When the will of a recently deceased ladies' man mandates a summer-long reunion for his daughters from different marriages at his posh Nantucket house, the three sisters are forced to confront long-festering resentments and misunderstandings as well as challenges in their private and professional lives, a situation that is complicated by a shocking revelation and the arrival of their mothers.
Cured from cancer, Sarah Talbot's joy is so contagious it affects those round her. Among them are pilot Will Burke and his daughter, both depressed by death in the family, and friendship leads to romance.
Descending on a family beach house won in a bet years earlier, three generations of women gradually impart difficult respective secrets including a pregnancy, a terrible crush and a deeply held resentment for past misdeeds.
Kit Brennan has always been the most grounded of her sisters. A Catholic school English teacher for seventeen years and a constant giver, her decisions have been sound--just not very satisfying. Her fortieth birthday is right around the corner, causing Kit to consider some wilder notions, like skipping right past the love and marriage to raising a child all by herself. A girls' weekend away is just the reprieve Kit needs from school, Mr. Wrongs, and life-changing decisions. It's there that she meets a man who's dangerous; a man who challenges who she thought she was, or rather should be. Kit wants to indulge herself this once, but with one of her students in crisis and the weight of her family's burdens weighing heavy on her heart, Kit isn't sure if now is the time to let her own desires take flight...
Ten years after leaving high-power jobs to raise their children, four New York friends enter their forties while struggling with the differences between their past ideals and their present realities, a situation that become turbulent when one of them meets a successful working mother of three who seems to have it all.