The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Picoult, Jodi. Wish You Were Here. Ballantine Books, 2021.

Picoult’s novel contains two parts. Part 1 takes place mainly in the Galápagos Islands and Part 2 takes place in Manhattan. Diana O’Toole, a 29-year-old auction specialist at Sotheby’s, narrates the story from a first-person perspective.

The story begins on March 13, 2020 as Covid arrives in Manhattan. Diana and her boyfriend, Finn, are preparing for their upcoming trip to the Galápagos, where Diana expects Finn to propose. However, Finn, a medical resident, is unable to go as he is needed at New York-Presbyterian Hospital where he works. He insists that Diana travels anyway. Diana reluctantly agrees to go alone.

Diana arrives as Isabela Island goes into lockdown. When Diana discovers that her hotel is closed, a woman identifying herself as “Abuela” offers her spare apartment to Diana. Diana ventures out from the apartment to find food and picks up an apple after she sees a tortoise eat one. A stranger grabs her, yelling “Cuidado!” as he cautions her away from the apples, poisonous to humans.

Diana goes swimming the next day and meets a teenage girl engaging in self-harm. She leaves when Diana tries to speak with her. Diana returns to her apartment to discover the stranger who grabbed her yelling at Abuela. The stranger is Abuela’s grandson, Gabriel. He leaves, walking across the street to embrace the girl Diana met earlier.

On another morning, Diana finds the same girl collecting trash on the beach. She is Gabriel’s daughter, Beatriz. They spend the next morning together as Diana shows Beatriz how to use trash to enhance sand sculptures. A week later, Diana learns that Beatriz is staying with Abuela. Gabriel barges into Abuela’s house to talk to her, but Diana cautions him to be gentle, telling him that Beatriz self-harms. Gabriel apologizes the following morning and offers to show Diana the island since Beatriz has been happier since she began spending time with Diana.

Beatriz and Gabriel each develop a relationship with Diana, taking her for hikes and showing her Isabela.

After two weeks, Diana prepares to go home. Beatriz tells her that she cannot leave due to travel restrictions. To cheer her up, Gabriel, Beatriz, and Diana visit a lagoon filled with flamingos.

A few days later, Diana phones her mother at the Greens, a memory care facility. Hannah, her mother, has Covid. To distract Diana, Gabriel takes her to explore the lava tunéles. He indicates again that Beatriz is much happier when she is with Diana. They hike, engaged in deep conversation, until a park ranger asks them to leave.

Beatriz later takes Diana for a hike down into the trillizos, the collapsed lava tunnels. Diana learns that Beatriz is unhappy because she has unrequited feelings for her host sister from her magnet school. In a moment of desperation, Beatriz lets go of the ladder keeping her safe, but Diana saves her.

After four weeks on Isabela, Gabriel, Beatriz, and Abuela celebrate Diana’s birthday. Diana realizes that she feels completely content. Gabriel and Diana spend the night together talking and drinking under the stars. The next morning, he takes her on a hike to a volcano. Diana’s mother passes away later that night. When Gabriel checks on Diana, they kiss. They give into their feelings and sleep together. The next morning, Beatriz discovers them in bed together and realizes that they had been intimate. She runs away, but Gabriel and Diana find her in the trillizos.

Weeks later, Gabriel takes Diana to a beach. Gabriel confesses his feelings for Diana as they swim, saying that he is certain they are meant to be together. Diana gets caught in a current. Gabriel attempts to save her, but Diana realizes that they both will drown unless she lets go of him. She resigns herself to drowning and lets go.

Diana wakes up in the hospital with Covid to learn that she never went to the Galápagos.

Finn tells Diana that she went to the emergency room with a fever after they talked about their trip. She became unstable and was put on a ventilator for five days. She woke up after she was extubated.

Diana struggles after five days of intubation. She needs physical and occupational therapy. She has difficulty processing her time in the Galápagos as a dream. However, Diana learns that her mother is alive and well.

Once Diana graduates from rehab, she returns home with Finn.

Home alone while Finn works, Diana reconsiders her career, exploring the idea of art therapy. That night, Finn starts to propose to Diana as they watch a movie, but she flees to the bathroom to prevent the moment from happening.

Diana, determined not to waste her second chance at life, visits Hannah at the Greens a few days later. Due to Covid restrictions, she has lunch with her on the grass while Hannah remains on her porch.

As Diana falls asleep one night, she dreams of Gabriel, continuing from the moment she left the Galápagos. Diana wakes up sobbing.

In May, Diana learns that Hannah has Covid. She sneaks into the Greens to visit Hannah in person. Hannah, lucid in the last days of her life, tells Diana how she wanted to be a mother desperately, but was so bad at it that she left the parenting to Diana’s father so that Diana would be happy. Two days later, Hannah dies, devastating Diana.

Finn takes Diana to one of their favorite parks to lift her spirits after her mother’s death. He proposes to her, but Diana rejects him, realizing that they want different things.

Three years later, Diana is an art therapist and has moved on from Finn. She arrives on Isabela Island. As she reaches into the tortoise enclosure, she falls. A stranger grabs her, cautioning “Cuidado!” and ending the novel.