The Castaways

This is the story of four couples who are the best of friends. They go on vacations together, they have weekend get-togethers, babysit eachother's children, support eachother when it comes to their jobs, marital issues and just life in general. But when one of these couples (Greg & Tess) dies in a mysterious boating accident the remaining friends are all left devasted by the shock of their tragic deaths.

Each chapter is written in the first person - each of the six remaining friends. With each chapter you learn more and more about Greg and Tess, their crumbling marriage and their hope to rekindle their flame with an anniversary picnic and sail. You also learn about the relationships of the three remaining couples, the Kapenashes, Drakes, show more and Wheelers , their affairs and pretty much their deepest, darkest secrets.

I really enjoyed this. I liked reading about these couples that on the outside seem to have it all - money, beatiful houses on the idyllic Nantucket, the perfect husband/wife and children, yet were all so completely and utterly dysfunctional in their marraiges and lives. And although I really could not relate to any of the characters, I liked each and every single one of them. They are people living their lives and learning from their mistakes. They are all flawed in one way or another, but in the end I felt as if they tried to better themselves.... I felt hope for them.

I was carried away by Ms. Hilderbrand's words. She weaves a tale of love, loss and friendship that is difficult to put down. This was an enjoyable and easy read and I recommend to anyone looking for a summer/beach read - but don't let the pretty cover fool you... it had a lot more depth then I was expecting. show less

With such a beachy cover, is it any wonder that this novel is being marketed as the perfect summer reading? But the light and sunny cover hides a much darker and more complicated story than you would expect.

The novel opens with the Chief of Police on Nantucket fielding a call telling him that two of his friends (one, his wife's beloved cousin) are dead, having drowned in a sailing accident, leaving behind twin 7-year olds. Told in a round robin sort of format, the chapters tell how each of the six surviving extremely close friends not only grieve Greg and Tess' deaths but also tells each person's past history with the deceased. Through an examination of their relationships within this cluster of couples, the problems in the MacAvoy show more marriage are fully disclosed; their lives and loves, missteps and mistakes highlighted and scrutinized.

But the book isn't just about Greg and Tess and the gut-wrenching effect their deaths have on this closely-knit group of friends, it is also a novel about surviving the imperfections and heart aches and everyday tragedies that dog everyone's life. It is about love and marriage and trust. It is about who we are through circumstance and personality.

The Chief is solid and unshakeable, the epitome of a small town police chief. Andrea is the former athlete, the mother of the group and Tess' beloved cousin. Addison is the generous, wealthy one who has seemingly stood by his wife even when she is so medicated she is almost comatose. Phoebe has been numb, in the thrall of any pharmaceutical she can wrap her fingers around, since September 11 when her twin brother died in the World Trade Center attack. Jeffrey is the stolid, responsible farmer who has only loved two women in his life, the group caretaker. Delilah is the entertainer who used to keep the group animated and cheerful. But all six of them are more than these simple distilled truths. They are people grieving deeply and harboring a train wreck's worth of secrets from and about each other.

Focused mainly on the six months immediately following the deaths of Tess and Greg, the two most immediately engaging members of the group, the book eventually spans the first year after the accident. But with the deaths of two, major cracks start to show in the friendships of the remaining members of "The Castaways." Delilah and Andrea seem locked in some sort of jealous power struggle for Tess' children and for her memory. Addison can't climb out of his grief at losing Tess, murkily certain that Greg has killed her to cover up a continuing affair (or non-affair) with one of his high school students. None of the friends seem to be capable of moving past the deaths except Phoebe, who manages to wean herself off the pills in the aftermath of the accident.

