The Identicals

I picked up The Identicals because I wanted a beach book with more bite than usual, and Elin Hilderbrand delivered exactly that kind of summer sprawl. She published it in 2017 with Hodder & Stoughton, and my reading follows the 432 page edition. Identical twins Harper and Tabitha Frost, age 39, have barely spoken in years and live on rival islands. Harper lives on Martha's Vineyard with their father Billy. Tabitha lives on Nantucket with their mother Eleanor and her teenage daughter Ainsley. When Billy dies, the sisters are forced into the same room again, and then they trade places for the rest of the summer.

Hilderbrand opens with the islands themselves acting like characters. Nantucket people think Nantucket is the real island, with cobblestones and old money polish. Vineyard people think the Vineyard is the real island, with more varied towns and less performance. The book leans into that ferry ride rivalry on purpose. It is only about eleven miles by water, but the sisters treat it like different countries. That distance mirrors their own split.

That split started when they were 17. Their parents divorced, with Boston designer Eleanor Roxie-Frost staying tied to Nantucket and electrician Billy Frost rooted on the Vineyard. Eleanor told the twins to choose. They settled it with rock paper scissors. Harper won and went with Billy. Tabitha went with Eleanor.

Then came the harder break, fourteen years before the main story. Tabitha had a premature infant son, Julian, who died. She blames Harper for pushing her to go out drinking that night and leaving the baby with his father. Whether that blame is fair stays unresolved for most of the book, which is the point. Grief needs a target, and a sister is a convenient one. Ainsley, now sixteen, barely knows her aunt. She knows she had a brother who died as a baby, and she carries a hospital bracelet reminder that keeps the loss present without big speeches.

Harper on the Vineyard when Billy dies

Harper's life on Martha's Vineyard is frayed in every direction when Billy dies of congestive heart failure in the hospital. She sits with him at the end and collects his effects, including a gold watch that feels heavier than it should. She texts Tabitha the news and gets silence back. She also texts two men, which tells you most of what you need.

One is Reed Zimmer, Billy's married doctor, with whom Harper has been having a secret affair. They meet late at a beach parking area the same night Billy dies. His wife Sadie catches them in the act. That single scene ruins Harper's standing on a small island in one stroke. The other man is Drew Truman, a young police officer who has been dating Harper casually and likes her more than she likes him. He pulls her over gently that night to offer condolences. She brushes him off because she is already tangled elsewhere.

Harper also has a steadier thread in Brendan Donegal, a former surfer living with a serious brain injury after an accident in the water. She looks after him with a patience she shows almost nowhere else. His mother Edie trusts Harper. That friendship matters because it proves Harper can commit to care when romance is not involved. It also sets up one of the saddest turns later.

Work is shaky too. Harper does delivery jobs and has a past arrest hanging over her reputation. She is not the polished Frost. She lives with her Siberian husky Fish, who follows her from island to island and later gets the last word in the epilogue. Money is tight. Billy's house is her only possible cushion, but selling it means letting go of the one parent who chose her back as a teenager.

Tabitha on Nantucket with Ainsley and Eleanor

Tabitha's Nantucket life looks tidier from outside and feels just as stuck inside. She lives in her mother's carriage house and manages Eleanor's boutique, a preppy resort wear shop that has gone stale and is losing money. Eleanor built a name as a designer, but the store now reads as stiff to younger shoppers. The pregnant manager Meghan tries to keep it afloat. Tabitha follows her mother's rules even while resenting them.

At home, sixteen year old Ainsley Cruise tests every limit. She is bright and angry, grieving a grandfather she barely knew and a brother she never got to know, plus dealing with a recent breakup with her boyfriend Teddy. She throws a party while grounded and damages a prized piece of furniture. She sneaks, drinks, and pushes. Tabitha responds with control that used to work and no longer does. She drowns Ainsley's phone in a drink cup one night after breaking up the party with help from Ainsley's childhood friend Candace. It plays as both funny and desperate.

Tabitha has also just split with her long term boyfriend Ramsay Striker, a local guy with charm and a wandering eye. He has already moved on with Caylee Keohane, which stings more because Caylee is younger and warm in a way Tabitha finds hard to be. Tabitha's other ex, Wyatt, father of Ainsley and Julian, is married to someone else and mostly absent from daily life. So Tabitha parents largely inside Eleanor's orbit, with money and housing tied to her mother.

