The Cousins

“My mother and her three brothers grew up on a giant beachfront estate named Catmint House, riding horses and attending black-tie parties like they were the princess and princes of Gull Cove Island.”

At the novel's beginning, the Story family background is highlighted as regal and almost royal. By using words like “beachfront,” “black-tie,” and “princess and princes,” McManus establishes the wealth and notoriety of the Story family. The reader knows immediately that this is not a typical family, and these are not typical family dynamics. Money and prestige are of the utmost importance for the Story family, and they are expected to conduct themselves accordingly.

“Mildred disowned all of her children. She cut them off both financially and personally, with no explanation except for a single-sentence letter sent two weeks before Christmas through her lawyer [...] You know what you did.” 

These lines establish the great scandal and overarching mystery of the Story family that will drive the novel's plot: Why did Mildred disown her child, and what did they do to deserve this extreme separation? The reader will find out that this letter was used as a cover-up to ensure that the fake Mildred, Theresa, was never caught. However, it also hints that the Story children are not entirely blameless, especially in the death of Matt Ryan: the letter is an accusation against Anders, Adam, and to a lesser extent, Allison.

“I wish to invite you and your cousins, Jonah and Aubrey, to spend this summer living and working at the resort.”

The invitation from Mildred to her grandchildren is unexpected, to say the least. Milly and her cousins cannot understand why their grandmother, who has never shown any interest in meeting them or spending time with them, would abruptly decide to bring them into her world. Still, the opportunity to get back in their mother’s good graces pushes Allison, Adam, and Anders to thrust their children into the world of Gull Cove Island, regardless of what their children might actually want. 

“My mother lives at the edge of a Mildred Story-shaped hole, and has for my entire life. It’s turned her into the kind of person who keeps everybody at a distance—even my dad, who I know she loved as much as she’s capable of loving anyone.” 

Allison’s detachment from her family has caused her marriage to fail and her relationship with her daughter to be strained. Milly understands that her mother’s behavior results from her broken relationship with her mother. Allison spent so much of her adolescence trying to maintain her mother’s approval that she never learned to be her own person, and now as an adult, she has trouble maintaining healthy relationships with her own family.

“I’m not sure which is more frustrating: that my mother is trying to blackmail me into spending the summer working for a grandmother I’ve never met, or that it’s totally going to work.”

Milly doesn’t want to go to Gull Cove Island, but her mother uses her diamond necklace as leverage over her daughter. Milly has always wondered why her mother didn’t give her the necklace as a gift, and her mother’s bribe makes Milly feel like her mother’s love and approval will always be conditional. Milly’s relationship with her mother echoes Allison’s relationship with Mildred, but Milly’s resentment is far more pronounced. Still, Milly craves her mother’s approval and agrees to go along with the deal.

“But yesterday, I learned how easily he can lie. And now I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Aubrey has spent her entire life in her father’s shadow, longing to measure up to the level of excellence and prestige that comes with being a Story. She believed her father when he told her that Mildred disinherited them for no reason, but when Adam reveals the truth of his affair, Aubrey is left questioning everything her father ever told her. For the first time, she realizes that her father might not be a good man, and he might even be a liar with a dark secret.

“This entire family is built on secrets, right? It’s the Story legacy.”

Milly has a far more cynical understanding of the Story family than Aubrey. Whereas Aubrey historically took her father's word as the absolute truth, Milly is from a world of elite families and opulent wealth, and she knows that every seemingly perfect family has secrets, including her own family. Aside from the secrets that come to light throughout the novel, Milly hints that there might be other secrets in the Story family that are centuries old. If a family is “built on secrets,” there are probably more than a few that will never see the light of day. This statement calls the character of the Story family into question.

“In the seconds before my grandmother regained her composure, one of my tangled thoughts separated from the rest with total, piercing clarity. She had absolutely no idea that we were coming.”

The first significant plot twist of the novel occurs when the grandchildren arrive on Gull Cove Island and meet Mildred. If Mildred was surprised to see them, then who really invited the Story children to the island? More importantly, why would someone want to bring the children here? The mystery deepens with Milly’s observation, and the identity of the letter-sender could be anyone.

“Family first, always.”

The first iteration of Abraham’s famous words comes when a teenage Allison feels conflicted about her feelings for Matt. She knows that she likes him, but she also knows that her brothers hate him. Allison tries to ignore her feelings for Matt to please her brothers, but after Allison gets pregnant and miscarries, her brothers interpret Abraham’s words differently. They aren’t looking out for Allison: just the Story family name.

“Things happen to him, like they’re out of his control. But that’s not how life really works; or at least, it’s not how it’s ever worked for him.”

In the aftermath of her father’s cheating scandal, Aubrey realizes how her father skirts responsibility for his behavior. Adam believes that he is superior to everyone around him and that his choices are always correct. When Aubrey asks him to apologize for the affair, he begins to blame her mother and still refuses to take responsibility. Just like he tells Aubrey that this news of the affair is hard on him, too, Adam has perfected the art of making himself a victim when he does something wrong.

“The urge to please him is so strong, ingrained over seventeen years, that despite everything, I feel a desperate need to make the anger in his voice go away.”

Aubrey has spent her entire life fearful of her father’s disapproval. When they get into an argument on the phone and her father gets angry with her, Aubrey is forced to wrestle with her habitual passivity and her newfound resentment toward her father. She decides that she doesn’t care about pleasing him anymore, and if she has to be the first person in Adam’s life to hold him accountable for his actions, she will be.