Each of the characters in the book holds a small key to what really happened in Tess and Greg's marriage and therefore what was likely to have happened out on the boat. But for all their closeness (and it really borders on incestuousness--Andrea having lived with Jeffrey before marrying the Chief is only the most socially acceptable relationship between the friends here), none of them can share what they know and move forward until the very end of the book. However, the big scene at the end seemed too easy and pat for the messiness revealed throughout the rest of the book. The characters felt authentic in their grief and I appreciated that each character handled that grief differently and at his or her own pace but I wondered if the characters' flaws needed to be so great to earn them this grief. I was left thinking these people were a train wreck at which I couldn't help gawking. The story kept me reading along avidly, except for occasional moments when I would think, "I really don't want to read what I know is coming next." In the end, the book was fine if a little melodramatic and if you are looking for an easy, soapy sort of read for the summer, you'll find it in this, albeit a little less sunny than usual. show less

This one gets three and a half stars as a summer read that runs just a bit too long, like a group vacation where you're tired of the company a day or two before time to go home.

That in fact is one of the sequences in this tale of four couples, each brought by circumstance or quirk to Nantucket Island, where they form a tight-knit group -- socializing together, often vacationing together, trading off child care, party planning, and bed partners in more or less random fashion.

Then a sudden tragedy leaves an unmendable breach in the group, and layers upon layers of deception and betrayal begin to unfold.

Hildebrand juggles six main voices in the tale, which eventually gets so tangled that it seems the threads can never be pulled out again. show more The ultimate resolution, when it comes, is about 50 pages too late, as readers will have already gotten there, eaten the hors d'oeuvres, had too many martinis, and gotten tired of waiting for the rest of the meal to arrive.

(It's also about the fifth book I've read in which the author does not have a firm grasp of the differences between rifles, shotguns, and the characteristics of their respective cartridge loads.)

However, if you're looking for a read to keep you entertained over a long lazy weekend, you could do worse. show less

Wouldn't you just love to be one of the people on the cover of THE CASTAWAYS? Lying barefoot on the beach, warm in the sun, lulled by the rhythmic surf. Well, be careful what you wish for -- life on Nantucket isn't always so relaxed and carefree, especially if you've just found out that your best friends are dead, maybe murdered. That's what each of the six people, three couples, telling this story are facing. Greg and Tess MacAvoy have drowned while sailing on their anniversary. Part of a group of friends who have nicknamed themselves the Castaways, Greg and Tess have been weathering some marital difficulties. Depending on whichever friend is at the helm of the story, this little boat trip could make or break their marriage.

Andrea and show more Tess are cousins who grew up together on the mainland and are as close as sisters. When she was nine, Tess nearly drowned on a beach where Andrea worked as a lifeguard and since then Andrea feels especially responsible for Tess. Andrea's husband, Ed, is the island's Chief of Police and has the unwelcome task of breaking the bad news to his wife, friends, and to Greg and Tess's 7-year-old twins. He also has the unpleasant task of delving deep in the private lives of his deceased friends in order to determine if their deaths were due to an accident or events more sinister.

Jeffrey, though married to Delilah, still pines for Andrea, his former live-in girlfriend. Delilah, aware of Jeffrey's feelings, puts all her energies into raising their kids and being the group's party hostess and social director in an effort to ignore the holes in her marriage. Delilah wishes she could have been closer to Tess, but the strong bond between Tess and Andrea didn't leave enough room for her to wedge herself in.

However, Addison and Tess have somehow managed to have a secret affair during the previous six months or so. It wasn't difficult to hide the affair from Addison's wife, Phoebe. She's been in a narcotic fog ever since her twin brother died in the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11. Addison wants Tess to divorce Greg and marry him. And why shouldn't she? Didn't Greg have an "inappropriate relationship" with an underage student? Or did he?

Clearly, THE CASTAWAYS is about the muddy and murky relationships between and among the various characters comprising this tight-knit little group. Elin Hilderbrand does a wonderful job of giving voice to each of the distinctly individual personalities. Cast adrift by this sudden tragedy, each person examines their relationship to the deceased couple, their friends, and to their own spouses. As though illuminated by their grief, each becomes aware of the weaknesses in their marriages and friendships, where loyalties have failed and forgiveness is required. Whether these flailing castaways will recover is as much of a mystery as why Greg and Tess died.