Eleanor herself is formidable and fragile together. She drinks too much champagne at the wrong moments. She speaks in cool dismissals that shut down conflict without resolving it. She loves her daughters in a controlling register. When the family travels to the Vineyard for Billy's memorial, Eleanor holds herself together in public and falls apart afterward. That fall becomes literal. Back on Nantucket, very drunk, she tumbles down the front steps and breaks her hip. Suddenly Tabitha must go to Boston for her mother's surgery, leaving Ainsley unsupervised at the exact worst moment.

Memorial, mistaken identity, and the swap

The memorial reception for Billy is where all the fuel meets the match. Tabitha, Ainsley, and Eleanor ferry over. Ainsley feels an instant pull toward Harper, the aunt she has met only twice. Harper looks like her mother but acts softer. That bond frightens Tabitha.

Then Sadie Zimmer spots Tabitha across the room, mistakes her for Harper, and slaps her and throws champagne. Eleanor steps in with icy calm, but the damage is done. Everyone now knows about Harper's affair with Reed. Drew breaks it off with Harper. Reed cuts contact to save his job and marriage. Harper loses delivery work and faces open scorn at the grocery store and on the street. She decides she has to sell Billy's house and leave.

Eleanor's broken hip forces the swap. Tabitha has to be in Boston. Ainsley needs supervision. Ainsley secretly invites Harper to stay on Nantucket. Tabitha resists, then gets a call from school about Ainsley planting contraband in another girl's locker with her friend Emma Marlowe as revenge over Teddy now dating Candace. The details are ugly, with gin and drug residue involved, and Ainsley gets suspended. Tabitha realizes she cannot manage Boston, the store, and a suspended teenager alone.

So they make a deal. Harper will stay on Nantucket in the carriage house, watch Ainsley, and help at the boutique. Tabitha will handle Eleanor in Boston, then go to the Vineyard to prepare Billy's house for sale. Tabitha privately hopes Harper will fail and prove her irresponsible. Harper privately hopes the change will give her breathing room and a share of the house money. Neither says the quiet part aloud.

Harper and Ainsley fix the boutique

The Nantucket stretch is the warmest part of the book, mostly because Harper is good at the unglamorous parts of care. She cooks dinner. She waits up. She takes the dog out and leaves food where a teenager will find it without a lecture attached. Ainsley, who expected judgment, gets steadiness instead and starts talking about Teddy, Candace, and Emma. Harper does not excuse the locker scheme. She makes Ainsley face the suspension and the social fallout. But she also sees a lonely kid trying to punish friends who moved on.

The boutique plot gives them a shared project. Meghan tells them plainly the store feels snobby and young shoppers avoid it. Harper brings in Caylee, Ramsay's ex, to help rethink the vibe. Caylee suggests a party with music and a looser dress code for staff and guests. They pull it off, sales lift, and the shop feels alive for the first time in years. Eleanor would hate the methods and love the numbers. Tabitha hates that it worked without her.

Harper's own trouble follows her. She learns she is pregnant by Reed. She also learns Tabitha is renovating Billy's house instead of selling quickly, which delays any payout Harper desperately needs. They fight by phone, with old accusations about Julian resurfacing. Then Edie calls to say Brendan has died by suicide. Harper takes Ainsley with her to the Vineyard to comfort Edie, walks into Billy's half renovated house, and is stunned by how beautiful it looks. Pride and resentment collide. She and Tabitha explode at each other again, this time about money, men, and the night Julian died.

Tabitha on the Vineyard with Franklin

Tabitha's Vineyard stretch starts as a business trip and turns into a second life. She decides Billy's place should not go as a teardown. With vision and stubbornness, she plans a full renovation for a larger profit. She hires Franklin Phelps as contractor. Franklin happens to be Sadie's brother, which makes the hire loaded from day one.

Franklin is capable, direct, and kind in a physical practical way. He shows Tabitha what the house could be. They fall into a fast, secret affair conducted between lumber runs and paint choices. For Tabitha, who has lived under Eleanor's gaze for decades, being wanted without a chaperone audience feels new. For Franklin, Tabitha is competent and funny once she stops performing Nantucket polish. The secrecy adds heat but also rot. Sadie sees any closeness with Harper's family as betrayal and pressures Franklin to end it. He does, and Tabitha adds that loss to Harper's tab.

