Two sisters with the same dad raised completely apart end up meeting at his lake house in maine after he suddenly passes away. a story filled with drama, secrets but, most importantly sisterhood. such a beautiful story of grief and forgiveness. after years apart lucy and vivian finally get to be the sisters they always wanted.

the cover and the title are so cute and creative that it left something to be desired in the writing. overall, it was okay, but i wouldn’t recommend it over other books at this point

thank you so much for the arc!

i am dnfing for now. i am having a hard time connecting with the characters and the story. i will hopefully come back to this one soon!

Life is messy and family is messier. I loved that this book is about two women working through their work and romantic complexities and challenges, yes but even more so, about what it means to make, find, and be family. The strengths of the books are also its challenges: it's complex, which gives lots of opportunities to engage, but fairly predictable plotting makes it feel, at times, both complex and surface-level. I'd love to have seen more character development, but also think this will be a book I'll sell to a specific type of reader who is looking for a family story that falls more into beach read versus literary read (ex: Celeste Ng.)

this was slow to get into at first but once i started to connect to the characters (and boy oh boy did i) it really started to pick up. I loved how the characters faults and strengths made them feel more grounded and dimensional.


thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC!! 3.5 Stars

I liked this book, the author represented the themes of love, loss, self-discovery and so many more really well in my opinion. However the pacing of certain sections of the book felt rushed and others where really slow. The book is well written, don't get me wrong, I just really had a hard time with the caracters.

Thank you to Penguin Group and Netgalley for this ARC of Maine Characters!

I think this book does a lot of things right -- it explores grief in a very wholistic way, it displays the complications of death and relationships. But overall, I think this book just wasn't for me. Some of the aspects of the book (including the ending) were a little chaotic and unsatisfying. I found it hard to get through and it included tropes that I'm very much against.

However, I did love the setting. It had me aching for a trip back to Maine!

Thank you net galley and publisher for this ARC. At first this story and book description sounded so good and interesting. It got a bit slow for me. I enjoyed how everything came together and the growth and journey shown for each character.

I adore Hannah Orenstein and I was really excited to read this book, but I thought it was lackluster. The premise is clever and emotional: In a more mature scenario reminiscent of The Parent Trap, half-sisters Vivian and Lucy meet at their father's lake house in Fox Hill, Maine shortly after his death. Together, Vivian and Lucy must navigate their grief over the death of their father and navigate the thorny terrain of their half-sibling relationship. Sadly, I thought the characterizations were too broadly drawn and the plotting was predictable. While I understand Orenstein wanted to create a stark contrast between Vivian and Lucy, it made them into archetypes — Vivian is the spoiled, jaded New Yorker with a fancy job who's sleeping with her married boss and Lucy is the sheltered, small town schoolteacher who's recently separated from her high school sweetheart and who has basically no backbone. I didn't really care for either character and the growth they experienced was predictable and trite. Orenstein has some nice passages in the book and she paints a vivid picture of the fictional Maine town, but this was overall too maudlin and too slow paced for me.

What a beautiful cover and blurb, right? This is a story about Vivian and Lucy, half-sisters mourning their father's sudden death of a heart attack and that they did not have a relationship until now. We don't know the inner workings of why Hank chose to keep his families separate while trying to have a relationship with both of his daughters. It was honestly unnecessary and pretty sad. I can say without spoilers that this book has sort-of-a happy-ish ending? Some endings are just heartbreaking and others are of the grand "first kiss/proposal/team wins the championship/winning court case" variety. This ending is neither of these. It is somewhere in the middle and I think that's what makes it a bit unsatisfying.

In my own ratings scale, I use three stars for "I like it, recommend" and two stars for "missing something, not for me" and I rated this as 3 (2.5) because this is well written, it is a good story, it has good pacing and good anecdotes. I simply did not like these characters, they were in difficult situations but handled them poorly, there was no way to turn back the past and the love triangles were...a lot. There are 4 love triangles in this book---
Vivian/Lucy/their father Hank
Hank/Celeste (Vivian's mom)/Dawn (Lucy's mom)
Vivian/Oscar (NYC married boyfriend)/Caleb (Small town bartender)
Lucy/Patrick (soon to be ex husband)/Harrison (new love interest)

That's a lot of people, y'all. It is a lot of characterization and is honestly ambitious. Harrison and Caleb are basically good guys but we don't get the time to get to know them. Dawn is the best character, but she gets very little time and it isn't her story. Everyone else is kind of awful.

Thanks to @netgalley and @duttonbooks for the ARC. Book to be released May 13, 2025.

Thank you, Netgalley and Penguin Group Dutton, for the ARC in exchange for my honest review! 

