Review Detail

Lexi's mother died suddenly when she was five, so it was always her and her dad until he married Abby and the family included her and five year old Connor and older step sister Chloe. Her father has never talked much about her mother, and while life with her family is fine, she has always yearned to know more about her mother as a teenager. When Lexi gets a package in the mail from a nursing home in Michigan, it contains a homemade mosaic box and just enough information to lead Lexi to want to visit Mackinac Island and the grand Palais du Lac hotel. She feels that if she can be in a place her mother was, she can discover more about her. With the help of Chloe, she formulates a plan to tell her father she is visiting colleges, but go to Michigan. It works, and while she is going to owe her father big time for the bills she is running up, is about to find some information. In alternating chapters, we see her mother's experiences in about 2003 on the island. Emma's family stays at the hotel, and she's going back and forth between dating JR, whom she likes, and Ryan, whom her family prefers, and for whom she has a growing affection. Lexi visits the local library and doesn't find much, but does connect with a hotel employee her age, Caleb. He's irritated with her interruptions at first, but introduces her to a 97-year-old movie star, Ms. VanHill, who has spent many years at the hotel. Slowly, secrets are revealed about the past. As Lexi finds out more about who her mother was, will this impact her perception of what her own identity is?