This summer, will three weekends in a Fire Island share house be enough time for Maggie Monroe to fix her life, find love, and make sure she doesn’t lose her friends for good?
It’s been six years since Maggie followed her screenwriting dreams to Los Angeles and forgot to look back. But things in Hollywood didn’t go quite to plan. Now, twenty-five and suddenly home in New York, Maggie doesn’t know who she’s more anxious to her ex-boyfriend, Mac, or her ex–best friend, Liz.
For Liz, Maggie is the girl who abandoned her at the worst possible moment and an unwelcome surprise who could derail her perfect summer. Liz is recently engaged to her high school sweetheart, Cam, but Maggie’s arrival brings old wounds bubbling to the surface, exposing the cracks in Liz’s apparent happily ever after.
When Maggie accepts her former friends' unexpected invitation to join in their summer share house, a rental named Serendipity, she knows it’s the chance she needs to get her life back on track. For three weekends, Maggie, Liz, Cam, Mac, and their closest friends will take the ferry to Ocean Beach, Fire Island, for some sun-kissed bliss, if only they can avoid the drama of their past catching up to the present.
With the nostalgic flavor of a stack of sepia-toned Polaroids, and perfect for fans of Emily Henry, Jennifer Weiner, and Ann Brashares, this big-hearted, page-turning story delves deep into a complicated friend group as they navigate one messy yet magical midtwenties summer. (from goodreads)
*Before I jump in, I want to thank Dutton books for both an eARC and a physical copy of this book. All opinions are my own.*
Serendipity is Becky Chalsen’s sophomore novel. She brings us back to Fire Island during the summer. While reading this book I was transported to the sandy hardcover floors, outdoor showers and wave jumping of when I used to go to Fire Island as a child.
Becky’s writing is amazing. She pulls you in with so much feeling and develops her characters so well. While this may be an unpopular opinion, Becky’s characters are so messy and I love them more and more because of that. The way they all fit together and while they are adults, they have nothing figured out and it made me feel so much better about my own messy life.
One thing that Becky does in her books that I really love is she writes chapters from different perspectives while still writing in third person which helps the reader get the full picture of what is going on.
While the story is about Maggie returning home to her friends and wanting a second chance at love, it's also about Maggie and Liz’s second chance at friendship. As women, friendships can even be more intimate than romantic relationships at times and I think Becky does a great job of conveying that. One of the other relationships that is focused on in this book is the mother-daughter relationship. Maggie, Liz and both Cam and Mac have different relationships with their mothers and we get to see the way everyone relates to their mothers and each other's mothers throughout the story.
The setting of Fire Island is the perfect backdrop for this story, where this friend group's last hurrah was all together. The house that the group stays in is called Serendipity and the house itself is one of the characters. The house holds the group's secrets and knows more than the other people do about each other which I think is so beautiful.
While Serendipity and Kismet (Becky’s first novel) are stand alone books, we do get a small cameo of Grace and Sam Sharp from Kismet which was something I loved. It was like doing a small check in with friends you haven’t seen in awhile.
If you’re looking for a summer novel that has romance, friendship and so much more I highly recommend this one. I adored every second of it.
Comments