The sex tape was bad enough, but making a woman see her dead parents walking around and talking to her is just beyond the pale.
The Wieland family is very wealthy, but also cursed. Terrible freak accidents and tragedies tend to befall the family, and for some reason they only happen in April. Fortunately, it never seems to affect their bank accounts, or the very large estate they own on a small island in Maine.
But it does mean the family members tend to be on edge in the month of April, even if they claim not to believe in the curse.
Clara Wieland was 16 when she witnessed both her parents dying in a freak accident. Because she was with them, she blames herself for not being able to stop it, although there was nothing she could have done.
Clara hasn’t been doing very well since then. She has struggled with eating disorders and addiction, to the point where she had to be hospitalized twice to address her malnutrition, and she still struggles with her relationship with food. She’s only recently gotten a job with a nonprofit, and it’s only because her family owns the nonprofit. Before that she flitted around the world in expensive hotels without a job because her family is just that wealthy.
So, when she starts seeing weird things on and around the island — a row boat that disappears, a grizzly bear when there has never been a grizzly on the island — she’s afraid the curse is coming for her.
As if that weren’t bad enough, a sex tape is released online of her having sex with a guy whose face we never see in a fairly nondescript hotel room. When her family asks who the guy in the video is, when and where it was taken, she’s too ashamed to admit she doesn’t remember.
It takes her a while to figure out that she doesn’t remember, not because she was drunk or high, but because it never happened. The video is a deepfake.
Unfortunately, her older brother, Teddy, is in the middle of a campaign for a Senate seat, and is more concerned with protecting his campaign than protecting his little sister from the online hate and threats she’s getting. Although, honestly, Clara doesn’t do herself any favors by reading all the comments. Making bad decisions seems to be a defining characteristic of hers.
When another video comes out, this one of Clara and her best friend, Jess, laughing about how Jess only married Teddy for his money, shit gets real.
Jess has not had the advantages Teddy and Clara take for granted. She grew up in a home with domestic violence until she and her mom finally left her dad and moved to the island.
Now that I think of it, I don’t think the island is ever named. It’s just “the island.” It’s one of those small coastal islands that depends on tourists and families coming north to cool off and spend some time on the ocean in the summers. None of the islanders are anywhere near as wealthy as the Wielands. Most of them work hard all summer long to take advantage of the tourist season and hope they make enough money in those few months to keep them afloat for the rest of the year.
When Jess and her mom move to the island when Jess is still a kid, she ends up working with Clara on a school project, and the two have been best friends ever since.
But they can never get away from the issue of money, even if the Wieland’s aren’t aware of it. Jess can never afford to not be aware of it. She can’t afford to do the things they do, but she doesn’t want to feel like she’s taking advantage of them, so she has rules she’s set for herself about situations when she will or will let them pay for stuff. Meals are OK, coffee and hotels are not.
I won’t get into the story of how Jess and Teddy ended up getting together because it doesn’t matter. But, no, Jess did not marry him for his money. That doesn’t mean her world didn’t change when she suddenly became a Wieland, because it absolutely did.
As the campaign crumbles and Teddy’s mental health starts to crack, Jess sees the ways in which Teddy abuses his privilege, for example, by hiring outside contractors when there are businesses on the island that could have really used that money.
Somehow, Jess is the one who bears the brunt of the ire of the islanders, especially after the fake video comes out. Turns out they all love a Cinderella story until think Cinderella is getting too big for her britches. They turn on her in a heartbeat.
Teddy grows increasingly paranoid as his campaign falters, and finally fails. He makes all the wrong decisions in reaction to the release of the deepfakes, and of course those decisions blow up in his face.
As if that weren’t bad enough, he starts seeing people that aren’t there. But he doesn’t know they aren’t there because an old classmate who has it out for him has gotten really good at projecting holograms. And apparently he knows exactly what to show Teddy to drive him crazy, while simultaneously driving a wedge between him and his wife and his sister.
This book by Sara Silgar had me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. I could not put it down, and I highly recommend it, especially as a fun summer read.