Meg Mitchell Moore's insightful 10th novel, Down with the Shipmans, brings three grown sisters and their widowed father to the family's beloved summer beach house in New Hampshire. Their father's revelation that he plans to sell the house provokes strong reactions from all three sisters. As they clean out the garage and try to enjoy some beach time (with assorted dogs and kids in tow), Jordan, Natalie, and Mae also each deal with personal drama. How they navigate the high emotions of the week--while causing plenty of emotional reactions in one another--makes for entertaining and deeply relatable reading.
The narrative sparkles with textural details: the creamy clam chowder at local haunt Petey's, the changing light of a seaside morning. Moore (Mansion Beach; Vacationland) also examines the challenges of 21st-century womanhood via the Shipman sisters: high-powered Manhattanite Jordan, whose job in crisis communications has turned into a major crisis of its own; homeschooling "tradwife" Natalie, who loves her Vermont farm life but has gotten swept up in her social media empire; and gig-working dog trainer Mae, whose multiple jobs never quite seem to add up to a career. Each must decide whether and how to let the others in on her difficulties, while all three of them struggle with letting go of the house. As they wipe up spilled juice and unearth old family photos and grudges, the Shipmans are forced to confront messy emotions, reconsider long-held assumptions, and admit that--beach house or no beach house--they'll always need one another. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams