taking a job at the local beach camp (which horrifies Alicia). “Summer was always a difficult time on the small island,” when 30,000+ summer visitors arrive. Both grandmother and granddaughter fall into a carefree routine, each immediately finding a potential new romance. You can guess where this all goes. It’s fluffy, nice, and incredibly full of first world, white people issues. Like whether or not Eleanor should sell the house (for the offered FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLARS) and allow her children to get on with spending their inheritance. Cliff makes a fortune, and Alicia’s husband is a highly successful physician, so no one in this family is hurting for money. They are just greedy. It isn’t until Ari’s interactions with the less fortunate children at the charitable beach camp where she is a counselor that why even become aware that not everyone on the island is a rich white person.

So reading It really was like a warm blanket and a cup of tea. Comforting. So that was the good. On the other side, didn’t really relate to any of the characters, in fact I pretty much couldn’t stand anyone! Or at the very least I was annoyed by them. Nancy Thayer’s fans will love it. The woman who worked in that library before me will love it. Tons of people will find it a comforting escape from their daily challenges in this extremely challenging year of the pandemic. I can only go three stars, but that’s just me.