The Garrett sisters live with their grandmother in the small town of Remington Hollow. There’s Des, the oldest at 19, who helps run the family bookstore and has little in life outside of looking after her family; Bea, who has life all planned out – heading to college with her boyfriend of five years – and it’s giving her panic attacks; Kat, an aspiring actress with a role in the community theatre production whose boyfriend just broke her heart. But she’s got a plan to get back at him; And youngest, 15 year old Vi. She’s crushing hard on the neighbour girl but isn’t sure whether her feelings are reciprocated.
The book alternates between their points of view to give us a snapshot of their lives for one summer.
A lot of the reviews for this mention Gilmore Girls and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (as well as Little Women), which are quite some shoes to fill. And sure it’s set in a small town (even a Hollow) which seems to have some quirkiness, but it didn’t really go all in on this so the similarities are few and far between. There’s a cat cafe and adorable festivals mentioned, but we don’t get to meet that many of the town’s inhabitants. Same with Sisterhood. It tells the story from differing points of view but that’s about all they have in common. There are friendships the girls have with other people that are important to them, and in varying stages of newness and fracturing, but we don’t get to see much of the relationship between the girls themselves. They seem very isolated from each other – and this is kind of the point, as they all search for answers for themselves – but it would have been nice to see a bit more richness in their relationship, more little moments between them where they weren’t squabbling or totally self-absorbed. It comes together a little in the end, but it’s not much, and I really wanted more from that aspect.
There’s definitely far more representation in this hollow than the more famous one, and that was really nice to see. Overall this is a very pleasant read, but I do wish it had a little bit more depth to it.