Destination Funeral

Author: Paige Harbison Title: Destination Funeral Publisher: St. Martin's Press Date Published: 07/21/2026

Read Dates: 06/21/2026- 06/22/2026
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

 📖 I received a gifted e-book ARC. The following is my honest review✍🏻

Destination Funeral is a magical realism story about four estranged friends who are reunited for a funeral. Sisters Didion and Sammie return to their mothers beach house when she passes away, and are joined by their childhood best friend Matt, and Didion’s on-again, off-again summer boyfriend and friend, Austin. They just have to get through one weekend and then they can go back to their separate lives, but after a big fight on Saturday over what to do with the house they wake up on Saturday again. And again. And again… Stuck navigating a time loop that only the people in the house are aware of, they’re forced to confront their unresolved issues and figure out their path forward.

This was a surprisingly emotional book about friendship, found family, love, loss, and grief. It’s romance-adjacent (there is a second-chance romance plot line) but I think the bigger focus is definitely on relationships of all kinds. The relationship between Didion and her mother was complex and heartbreaking, and Didion’s complicated past with Austin was difficult for me. I really loved the book though, and I’m definitely looking forward to more from this author!

When Babe—the complicated, magnetic matriarch of their teenage summers—dies, four estranged friends return to sleepy Mercy Island, a storm-swept stretch of coastal Georgia, summoned by the reading of her will.

Didion arrives at the timeworn pink house to find the friends she never thought she’d see again—along with the tensions, attractions, and unfinished business that once bound them together and broke them apart.

What should be a brief weekend of small talk quickly unravels when they wake up and discover...it’s Saturday. Again. And again. And again.

Trapped in a time loop with no end and no instructions, they’re forced to confront the betrayals, breakups, and buried truths that shattered them all those years ago. Because maybe, just maybe, an endless weekend is exactly what they all need to save their own lives.