Christa Barnet spends her days on a small island in the Indian Ocean studying snails. She is content there. She doesn’t have to deal with social media or family drama. She can just focus on her studies in peace. That’s important to her, as her childhood was filled with difficulties beyond her control. It came with the territory, Christa being the littlest Liddle.

Jasper Liddle was a popular television host, a scientist who could make the natural world come alive for viewers. He was loved by adults and children alike. And then he was gone. The plane he had been piloting went down in a remote part of Alaska, and all the searches turned up nothing. His wife and three daughters had to go on with their lives without him.

When Jasper disappeared, Christa had been a toddler. Her sisters were older, so they had a bond that Christa had felt left out of. But as a cute kid, she had been a part of the marketing her mother had done for the foundation built on the work of Jasper. Christa would hold an animal and smile for the cameras, and the adults took care of the rest. But now she’s an adult, and she’s happy to be far away from the Liddle Foundation and from the Liddle Little’s, the stuffed animal business that compared to Beanie Babies.

But then she got the news she never expected to get. Jasper was alive after all, and after 25 years of being away in the Alaskan wilderness, he was heading back to Los Angeles. Her father was coming home.

After many quiet years of studying snails on her small island home, Christa is thrust back into California, and back into the orbit of the paparazzi. She can’t even get out of LAX without running into a reporter, and soon they are swarming around the house. She camps out at her mother’s house with her two sisters, and they try to wrap their heads around the fact that their long-long father (and husband) is alive and well and talking to Oprah about why he’d been gone so long.

Trying to sort through decades of sibling rivalry, grief, anger, embarrassment, shame, and resentment, the Liddle family try to sort through their feelings to decide how much they are willing to put up with for themselves and for their familial bonds. As long-held hurts fall away and old crushes rise back up, Christa has to decide for herself how to move forward in a world where her sisters no longer hate her and her father exists as more than a distant memory. She has to stop hiding from the past and live in the present, and to figure out how to do that with a spotlight shining on her, no matter how much she may shy away from it. Using humor, intelligence, and inner strength, Christa has to navigate a new reality and find her way to her best life.

Abbi Waxman’s Christa Comes Out of Her Shell is a warm and witty look at family in the spotlight and how fame can make or break the relationships around you. It is human and endearing in a way that feels like a hug while also keeping it’s sharp edges, like a fork you might keep in your pocket to stab at the fingers of a rogue reporter who is trying to hold the elevator doors open to get an unwelcome photo or quote. Just as a random example. It’s a tale of survival and of revival, and of a family coming together when they all need each other the most.

I have been a fan of Waxman for many years now, and I am always caught a little off-guard by her writing. It’s lovely and lyrical, that doesn’t change. But she creates characters who are real, who you want to hang out with, and who will pull the rug out from under you every once in a while, but in the best way. I could identify with Christa right away, so I was with her on her journey. But as I met some of the other characters in the book, I was surprised at how much I was taken with a lot of them too (not all of them, certainly; we are talking about the entertainment industry). I knew I wanted to read Christa Comes Out of Her Shell as soon as I knew it was coming out. But I didn’t know at the time how much I would genuinely fall in love with this story. This is the perfect book for a long rainy weekend or an afternoon by the pool, or better yet, curled up in bed with your favorite creature.

Egalleys for Christa Comes Out of Her Shell were provided by Berkley through NetGalley, with many thanks.