50 pages • 1 hour read
Karen M. McManusThe Cousins
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Milly Story-Takahashi
Milly is a wealthy 17-year-old prep school student from Manhattan, the daughter of Allison Story, and one of the three narrators and protagonists. Milly’s full name is Mildred, after her grandmother, and she believes that her mother named her this in an attempt to appease her own mother because “why else would [she] saddle a twenty-first-century girl with a name like Mildred?” (22). Milly’s father is Japanese, and her parents are divorced. Jonah describes Milly as “drop-dead gorgeous” (52) with “dark hair, dark eyes, and full lips curved in a smirk that should probably be annoying but isn’t” (53). Aubrey admires Milly’s beauty, fashion sense, and intellect, noting that Milly is usually “three steps ahead of [her]” (113) when it comes to piecing information together.
Milly, however, doesn’t see herself the same way that Jonah and Aubrey see her. She knows that she is pretty, but she has spent her entire life feeling like she isn’t good enough for her mother. She is self-conscious about her performance in school, claiming that “it’s the bane of [her] mother’s existence that [Milly] [is] always ranked solidly in the bottom half of [her] class” (16) at her elite prep school. Her mother constantly corrects her grammar, denies her physical affection or praise, and leaves Milly feeling like she will never measure up to the Story family standards. Milly is so starved for attention and praise that she frequents bars to get attention from strange men.
When Milly meets Aubrey, the girls bond over shared family drama. Just as Milly feels she will never measure up to her mother’s standards, Aubrey doesn’t think she will measure up to her father’s. The girls become good friends throughout the summer, and they realize that they can be so much more than what their parents wanted or expected them to become. Milly’s relationship with Jonah is unusual at first, but when the news breaks that the two aren’t related, Milly finds herself warming up to Jonah and confessing her feelings of inadequacy to him. Jonah is enamored with Milly and can’t understand why she seems determined to try to please her mother and her grandmother. In his eyes, Milly is perfect the way she is, with or without Mildred or Allison’s approval, and he helps Milly learn to love herself during their time together.
Aubrey Story
Aubrey is a high school swim star from Oregon, the daughter of Adam Story, and one of the three narrators and protagonists. Aubrey describes herself as “blond, freckled, and athletic” (36), and aside from sharing a “port-wine birthmark” (36) similar to her grandmother’s, Aubrey doesn’t share much of a resemblance with anyone in the Story family. She has never felt delicate, beautiful, or elegant like her father or his mother, and she has lived her whole life trying to please her proud and arrogant father.
Aubrey is consumed with anger toward her coach and her father, the two people she admired most in the world, and she begins to question her lifelong adoration of her father. She is embarrassed to think about “how mindlessly [she has] always worshiped [her] father” (42). Despite her anger and disillusionment, Aubrey describes herself as “the Girl Least Likely to Cause a Scene About Anything, Ever” (33), so she avoids confrontation.
Aubrey strives to find some sense of belonging, whether in her family or other relationships. She has “been part of a team almost [her] whole life” (101), and when she learns that her swim coach had an affair with her father, she feels like she has to give up her love for swimming and quits the team. Without her team, “The loneliness [...] settles over [her] shoulders like a heavy blanket” (101). She stays with her mediocre boyfriend for so long because he offers some sense of stability and familiarity in her life. Jonah observes that “[Aubrey] couldn’t care less about the money. She just wants somebody in this messed-up family to give a shit about her” (189) because she has been starved of her father’s approval for her entire life.
Aubrey’s cousins, however, notice only her exceptional kindness and innocence. Jonah remarks that “even when [Aubrey’s] not smiling, there’s something friendly about her face. And honest” (56), and he feels like “being sarcastic to Aubrey [would be] like kicking a puppy” (58). Aubrey develops an unexpected bond with Archer, the first person to show her fatherly love or concern. Unlike Adam, Archer tells Aubrey that he is proud of her for her hard work on the swim team, and he tries to protect her in the final standoff with Theresa. Thanks to the love and support of her cousins and her uncle, Aubrey grows as a person and learns to love herself outside of her father’s expectations.
