ARC Review: The Summer Place by Jennifer Weiner

When Ruby, just 22, announces her engagement to her relatively new boyfriend, Sarah, Ruby’s mom, is taken by surprise. But Ruby has her heart set on a wedding at her grandmother’s house at Cape Cod, for which Ruby has already made arrangements. But in the short three weeks before the wedding, things start to change for every family member involved.

This was an interesting one. I liked it as much as That Summer (which was my first Jennifer Weiner book) and I haven’t read Ms. Everything or Big Summer (yet! I have both waiting to be read on my shelf) so I can’t speak to how it compares to her other books, but I definitely enjoyed this one.

One of the reasons it was so interesting is that it takes place during COVID, but didn’t make it the defining feature of the book. It was “a book that took place during COVID”, not “a book about COVID” and it felt very natural in a way that I haven’t seen in other books that tackle COVID.

There’s also a little call back to That Summer thrown in here! I absolutely love it when authors do this, so this was fun for me.

There is a lot of infidelity in this book—definitely a topic that is heavily explored. Usually I’m on the fence about this and whether or not I think it works in a book usually depends on how I feel the author tackled it as a whole. I think there may have a been a tad much here but it didn’t keep me from not liking the book. It made some of the characters unlikeable, but overall I thought Weiner handled the topic well enough.

I also liked how all the characters’ lived intertwined. There are a lot of characters with their own stories, but Weiner was very clear with her writing, so I didn’t feel like there was any confusion as to which character perspective each chapter was focusing on. While the cover and title may suggest a light/airy/fun summer read, that’s really not the vibe here. I would recommend picking this one up if you like: books set in Cape Cod, interwoven storylines and character driven novels

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