Avery is a firecracker. In a crayon box of colors, she’s the shocking pink and laser lemon, when all she wants is to be a quiet tan or soft cornflower blue. Jax is a wall flower, because sometimes it’s better to stay quiet when the alternative is to be told that you’re doing or saying everything wrong. Avery and Jax’s extended family haven't spoken to each other for years. Until now...
When their beloved Aunt Robbie summons the large, estranged family together for a gathering at their broken-down family cabin on Crooked Lake, cousins Avery and Jax seem to be the only ones who don’t know what happened years ago that shattered this family. But instead of learning the answer, everyone is about to get a horrible surprise: Aunt Robbie has been diagnosed with ALS, and by the end of the summer, the island that’s been a part of their family for generations must go up for sale.
As Avery and Jax begin to dig through decades worth of history in the long-abandoned house, they also begin to dredge up diary pages that their aunt once scattered around the island as a kid, the summer that tore their family apart.
In this alternating narrative by bestselling author Erin Soderberg Downing, two cousins who have finally begun to discover the joy of family - however cracked and imperfect theirs might be - long to unravel the mystery of what happened then, with the hope that they might also be able to figure out how to glue their broken family back together again.