Finished: The Nest (Sweeney) An easy-reading page-turner about four adult siblings who all spend their inheritance before they actually have it, and the problems and personal growth they go through as a result. The Plumb siblings are Leo, 46, Jack, 44, Bea, 43 and Melody, 39. When youngest daughter, Melody, was sixteen, their father decided to create a nest egg for the kids' future. He didn't intend for it to be an inheritance of any huge substance. He wanted the kids to get their educations, earn their own way, and then each have a bit of money for later in life if they needed it. Therefore, he set the terms to be that the money would not be available to them until Melody had her 40th birthday! Unfortunately, their father unexpectedly died not long after creating the trust fund. The kids were distraught. Their father had been the most loving of their parents, as their mother was a cold, selfish, alcoholic who was never very loving. The trust fund was left in the hands of the mother to only use if an emergency came about, but otherwise to divide it by the four children at the designated time. The market just happens to be good to their father's investment, and by the time Melody is about to turn 40, it is worth over 2 million dollars. Each of the siblings has overspent in their lives and constantly counts on the impending "nest" to pull them out of their financial woes. Melody and her husband have twin 16 year old daughters and a huge mortgage on their New York house. Melody is counting on the money to be able to pay off some of her mortgage and send her girls to whatever private college they'd like to go to. Bea is a writer who had a successful run of stories many years ago, and acquired a publisher, Stephanie....but along the way she developed writer's block and is living paycheck to paycheck. Jack is an antique dealer with a shop which has slowed down in business. He's married to Walker. Together they own a summer home, but Walker basically supports Jack. Jack, who was afraid to invite his family to his marriage to his longtime boyfriend, has mortgaged the beloved summer house without telling Walker. He counts on using the money to right that wrong. Leo, the most successful of the siblings, had an extremely successful online gossip magazine, but sold out on his partner for millions because he was tired of it, and because he wanted to marry the socialite he'd become enamored of. None of the siblings has remained particularly close at all, each pretty much going about their own lives and worrying mostly about themselves. As the book opens, Leo and his wife are at a cousin's wedding. Leo, high on cocaine, gets bored and seduces a nineteen year old server at the wedding. He convinces her to go with him in his Porsche. He's the charming one, after all. She does go with him, and in the process of performing a sexual act on him, they are in a horrific car crash. Both survive, but the girl loses a foot in the accident. Finding out the girl and her family are illegally in the country, Leo's mother and her new husband pay them off to keep quiet. She pays them off with the nest egg money!! Leo's mother argues that it is an emergency. Of course, she's not even doing it out of concern for Leo....she's doing it to keep the story quiet so her new husband's reputation isn't tainted. The other siblings are furious! How could she use their nest egg money to bail Leo out?? Surely he will have to repay them. Jack demands, Melody whines, and Bea worries. Leo finally meets with them and tells them to give him a little time to work something out. He's lost every penny he has to his wife in the divorce settlement after the accident. Leo secretly knows that he has 2 million dollars squirreled away in a Grand Cayman bank account that his ex-wife's lawyers know nothing about. He COULD pay his siblings back, but decides, instead, to run off and leave the country, leaving them stranded. This is not before he gets Stephanie (Bea's old publisher, and Leo's old flame) pregnant. Stephanie never tells him she's pregnant, especially since he up and leaves without even a note. She ends up being a great single mother and actually getting to know Leo's siblings when all is said and done. With Leo running off and no nest egg in sight, we see how each of the siblings deals with their various financial troubles. Jack makes a decision to deal in an illegal transaction with a stolen antique. When Walker finds this out, he leaves Jack after 20 years together. Jack is devastated at first. Walker sells the summer cottage and actually helps Jack out of his troubles, but then divorces him. At the end of the story, Jack has actually learned to live on his own and has vowed to be there for his brother and Stephanie's little daughter. In an epilogue we see that it's Uncle Jack who walks her down the aisle many years later! Melody finally must admit to her husband and twin girls that she's not the perfect mother! She agrees to sell her beloved house, and when the twins let her know that they'd be just fine going to state schools, their family works things out and turns out okay. Bea finds her writer's block unblocked and begins a new story and actually finds a new love. So, in the end, they didn't really need the "nest" after all, and ended up taking care of things on their own like their father wanted. And, as a result of having to communicate so much about the "nest", they actually get involved in each other's lives and grow closer! Leo, he ends up living a lonely life, still exaggerating his own self-importance and wondering why Stephanie has never come looking for him, lol. All in all, a pretty good book and a fast read. :-)