Natasha Kapoor receives news that her grandmother Frances has died, and she returns to the coast for the funeral. While there, her grandfather Arvind gives her the first ten pages of the diary of her Aunt Cecily, who died as a child. No one ever mentions Cecily, as her death was a tragedy that has, itself, never been discussed. But Arvind implores Natasha to find the rest of the diary, as well as gives Natasha a ring that used to belong to Cecily.

As Natasha begins to read the pages of Cecily's diary, she begins to discover family secrets about love, family rivalries, and heartache. One of the things Natasha wants to figure out, though, is whether her mother, Miranda, was responsible for Cecily's death, as was intimated to her after the funeral services by another relative. Is it really possible that one sister killed another and the rest of the family covered it up? and is this why the rest of the diary is missing?

The diary, which is included as part of the book, started as part of a school assignment for Cecily in 1963. After the assignment was completed, Cecily kept writing because she enjoyed it so much, and thus began the recording of the family's goings-on that summer. The rest of the diary is eventually discovered, and Natasha discovers the explosive truth.

However, this happens as her marriage is dissolving and her jewelry-making business is about to go bankrupt. She tries to keep her personal life in order as she is discovering that no one in her family is who she thought they were.

The plot of this book was extremely interesting, but the way in which the story was told was very confusing. Because the diary pages were interspersed with the rest of the book, it became difficult to keep the generations separate and remember that "Miranda" was the diary writer's sister and Natasha's mother, for instance. And because there was an extended family (which is realistic), this problem increased as a new family member was introduced. I also found the font used for the diary pages to be extremely difficult to read.

Although there were many characters, none of them were unbelievable, and all of them had separate voices, which is quite a feat. The ending was completely unpredictable, and I was quite satisfied with where the characters were left -- everything was left as it should have been.