Hollis Shaw loses her husband in a car accident in the first chapter of Elin Hilderbrand's The Five-Star Weekend. Hollis grew up the daughter of Nantucket's "busiest plumbing contractor," went off to college, then to work in Boston, married a doctor, had a daughter, and went from "one of us" to a "summer person." But when her pandemic blog, "Hungry with Hollis," makes her "internet famous," the Nantucket folks are happy to welcome Hollis home to grieve her husband's death.
Hilderbrand plants tantalizing questions, as Hollis confides to Gigi, one of her blog fans, the guilt she feels over her last exchange with her husband, and her daughter reacts to Hollis not in empathy but in anger over her father's death. Hollis then plans a "five-star weekend," with one friend from each decade of her life, the most recent being Gigi--whom she's not yet met. Suspense builds as Hollis's world falls apart, and she examines the nature of intimacy, both in friendship and romance.