This is the place for the spoiler discussion of Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner. If you haven’t read the book or don’t want spoilers this is NOT the place for you. Now let’s get to talking!
Plot Summary/Synopsis of Big Summer By Jennifer Weiner
Okay, just a very quick synopsis of what happened. Feel free to skip this if you want to get to the spoilers!
Daphne, an Instagram influencer, just got a new job promoting a plus-sized, sustainable fashion line. Daphne, who has always been self-conscious about her size, is thrilled.
Daphne’s also a little puzzled when she gets invited to be a bridesmaid in the lavish wedding of her frenemy, Drue. But Leela, Daphne’s new boss, urges her to accept the invitation and offers to send her clothes to wear and photograph.
Drue is welcoming to Daphne and they are even sharing a cottage before the wedding. Daphne meets Nick, a guy at the wedding and sleeps with him. The next morning, she sneaks back in the room she shares with Drue and finds Drue dead in the hot tub.
Daphne (with the help of her friend Darshi) starts investigating Drue’s murder and finds out that:
a) Nick isn’t who he seems to be. He’s actually a wedding crasher who disappears after the murder.
b) Drue’s wedding was a sponsored event and Stuart (Drue’s groom-to-be) was in love with someone else. Drue needed access to her trust fund and getting married was a condition. They’d planned the whole thing and Stuart was going to leave her at the altar.
c) Drue was seeing someone else too.
d) Nick is actually the son of Christina, a local woman who was murdered years before, and Robert Cavanaugh, Drue’s father. Robert was a serial philanderer who had multiple kids with different women.
e) Drue was trying to be a better person. She had written a will leaving her money to all her illegitimate half-siblings.
f) Leela, the fashion designer, was the killer. Drue paid Leela to take her SAT’s in high school. When they got caught, Drue blamed Leela, ruining her life.
Daphne confronts Leela. Leela says she’s going to kill Daphne and stage her death as a suicide. But with the help of Nick and her dog, Daphne manages to get away.
Spoilers for Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner
I have a few issues I want to discuss, but feel free to bring up your own.
Here are my big three:
1. The murder.
Were you as surprised as I was that this book, with its beachy cover, had a murder? Given the prologue, maybe I should have been expecting something dark to happen but when bride-to-be Drue ended up dead in a hot tub, I screamed, scaring my entire family.
Given the fact that I understood the significance of the prologue (which we will discuss below) you’d think I might have been expecting a murder. I didn’t. It REALLY surprised me. Were you surprised? Did you think the book should have made Daphne more of a suspect? Nick was also ruled out pretty quickly.
2. The murderer: who killed Drue?
Did you guess that the murderer was Leela??? Leela, the super-hip, seemingly wonderful, millennial designer of sustainable, plus-sized clothing who has hired Daphne to be an Instagram influencer for her fashion line, murdered Drue? Leela held a grudge against Drue for years. WHY? Because Leela helped Drue cheat on her SAT back in high school and, when they got caught, Drue threw Leela under the bus and ruined her life.
Did you find Leela’s motivation credible? I’m not so sure I did, but I was definitely surprised.
I have a rule in mysteries and that is that the murderer can’t be a totally random person who played little to no role in the book. And I have to give Jennifer Weiner props for setting all this up and completely fooling me. Did I think it was credible that Leela would have waited and planned ALL these years to murder Drue? Mmmm .. maybe.
What happened to Leena all those years ago was terrible, but the fact that her entire fashion designer persona (and fashion line) was invented as a secret identity that would allow her to murdering Drue? That was super-extra of her.
Leela certainly can hold a grudge – I’m a grudge-holder myself lol. I still enjoyed being surprised. I did not suspect Leela at all.
3. Did Drue Really Change?
I’m not saying Drue (or anyone) deserved to die, but part of the book’s theme seems to be about whether people can change. Drue had been pretty awful to Daphne growing up. Had she changed?
Ummm… her entire wedding was a sham to get access to her trust fund. Tell me what you thought about that! (Taylor, you made a good point about that in comments!)
Let’s Also Discuss the Prologue! What happened to Aidan and Christina?
Were you confused by it and how the story of Christina’s murder and her surviving son Aiden played into this story? Nick was Aidan and he was actually Drue’s half-sibling.
Did you know that the murder of “Christina” in the prologue is based on a real Cape Cod murder case from 2002?
As someone who’s been visiting Cape Cape for years and also someone who listens to true crime podcasts, I realized right away that “Christina” the mother described in the prologue had to be based on the Christa Worthington case. If you’re not familiar with the case, here’s a run-down of the case from ABC News. If you like true crime podcasts, I recommend A Killing on the Cape, which covers the case.