“I used to think there was something…romantic, I guess, about their particular brand of dysfunction. But truth is, my dad and his siblings are all miserable.” 

Aubrey begins to understand what Milly knew all along: the Story family may look beautiful, mysterious, and glamorous, but beneath the veneer of perfection lies a legacy of pain, loneliness, and dissatisfaction. Even Adam, who claims to be better than others, is deeply unhappy with how his life has turned out. Aubrey realizes that her lifelong envy of the Storys was misguided, and she decides that she wants to be a different kind of Story.

“One disgruntled client lost the entirety of his retirement savings, his child’s college fun, and is now in danger of losing his family’s small business.”

This line from the news coverage of Anders’s infamous scam reveals the motivation behind Jonah’s decision to come to Gull Cove Island. Jonah North isn’t just a kid in need of some cash: he needs cash because all of the money he saved for college was borrowed by his parents, then lost because of Anders. Jonah harbors a grudge against Anders for wrecking his family’s finances, damaging his relationship with his parents, and in Jonah’s eyes, taking away his future as a college student.

“Leave the past where it is [...] There’s nothing to be gained from reopening old wounds, and a lot to lose.” 

Donald’s advice to Milly is meant to get her to stop asking about what happened with Mildred and her children. Although Donald sounds as if he has the best interests at heart, the truth is that he doesn’t want anyone snooping around and learning what he and Theresa have been doing all these years. The grandchildren’s curiosity is dangerous, which is why he is determined to get them off of the island.

“I used to think that me being her namesake might mean something. That looking so much like my mother might mean something. That wearing my grandfather’s watch every day might mean something. That caring about art and fashion the way she does might mean something.”

Milly may resent Mildred for how she treated Allison, but Milly has always longed for Mildred’s approval. Milly chose to wear her grandfather’s watch and become well-versed in art and fashion to earn her grandmother’s favor. Instead, she is pushed to the side at brunch and ignored by the woman she has wanted to impress all these years.

“[Mildred’s favor] feels like the poisonous apple in ‘Snow White;’ a gift given with malice that I’ll instantly regret accepting.”

After brunch, Milly starts to become disenchanted with Mildred. She starts to understand the toxic nature of Mildred’s attention. She refers to Mildred’s favor as a “poisonous apple” because her attention may seem wonderful at the time but leads to bitterness and emotional investment that can ruin a person’s life. Mildred wrecked Allison’s self-esteem, and Milly is determined not to let the same thing happen to her. 

“When Donald Camden burst in on my kiss with Milly, my time as Jonah Story was officially up.” 

Jonah’s masquerade was going well with Aubrey and Milly’s help, but when he is caught kissing Milly at the Summer Gala, he has no other option but to come clean. Even if the kiss hadn’t happened, Anders was on his way to unmask him as a fraud, which means that Jonah’s charade was doomed to fail. Once he isn’t pretending to be JT anymore, Jonah can be his own person and do as he wishes on Gull Cove Island.

“It felt good to be angry. But it didn’t help, and it didn’t change anything.”

After talking to his parents about bankruptcy court, Jonah starts to see the light at the end of the tunnel. What happened to his family was terrible, but he begins to understand that being angry isn’t going to undo the damage that was done. His family doesn’t need revenge: they need a plan to recover, which his parents were trying to do while he was away on his futile revenge mission.

“It’s all right to be mad [...]. You’re entitled to that feeling. But give some thought to forgiveness too, okay? If there’s one characteristic I wish the Story family had more of, it’s that.”

While Jonah is learning to find peace in the aftermath of his failed revenge mission, Archer encourages Milly to forgive Jonah for not being honest about his intentions on the island. Archer points out that the Story family is not known for being particularly forgiving when people mess up, which has successfully alienated all of the Story children over the years. Milly can choose to be a better Story and set a new precedent for love and healing by forgiving Jonah.

“There’s something dangerously seductive about Story secrets; they snake their way into your heart and soul, burrowing so deep that the very idea of exposing them feels like losing a part of yourself.” 

Families like the Storys use secrecy to maintain control over people and possessions. Aubrey’s comment here, however, is about the secrets that she, Milly, and Jonah kept from one another at the beginning of the summer. To be a Story is to cover up the imperfect, ugly parts of yourself, and Aubrey recognizes how those secrets can drive people apart and control their lives.

“There wasn’t a birthmark.” 

The biggest plot twist in the novel occurs when Aubrey discovers that the woman posing as their grandmother isn’t Mildred at all. This drives the action of the story's final chapters as Aubrey breaks into Catmint House and winds up confronting the imposter, Theresa Ryan. Theresa’s whole story comes out, and the truth is revealed after 24 years. And if Aubrey hadn’t noticed the missing birthmark, the story may have never reached its resolution.

“Mildred Story wasn’t a villain after all, but a woman who got taken from her children without having a chance to say good-bye.”

The tragic truth of Mildred’s death transforms her from villain to an innocent bystander. Mildred may have been too tough on her children, especially her daughter, but she wasn’t the cruel, capricious woman everyone seemed to think she was when “she” cut off her children. In reality, her children were deprived of the opportunity to grieve their mother, and decades of thinking their mother hated them have caused permanent damage in all of their lives. 

“They spent it all. Every last penny. The Story estate is gone.”

The Story family is famous for its wealth, and for most of the Story siblings, being disinherited meant losing access to their mother’s money. When news breaks that Donald and Theresa have used up the Story family money, it seems that the family has lost everything that mattered to them. However, the people in a family—the Story children and grandchildren—are what make a family’s legacy, not riches or possessions.