I've never read Hannah Orenstein before, but I will now be looking for her! The description of an adult Parent Trap made me want to read this. It's one of those rare books that keeps you hooked even if you're not totally in love with the characters. They were very flawed, but I think that's what kept me reading because of that...their flaws are what made them real and relatable, whether or not I liked them. I used to summer in Maine often as a kid throughout my young adult life, and this book brought me back to my happy place because, like me, the girls had ties to Maine.

Additionally, there was character development and dynamics that I loved reading about on screen. This was more of a book about family relationships than romance, but it was just such a good read, and I was okay with it. It's a perfect spring/summer read!

P.S.- I additionally loved the dual POV from the sisters.

Excellent book about 2 sisters who meet for the first time after their dad's death. It was beautiful. I cried!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this arc in exchange for an honest review!

I'd like to thank NetGalley and the publishers for providing a copy of this book. I enjoyed the setting and the "Parent Trap"-inspired premise. This book will likely appeal to fans of Carley Fortune and Emily Henry, as it shares a similar tone and setting. While I didn't fully connect with one of the sisters, overall, I found the book to be an enjoyable read.

I read this book as an ARC from the publishers and NetGalley.
What initially jumped at me was the title, anything including Maine I enjoy trying to read as who doesn’t want to read a book set where they live.
While the storyline was good, it was a slow book. There was parts that kept me interested and parts that could have been done without.
You follow two many characters at times and then the end is too few. The two main characters Lucy and Vivian start to foster new relationships romantically but the follow through lacks, we are introduced to both love interests without finding out what happens or in one case nothing happening although wrote like we would follow it.
The much anticipated meeting of the moms also falls under the radar. We are wildly anticipating the meeting, likely hoping for drama (I know I was) and it was flat, boring and basic.
What I’m trying to get out is that while the storyline and idea is great it is flat, and anticlimactic

Two half sisters meet for the first time following their father’s death in a book that is appropriately coined as a grown-up parent trap. Told over the backdrop of a summer cabin on a lake in Maine, this book will be a big hit this summer among fans of Carly Fortune.

This book is very character driven. It explores relationships with romantic partners as well as developing, complex, relationships adult children have with their parents. I particularly loved scenes with the two mothers.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

My first read by this author and I’m really happy NetGalley gave me an ARC. Maine Companions was the book I needed to read after a reading slump ; mostly 2-star reads. Vivian and Lucy meet on the steps of their late father’s summer home. They are step-sisters born a few months apart. Different moms, same dad, different lives. Vivian has come to scatter her dad’s ashes and tries to maintain some civility towards Lucy. Then there’s Vivian’s mother, a famous romance novelist and Lucy’s mom Dawn; a down on her luck waitress. Exes appear as do potential male suitors. There is an easy flow to this book and I enjoyed it. My only gripe would be the daily ‘let’s grab a bottle of wine and take the motorboat out’. Not a smart thing to do and probably illegal.

The setting was rhe exact town I was visiting currently, so that was a huge bonus as I knew every location! Some unlikeable characters, but it came together in the end as a heartwarming story about women, grief and strength.

I was drawn to this book for the title, cute cover, and description before I even realized the author was Hannah Orenstein-- I had already read her "Love at First Like" and "Meant to be Mine" and enjoyed both! This one lived up to it's predecessors.

To quote Gen Z -- "It's giving Parent Trap" . This book is about two half sisters who meet for the first time at their dads cabin after he unexpectedly dies. To make matters even messier, one of them didn't know the other even existed until that moment. The story goes through complicated family dynamics, relationships, and small town vs big town life. The character development of both of the sisters was great and relatable to anyone who has dated someone who maybe wasn't the best fit or that they couldn't let go of. It could definitely be a Hallmark movie plot. Would definitely recommend!

A well written family drama. Two adult children meet each other for the first time after the death of their dad. Forced proximity, grief, and maybe some understanding once the two get to know each other. This book an introwas duction to the author for me and I really enjoyed her style of writing. I will be looking for other books by this author. Thank you Dutton for my arc of this book. Can't wait to see how the rest of the world reviews this cute little book.

This is a great summer read! It is a beautiful story between two sisters that do not meet until adulthood. It delves into the complexity of intertwining lives and how one secret can hold so much weight. Both Vivian and Lucy find themselves at a personal crossroad, then their father dies, they are brought together and their lives are forever changed. The author did a great job of showing not only the good, but the bad parts of the characters. She was able to balance it in a way so that the characters are still likable and the reader is able to understand the pain and trauma that has led to more of their less desirable behaviors.

Maine is one of my absolute favorite places and yearn for it in the summer. This embodies the small town Maine life and the authors love for it is apparent.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for the arc.