Beautiful Day by Elin Hilderbrand

Best Beach Read this summer…  I devoured Beautiful Day over a couple of afternoons at Crescent Beach and Reid State Park, and savored every minute.  This is the first Elin Hilderbrand novel I’ve enjoyed, though I chased it with Summerland  and have Castaway in my book pile.  It has been a recreational reading kind of summer!

Beautiful Day recounts the weekend of a family wedding on Nantucket.  The bride’s mother wrote a wedding notebook before she died, expressing her wishes for how everything (everything) should be executed.  Told from several characters’ points of view and rich with family drama , you discover the tangles beneath the perfect looking family–what pulls them apart, and ultimately, what holds them together.  The story is pleasantly predictable and worth the relaxing read.

The Falmouth Memorial Library has a copy of Beautiful Day.  I often see it on the hold shelf paired with The Last Original Wife by Dorothea Benton Frank, Island Girls by Nancy Thayer, and One Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams.