Spoilers and Discussion Post for Every Vow You Break

Have you read Every Vow You Break by Peter Swanson and are looking for spoilers? Want to discuss the ending of the book? Need a plot summary? You are in the right place. Here’s my Spoilers and Discussion Post for Every Vow You Break by Peter Swanson!

Table of Contents for This Post:

Plot Summary for Every Vow You Break

The Ending of Every Vow You Break

Spoiler Discussion

Book Club Questions for Every Vow You Break

Plot Summary of Every Vow You Break by Peter Swanson

Right her before her wedding, Madeleine spots a guy she’s met before. She nervously avoids him, then gets an email from him asking her to call her wedding off and meet up with him. She emails back and says no.

Abigail is at her bachelorette party and meets a guy. They discuss her fiancé, Bruce. Abigail met Bruce in a NY coffee shop and told him about her parents’ financial troubles. He offered to pay her student loans and says he fell in love with her at first sight. Before long, they are engaged. 

Abigail and the guy she just met (guy #2) agree to use made up names: hers is Madeleine and his is Scottie. She decides to have one last fling with Scottie before marrying Bruce.

Just to review: “Madeleine” is actually Abigail and her hook-up is “Scottie.” But Abigail is marrying Bruce.

Abigail and Bruce get married. He planned the surprise honeymoon, which is on an island off Maine. It has luxury accommodations but no cell service or internet. Bruce is an investor in the resort.

When “Scottie” shows up on the island, Abigail is horrified. She finds tells him he was just a fling and asks him to leave her alone. He says they had a connection and he’ll prove it to her- she has to sleep with him one more time.

A panicked Abigail uses the resort emergency phone to call her best friend Zoe and ask her to research “Scottie.”

Another woman honeymooning on the island, Jill, tells Abigail she also just ran into a man she had a fling with.

Zoe finds out Scottie’s name is really Eric and that his wife, Madeleine, drowned in their honeymoon.

Well, that is a bit weird.

Abigail tries to salvage the situation by telling Bruce she finds Eric creepy. She adds that thinks she saw him at her bachelorette party. Maybe he’s stalking her.

Abigail goes to meet Jill, but Jill doesn’t show up. Late that night, Abigail spots Jill, bleeding and hiding in the bushes outside her room. Horrfied, she insists that Bruce call for help, but the resort says that she must be mistaken: Jill and her husband have already left the island.

Abigail tells Bruce she wants to search the island for Jill and then leave. She runs into Eric who says he also saw Jill last night.

Bruce tells her they can’t get a flight out until the next morning and they argue.

Spoilers for the ending of Every Vow You Break by Peter Swanson

Abigail runs into Eric, who confides that Bruce paid him to meet Abigail at the bachelorette party and tempt her into cheating. Eric apologizes for this.

Abigail is freaked out and tells the resort she wants to leave immediately. The resort arranges a plane for her. Eric says he’s coming with on the plane with her (and Bruce) to protect Abigail. Eric claims Jill was thrown out of the plane when she was trying to flee the island.

What??

It turns out that all the guys are in this together. Abigail is drugged and wakes up next to Jill. Abigail tells Jill she thinks the guys are all playing a game and will kill them.

The men drug the two women again and set up a mock trial for them.

Things get out of hand and Alex kills Jill with a rock. The other men seem horrified by this and, in the confusion, Abigail runs. She finds some food and hides in the closet of her cabin at the resort.

Bruce comes back to the room and she waits until he falls asleep, then stabs him. She steals a kayak and a gun and tries to escape but Eric finds her. She shoots him and gets the kayak in the water. After paddling all night, she finally reaches shore, where she calls 911.

The Ending of Every Vow You Break Explained

The men were part of some sort of fidelity cult that lured cheating women to the island to punish them and …. yeah, this was a weird one for me.

I mean, I don’t believe in cheating, but proposing to someone you just met, then hiring someone to try to trap them into cheating, then going ahead with the wedding so you can then punish and kill them is … weird. And way too much work. It’s like ten wrongs don’t make a right. Or something to that effect.

Spoiler Discussion for Every Vow You Break by Peter Swanson

Abigail was a great character and I liked her. Yes, she had a whirlwind romance, got engaged, cheated on her fiancé, and then decided to get married. Hey, no one is perfect!

I thought this book would be focused on the stalker trying to ruin Abigail’s life, but I was completely wrong.

I was glad that the book had some surprises up its sleeve, and I thought the twist that Bruce had hired Eric to test Abigail’s loyalty was interesting.

But where the book lost me was the whole “fidelity cult,” which seemed really out-there to me. I did notice the absence of women on the island right away, and I wonder if other female readers did too.

Book Club Discussion Questions for Every Vow You Break

Does your book club need some kick-off discussion questions? Here are some suggestions. Feel free to add more in the comments!

1. Discuss the themes of marriage, vows, and fidelity in the story.
2. Discuss the role that gender stereotypes play in the book. How do the characters reinforce or break out of traditional stereotypes?
3. What part does the book’s setting play in the story?
4. How /where does Every Vow You Break fit into the thriller genre? Is it a modern gothic? A domestic thriller? How does it fit into/ the new subgenre of female-centric/feminist domestic thrillers that have become more popular in the last ten years?
5. In their review, The New York Times points out that Every Vow You Break has parallels to fantasy-horror books like Rosemary’s Baby, a 1968 book that some have argued reflected cultural anxieties of the time over feminism and women’s rights. Do you think the horror elements in Every Vow You Break reflect any cultural anxieties of our time?

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What’s the Best Book by Peter Swanson?

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Want to see my post on Mysteries and Thrillers Set on an Island? Check it out!