The Summer Place by Jennifer Weiner
The Summer Place is Jennifer Weiner’s newest book, a family drama in which EVERYONE seems to have a secret. And each of these secrets has the potential to greatly alter, if not ruin, someone else’s life. This book tells the story of three generations of a family, and is narrated by different members of that family. Sarah and Sam are adult children of Veronica; they are twins who both have blended families. Ruby is Sarah’s twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter, who is newly engaged to her boyfriend and wants to get married at Veronica’s summer home on Cape Cod. Veronica’s house, the summer place in the book’s title, takes a few short turns at narrating the story and is definitely my favorite narrator.
Sarah is busy with her job, raising her family in the city, and trying to return to her pre-pandemic life. She finds herself increasingly concerned about her husband Eli, who has been atypically distant towards her and their children. Sam is recovering from a devastating loss, and raising a young child who is also grieving the same loss. Their mother Veronica has grudgingly come to realize her dreams of having her children and grandchildren come to stay in the Cape house for the summer are not going to materialize. She makes plans to put the house on the market, and makes some startling, unpleasant discoveries at the same time.
Most of the novel is moved forward by the development of each character’s secret, and Weiner does a great job of explaining the characters’ histories, interactions, and how each secret began and what the implications are if the secret is uncovered. As readers, we do not know all of the secrets right away, and are making discoveries as the novel progresses. The story is great, and Weiner perfectly describes the little things in a relationship or marriage that eventually become big things, especially after the forced closeness of the pandemic. Some of the secrets just did not seem as weighty to me as they did to their characters, and the story seemed to get a little weighed down by the importance and drama around the secrets.
All told, this is a great summer read and is classic Jennifer Weiner. I loved some of the history of families summering on the Cape, and reading about the core differences between both the physical homes and the demographics of the owners. Some of this history was eye-opening for me; I was not aware of the anti-Semtic history of Cape Cod in the mid- to late-1900s, or the “turf wars” that developed when homeowners attempted to police who could and could not swim in the ocean in front of their homes. This book is enjoyable and engaging, and a perfect book to read by the pool or, ideally, on a Cape Cod beach.