Jonah North (Jonah “Story”)
Jonah is one of the three narrators and protagonists, and at the beginning of the novel, the reader is led to believe that he is Milly and Aubrey’s cousin and the son of Anders Story. However, Jonah North is the son of one of Anders’s victims, and he is on a mission to avenge his family.
Milly notices that something is off about Jonah right away. Although he “[makes] a solid early effort at copying [her] cousin’s obnoxious mannerisms, he [isn’t] able to keep it up” (133). It isn’t long before she pulls the truth out of him: Jonah isn’t her cousin, and JT bribed him to take his place on Gull Cove Island for the summer. To Milly’s knowledge, that’s all there is to the story, and Jonah withholds the real reason he has decided to come to Gull Cove Island.
Jonah is described as lacking the same “analytical, academic tone as Jonah Story,” but Milly calls him “annoying in his own way—he has a bad attitude and a chip on his shoulder about something” (133). Jonah has every reason to be angry: he lost his entire college fund in his parents’ bad deal with Anders, and his family was brought to the brink of financial ruin. Why should Anders get a chance to reconnect with his wealthy mother and inherit the Story family estate when he ruined the lives of so many people? Jonah seizes his chance to attack Anders’s character on the night of the Summer Gala, claiming that “[Anders] [is] trying to manipulate the entire room, just like [he] manipulated [Jonah’s] parents” (322). Even though Jonah finally gets to play out his revenge fantasy, he realizes that he has hurt Aubrey and Milly in the process, and he regrets his decision: “It wasn’t worth putting Milly and Aubrey in a bad situation. But tonight, when I was humiliated and stressed [...] I let my bitterness take over” (330).
What Anders did to Jonah’s family was wrong, but as Jonah thinks about his parents’ bankruptcy proceedings and the advice of their lawyer, he realizes that being angry with Anders won’t undo the damage. Jonah realizes that he is allowing his anger and thirst for revenge to take over his life, and he decides to let go of the past and move forward into the future with his family as they rebuild their business. He finds a future to look forward to with Milly, and with the help of his new friends on Gull Cove Island, he decides to embrace hope and leave his bitterness behind.
Mildred Margaret Story
Mildred Story is the widow of Abraham Story, the mother of Adam, Anders, Allison, and Archer, and the grandmother of Milly, Aubrey, and JT. She is a complicated character whose true identity is shrouded in mystery, and Milly describes her as a presence that “loomed large over [Milly’s] childhood, but as more of a fairy-tale figure than an actual person” (19). Two years after Abraham died, Milly explains that Mildred abruptly disowned all of her children without any apparent reason. Without their mother’s money or presence in their lives, the Story children drifted away from Gull Cove Island and one another. Because none of the Story children claim to know why their mother disinherited them, their children are led to believe that their parents were “treated unfairly, and that [their] grandmother must be cold, capricious, and maybe even crazy” (44). However, through a series of bizarre encounters with “Mildred” on Gull Cove Island and Allison’s memories of the summer of 1996, the reader develops a clearer picture of who Mildred was and, more importantly, who she was not.
Allison’s memories state that “Mildred Story wasn’t a natural hostess; she’d always relied on her husband’s gregariousness to get her through social gatherings” (88-89). She was uptight, shy, and although well-versed in the ways of proper society, she was somewhat lacking in social skills. Allison depicts her as fussy, self-conscious, and very fond of her children: especially her older sons. In fact, during their brunch with “Mildred,” Jonah reports that “Mildred wasn’t interested in [her grandchildren] so much as Adam and Anders. All of her questions were just a roundabout way of forcing [Jonah and Aubrey] to talk about them” (287). Jonah assumes that she asks so many questions about Adam and Anders because they were her favorite children, matching old rumors of Mildred’s favoritism.
Still, something seems unusual about how Mildred cut off her children. Carson assures the kids that “Mrs. Story couldn’t be lovelier to her employees and people around town. Why would she be so ruthless with her own children?” (141), which re-opens the decades-long question. For most of the novel, Mildred is painted as a villain, but as the story of her tragic death and hijacked life comes to light, Milly states that “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” (444). In the end, everyone—including her own heartbroken and confused children—must re-evaluate the woman they thought hated them for the past 24 years and begin the process of healing. Mildred was used as a puppet for Theresa and Donald’s wrongdoings: a bittersweet comfort for her grieving family.
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