The Castaways: A Novel by Elin HilderbrandThe Castaways are a group of eight friends who live on Nantucket. They take trips together, they drink and play Scrabble on Sunday nights, they are a very tight knit group of four married couples. The novel begins with the deaths of Tess and Greg the youngest of the four couples. The others recollections of the couple, secrets and guilt are intertwined with discovering why Tess and Greg died so tragically.
For starting off with a death it was a bit slow going at the beginning. I had a lot of trouble getting into the story since the narrative kept shifting from one character to another. This continues throughout, but got less confusing as I became more familiar with each character and who they were married to.
Many have described this as a soap opera of a story and I have to agree. This group of friends, all married and some with kids, was very incestuous. We have some having affairs, others lusting after their friends' spouses, one woman is an ex of one of the other husbands. Oh, and that isn't all the secrets they are keeping or all the drama they deal with.
I really don't know how or why they considered themselves "the best of friends", because with the amount of cheating, lusting, keeping secrets and just being vindictive against the others, they do not resemble friends at all. Despite this, or probably because of it, I couldn't put the novel down once I figured it all out.
Very addictive, just like a soap opera.
3.5/5
