Thanks to some amusing scenes and surrounding characters, the story manages to entertain, albeit superficially. Few of the characters seem fully realized, and the plot is flat-out preposterous. But the novel could serve as a sort of public service to stressed-out brides: If the wrong flowers are delivered to your wedding, don't have a meltdown. Things could be so much worse.

• Summer House. Nancy Thayer. Ballantine. 368 pages. $24.

The golden, sprawling Wheelwright family seems to have everything: health, beauty, money, social pedigree and a gorgeous summer house in Nantucket where the whole brood gathers every year.

Overseen by matriarch Nona, whose 90th birthday party is one of the island's summer highlights, the Wheelwrights -- Nona's children, grandchildren and their families -- are the sort of blue-blooded, moneyed clan that holds a Family Meeting every year to discuss charity giving and investments.

The family's summer will bring parties, weddings and a birth but also plenty of heartbreak and drama. One wife discovers infidelity after overhearing her husband call someone ''Sweet Cakes'' on the phone; the alcoholic prodigal son shows up with a young pregnant woman right before Grandma's big party; frequent interfamilial strife breaks out, and long-held secrets are finally revealed.

Thayer portrays beautifully the small moments, inside stories and shared histories that build families and makes the reader intimately familiar with the Wheelwrights' flaws and triumphs. She captures the essence of summer, from the nights when ''the stars, one by one, twinkle on, as if someone up there were walking through the heavens, lighting them like candles'' to the physical thrills of gardening or simply sitting in a patch of sun.

The writing can be a little formal, and the affairs occasionally too domestic, but the novel reminds us that life is complicated, and the simple pleasures of family togetherness are too precious to take for granted.

Hannah Sampson is a Miami Herald staff writer.

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