It All Comes Down to This

Fowler, the author of well-received family and historical dramas like A Good Neighborhood and A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts, veers light in this sparkling, summery contemporary story, A dying woman with a secret past, Marti Geller leaves behind three successful adult daughters: freelance journalist Beck, who longs to write a novel; pediatric cardiologist Claire, who pines for the wrong man; and Sophie, whose Instagram-ready life looks better online than in reality. Marti dispenses maternal advice to “take more taxis,” and her revelatory bombshell of a will requires Beck, Claire, and Sophie to sell the family’s summer house in Mount Desert, Maine, and split the proceeds. This forces Marti’s rivalrous daughters into a closeness that each had previously only shared with their mother. Together, the sisters must eventually reveal and confront their own scandalous secrets.