A Nantucket Wedding

A Nantucket Wedding is Nancy Thayer’s 2018 novel, one of many she has set on the Massachusetts island that has been her literary home for decades. Thayer has written more than thirty novels with Nantucket as their primary setting, and her readers come back to her for the consistent atmosphere of the place and for the multigenerational family dramas she handles with practiced skill.

In this novel, Alison Cunningham is preparing for her summer wedding to David Gladstone, a wealthy widower whose two adult daughters are coming to Nantucket for the family weekend that will introduce them to their new stepmother and their new stepfamily. Alison has two adult daughters of her own, both of whom are dealing with their own complicated lives. The blending of two grown families through a second marriage is rarely as simple as the parents would like, and the novel works through the misunderstandings, the old jealousies, the hidden pregnancies, the affairs, and the slowly developing recognition of who the new family members actually are as people rather than as obstacles.

Nancy Thayer’s strength is her affection for her characters. The various Cunningham and Gladstone women each get their own perspective chapters, and Thayer handles each of them with the kind of care that keeps the novel from tipping into soap opera. The Nantucket setting, with its particular rhythm of summer days, beach picnics, sailing, and the slow gathering of friends and neighbors at sunset, gives the book the feeling of a real summer rather than a postcard backdrop.

For longtime Thayer fans, A Nantucket Wedding is a comfortable summer read that delivers the family blending drama her readers expect. For new readers, the novel is a fair introduction to her style and a good entry point into her wider Nantucket catalogue. Readers who enjoy Elin Hilderbrand’s Nantucket novels will find similar pleasure here, though Thayer’s voice is slightly quieter than Hilderbrand’s high gloss summer fiction.