Her lowest moment comes after the big fight with Harper. Hurt and vengeful, Tabitha drives to Reed's cottage planning to impersonate Harper and sleep with him as payback. She gets there, starts the act, and cannot go through with it. She tells Reed who she really is and leaves. I found that scene convincing precisely because she stops. Revenge fantasies are easy to imagine and hard to execute when another person is in the room. Her refusal also protects Franklin from a betrayal he did not earn, even though they are broken up at that point.

Julian, Eleanor, and what forgiveness costs

The book withholds the full account of Julian's death until late, then handles it without turning it into a courtroom reveal. Tabitha's son was premature and fragile. The night in question involved Harper urging Tabitha to go out drinking and leave the baby with his father. Tabitha went. The baby died. Tabitha has carried both grief and guilt since, and blaming Harper gave that guilt somewhere to live outside her own chest.

Eleanor forces the reckoning. Back in Boston and later on Nantucket, she calls a family intervention and admits her own share. She believes stress she placed on a pregnant Tabitha around the boutique opening contributed to early labor. She also believes she should have paid for longer hospital care. Whether medicine would have changed the outcome is left uncertain, and wisely so. The point is not a medical verdict. The point is a mother who controlled everything finally saying she failed at the one thing that mattered.

That admission loosens something between the twins. They argue through the night of Julian's death without euphemism for the first time. Harper owns pushing Tabitha to go out. Tabitha owns choosing to go. Eleanor owns adding pressure when rest was needed. No one is innocent, which paradoxically lets them stop keeping score. Harper then tells Tabitha she is pregnant. The timing could feel soapy, but here it lands as continuation rather than cure. A new baby does not replace Julian. It gives Harper a future that requires her to stay steadier than before.

The closing movement is symmetrical without being cute. The sisters scatter Billy's ashes together at Farm Neck Golf Club and in Oak Bluffs harbor, saying goodbye to the parent who anchored Harper and eluded Tabitha. Franklin, with Sadie's reluctant blessing, goes to Nantucket to reunite with Tabitha. Reed travels to Nantucket to find Harper after learning about the pregnancy. The epilogue, told from Fish the husky's point of view, finds Harper and Reed living in Brendan's old cottage on Chappaquiddick and preparing for the baby, with the sisters talking again.

What lands and what strains

What lands is the sister story and the island swap mechanism. Harper caring for Ainsley feels earned through meals cooked and rides given, not through speeches. The boutique turnaround works because Meghan names the problem plainly and Caylee brings practical fixes. Tabitha learning to see the Vineyard through work boots rather than as Harper's excuse gives her arc texture. Ainsley's suspension and slow repair avoid easy redemption. She did a cruel thing to Candace, lost friends, and has to live with being known as the girl who did it. Caylee and Harper help her build a sturdier routine, not a new reputation overnight.

What strains is the romance load. Both sisters get a full love interest plus leftovers, with Reed, Drew, Franklin, and Ramsay rotating through. Drew fades fast once his function as decent alternative is done. Reed is thin beyond guilt and desire. Franklin is the strongest of the group because his work gives him scenes with Tabitha that are not about kissing. Even so, Sadie controlling his dating life at his age stretches belief. The book also asks us to accept that a boutique party and a house renovation both go unusually well in one summer. The successes are fun to read but tidy.

Length at 432 pages suits the double story. There is room for both households without rushing. A few renovation and retail loops could trim, but they show competence, which the book values. These women fix houses and stores while failing at apologies, then learn apologies too. That balance keeps the ending from feeling sugary. Happiness here has back payments due. The sisters pay them together, which is the best argument the novel makes.

Who should pick it up

Give The Identicals to Hilderbrand readers who want Nantucket plus Vineyard in one volume, to sisters navigating old fights, to mothers and daughters who like frank talk about money and care. It suits a long weekend with ferry time built in. Do not give it to readers who want a tight mystery. Pair it with The Perfect Couple for more Nantucket social machinery.

At 432 pages I finished it in three sittings, marking Harper and Ainsley scenes. Harper starts hiding an affair and ends preparing for a child with steadier habits. Tabitha starts managing her mother's shop and ends managing her own choices about house, lover, and sister. Eleven miles apart felt like eleven hundred. By the end the water is just water again.