This is a complex and multi-layered story with a lot more depth than the laid-back book cover suggests. If you're looking for a satisfying summer read about love, marriage, and friendship, this is the book for you! show less

Andrea and Ed (The Chief), Delilah and Jeffery, Addison and Phoebe, and Tess and Greg are four couples that make up a group of friends who called themselves The Castaways. Living together in Nantucket, the group is as close as any group can be until a boating accident shakes claims two of their lives and shakes the rest of them up. While sailing on a boat for their anniversary, Tess and Greg have an accident and both are killed. What they leave behind is a lot of grief, a lot of questions, and some secrets that slowly start to come apart as people unravel. Most of the secrets center around Tess and Greg: what happened the night they died, why did Tess have opiates in her blood, had she been about to tell Greg about the affair she was show more having, and was Greg going to admit to the affair he was having and leave her? With the two of them dead, their friends can only try to make sense of the events without them and it tears them apart.

The story is not really about Tess and Greg, but about the friends that are left behind. This is a book about emotion. Some turn to alcohol, some dream of escaping, some retreat inward and seem about to self-destruct, and some flourish. Phoebe, the pill addict, seems to blossom from the tragedy while Andrea, the den mother type who is logical and hard backed, seems to dissolve. Addison, rich beyond anyone’s dreams, starts to drink and neglect life because he was in love with Tess. And Delilah, in love with Greg, can’t find solace in the same places she once did and longs to run away like she did as a teenager. It is the full spectrum of grief and how different people react to loss.

Every character of The Castaways is rich and full of life. Each one is complex and realistic, and you can imagine people like this living down the street. Again and again, though, I was taken aback by the selfishness of each person in the story. One of the greatest things that friends provide each other is a support group, yet none of the friends-- for how tight they claimed to be-- felt comforted by each other. The tragedy does not bring them close together. Instead, it almost tears them apart. Nearly everyone became consumed in their own grief, or in their own memories. But there is a lot happening to tear them apart. It is a little shocking that so many of them are betraying each other. In a way, though, this is good because people aren’t perfect. Hilderbrand doesn’t try to make ideal characters, but creates them with flaws and does not nurse their grief with excuses. Stark reality is really that hard and people don’t always behave the way we’d expect or want, even the best of people.

I was absolutely addicted to this book while I read it. I couldn’t put it down, and I mean that with complete honesty. For a while when I started the book, I had to refer back to the front to get the characters and their relationships straight. It took a while for me to remember offhand who was married to who, who were best friends, and who was secretly in love with who. If you like complex relationships, this book will definitely appeal to you. There is also so much emotion in this book, and you want to keep reading because you want to see everyone start to pick up the pieces of their lives and heal. You want to know what the truth is. You want to see if good things can happen out of a series of bad. show less

This was an excellent offering by a talented author, one that explored the tough issues of love and loss and redemption through the eyes of a disparate cast of characters. Though we never meet Greg and Tess MacAvoy, they loom large over the narrative as their characters are revealed in snippets of memories. Each of the six main characters in The Castaways have a different vision of Tess and Greg, and only by combining all those different versions do their true personalities unfold.

Well-written and deftly rendered, this story of adult relationships between friends, families, spouses and exes reflects the complicated reality of today's world. I was most impressed by the pacing of the various revelations and quality of the ending. I found show more the novel engaging and difficult to put down once I started. This is a must-read for the summer season. Highly recommended- 5 strong stars! show less

A group of super close friends, four couples, have their lives forever changed when one of the couples dies.

The death brings about a lot of questions. Was the husband, Greg, guilty of an affair with a student? Is he capable of hurting his wife because he wanted her out of the picture?
And what about his wife Tess? Was she still in love with Greg? Was she going to leave him?

And how will their deaths impact the lives of their closest friends and relatives?

Lots of secrets being kept in this very close group of friends. They all felt like they really knew each other but practically every one of them is keeping secrets or betraying someone else in their group.

Well written. Lots of detailed characters. I always appreciate really well written show more characters. show less