The Summer Place

Jennifer Weiner is back again with an engaging, character-driven story about the wonderful and emotional messiness of family! The Summer Place is a hard-to-put down, dramatic beach read with juicy secrets, great topics, and well-developed characters.

This is a story about three generations of a family - grandparents, husbands, wives, children, and significant others who all have a connection to Ronnie, the matriarch of the family. Ronnie is the owner of a beautiful home on Cape Cod where many family memories were made and a place that has a secret or two of its own. With Ronnie's granddaughter's wedding soon to bring the family together, secrets and lies, self-discovery and scandal, will abound in this once tight-knit family.

Weiner sets her story in Cape Cod with vivid descriptions of the area, and I liked how she subtly included the impact of the Covid pandemic at the beginning. The story is rather on the long side, but Weiner uses this page time to delve into her characters' lives by providing her readers with backstories on several of the characters, many of whom share their POVs. We get clear pictures of their motivations, foibles and strengths and that detail helped me keep them straight in my head. Granted, readers will have to suspend disbelief with some of the coincidences, but that was easily done and made for some interesting reveals.

Add The Summer Place to your must-read summer book list! I'd suggest going into it blind and letting Weiner unfold her well-woven story and her cast of intriguing characters that will keep you eagerly turning the pages. 

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to Atria Books for my advanced digital copy provided in exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 4.5 stars

Author: Jennifer Weiner

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Type and Source: eBook from publisher via NetGalley

Publisher: Atria Books

First Published: May 10, 2022

Opening Line: For forty years, the house had stood, 

silvery cedar and gleaming glass, on the edge of the dune, 

overlooking the waters of Cape Cod Bay.

Book Description from GoodReads: From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of That Summer comes another heartfelt and unputdownable novel of family, secrets, and the ties that bind.

When her twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser is shocked. But the wheels are in motion. Headstrong Ruby has already set a date (just three months away!) and spoken to her beloved safta, Sarah’s mother Veronica, about having the wedding at the family’s beach house on Cape Cod. Sarah might be worried, but Veronica is thrilled to be bringing the family together one last time before putting the big house on the market.

But the road to a wedding day usually comes with a few bumps. Ruby has always known exactly what she wants, but as the wedding date approaches, she finds herself grappling with the wounds left by the mother who walked out when she was a baby. Veronica ends up facing unexpected news, thanks to her meddling sister, and must revisit the choices she made long ago, when she was a bestselling novelist with a different life. Sarah’s twin brother, Sam, is recovering from a terrible loss, and confronting big questions about who he is—questions he hopes to resolve during his stay on the Cape. Sarah’s husband, Eli, who’s been inexplicably distant during the pandemic, confronts the consequences of a long ago lapse from his typical good-guy behavior. And Sarah, frustrated by her husband, concerned about her stepdaughter, and worn out by challenges of life during quarantine, faces the alluring reappearance of someone from her past and a life that could have been.

When the wedding day arrives, lovers are revealed as their true selves, misunderstandings take on a life of their own, and secrets come to light. There are confrontations and revelations that will touch each member of the extended family, ensuring that nothing will ever be the same.

From “the undisputed boss of the beach read” (The New York Times), The Summer Place is a testament to family in all its messy glory; a story about what we sacrifice and how we forgive. Enthralling, witty, big-hearted, and sharply observed, this is Jennifer Weiner’s love letter to the Outer Cape and the power of home, the way our lives are enriched by the people we call family, and the endless ways love can surprise us.