Summaries

Synopsis

Sometimes the universe grants a couple seconds of happiness before cruelly pulling you back into the muck. And so it goes for Nicole who, just as she is in a position to move on with life after finalizing a divorce with Jake, receives a phone call from her mother: the entirety of her shitty family is coming to stay for Thanksgiving weekend. But maybe this time will be different. After all, Nicole is enjoying newfound success, both in her career and in her new relationship with Braeden, the charming man she has begun seeing. With life finally looking up for once, perhaps she will feel empowered to deal with her family. She needs that strength too, because they are still oblivious to the fact that she is now divorced from her ex-husband, Jake. Nicole has put off telling them because she knows how that conversation will go. Her mother is a master champion of passive-aggressiveness, each word coming out of her mouth a calculated dagger. Plus, her sister, Debra, does her part to remain in their mother's favor, which means looking down her nose at Nicole as often as possible. Making up the rest of the visiting family is Debra's husband, Todd, who seems to share a brain with Debra. And with these people coming for the weekend, the topic of divorce will be unavoidable. Conversations with this horrendous family are always fun, but with all of them staying at Nicole's house, it will be an unrelenting four-day torture marathon.

Meanwhile, Jake is not ready to let Nicole go, as demonstrated through displays of patheticness, obsessiveness, and creepiness ranging from cheese-puff-stained fingerprints on tube socks up to full-blown stalker behavior. But not only is Nicole beyond done with Jake, she is getting closer with Braeden, a person with a dark and bloody secret: he is, in fact, a serial killer. As Nicole and Braeden get more comfortable with one another, Braeden struggles with the idea that perhaps Nicole is the one who will accept him for who he really is. His mask starts to slip, and so far, Nicole hasn't run away. Braeden wonders if he should take the mask off completely and clue her in to the fact that he enjoys random homicidal expeditions. Meanwhile, Jake's obsessiveness only grows more desperate, and this desperation and propensity toward creepy stalking leads him to see more of Braeden's secret life than perhaps he should have.

By the time Nicole's family arrives, Jake's obsession and Braeden's pining come to a head in the form of the most awkward Thanksgiving ever. Yes, Nicole will be enjoying dinner with her abusive mother, ridiculous sister, and nincompoop brother-in-law, along with the creepy ex and her serial killer beau. However, it is not an accident that these people ended up sitting at the same table. Nicole pulled their strings in a plot to give them what they all deserve and to finally be free. From the family's perspective, the dinner starts off like normal. That is to say, they get their passive-aggressive digs in, narcissistically drone on about their own nonsense, and create the annoying and aggravating type of atmosphere in which they thrive. But as things progress, filters are removed, motivations revealed, and the craziness escalates with each passing moment. Just when the family thinks learning of Nicole's divorce is the most horrific thing that they can hear, they discover knives aren't just for carving turkeys, that someone at the table brought a surprise, and they learn the hard way just how much Braeden loves gravy. Sometimes freedom converges with vengeance and violence.