Join Our Discussion of Big Summer!
OKAY TALK TO ME IN COMMENTS. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE BOOK, THE MURDER, THE KILLER? I will respond to all comments so if you want to be notified so we can chat, please click the small envelope icon just above the comment box.
If you want to read my review of Big Summer, you can find it here!
Do you love other books with big twists? Check these out!
The Whisper Network by Chandler Baker (with marked spoilers)
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (with marked spoilers)
The Wife Between Us by Sarah Pekkanen and Greer Hendricks (with marked spoilers)
You Are Not Alone by Sarah Pekkanen and Green Hendricks (with marked spoilers)
The Wife Stalker – review and The Wife Stalker by Liv Constantine SPOILER review
Despite that prologue, I did not see that twist coming *at all.* Shocker. And I didn’t suspect Leela until it was practically spelled out for me. LOL
I’m not really a fan of the whole “plucky heroine solves murder” trope, but I did enjoy learning more about Drue’s background and all the layers to her. I liked that Weiner showed her flaws (and goodness knows she was flawed), but also her self-awareness.
Same – I literally scared my family by yelling “OMG” when I got to the dead body. And I understood the prologue so I should have been prepared! I enjoyed this overall!
I am, of course, reading your spoiler review lol
I kind of wish I didn’t though because I ALWAYS figure out the mystery/killer/twist and I wonder if I would have here.
Karen @ For What It’s Worth
Haha I am glad you are reading it. This one threw me and it was really hard for me to accept the ending.
Leela was only a surprise to me when I decided it couldn’t have been Drue’s mother. There wasn’t anyone else left. I thought the prologue was basically meaningless.
Ooh, you’re good! And I agree that the prologue didn’t do much except explain Aidan’s backstory and confuse a lot of people. I do think that a lot of possibilities for suspense (and more suspects) were overlooked.
Who killed Aiden’s mother from the Prologue? Ms Weiner did not come full circle.
That is true. Aidan/Nick talks about a guy they thought was a suspect, but I think her murder was unsolved. I do wish that Nick’s mother’s case had been more integrated into the story.
So who was the father of Daphne”s son? It started out as a good story. Was Nick the dad, or did all of this happen post child? Too wacked to follow.
It did get pretty crazy. You mean who was the father of Christina’s son? Robert Cavanaugh, Dru’s father. Dru and Aiden/Nick (Christina’s son) are half-siblings.
One thing I never was able to understand that I can’t get passed is Daphne’s lightbulb moment when they couldn’t find Nick at first but then suddenly knew he would be hiding in that random room/closet in the house. How did that happen? Did they explain or hint at this at I totally missed it? It felt so random
I agree – I haven’t read the book in a year but I feel like it did seem random. Was it some sort of callback to his mother’s murder or something? When I have a chance I will try to pull the book out and see.
I don’t think so because she didn’t know about his mother’s murder yet! It felt like the biggest aha moment at that point in the book so far – but without any explanation! Still driving me crazy!! Let me know if you happen to find out. 🙂 Thank you!
You’re right – I went back to look. Out of absolutely nowhere she suddenly realizes where Nick is hiding and goes right to a door in the house where she and Drue are staying, a door I don’t remember anyone mentioning, and there he is. She does have her lightbulb moment while going over their night together, so all I can think of is that when Daphne meets Nick, he tells her that when they were kids, Drue used to lock him in a supply closet. But that doesn’t really make sense either. Did she think Drue locked him in a closet?
Okay I think you just cracked the case! 🧐 that has to be it. Thank you!!!
I wish it made more sense but it’s all I’ve got. If anyone else has a theory I’d love to hear it!
When they’re in the hot tub and talking about the size of the house, they say “you could hide a family of 4 in the house and no one would know,” because it’s so big. She realized he was hiding right under their noses.
Great catch!!
Who murdered Drue? PLEASE. THANK YOU.
Hi Linda! Leela (the clothing designer) murdered Drue. Back in high school, Leela helped Drue cheat. When they got caught, Drue threw Leela under the bus (and her rich family protected her) while Leela’s life was ruined. Leela had been waiting to get revenge for years!
Wait, why does faking a wedding to access money that belongs you, but is being withheld from you for a sexist and archaic reason, make you a bad person? As someone who had a friend like Drue, I appreciated that she was trying to be a better person and was making such an effort with someone she had wrongs a long time ago.
Ha – fair point! And despite her crappy behavior as a teenager, she did seem to be trying to make amends.
I haven’t read the book in quite a while but wasn’t Drue also lying to her family and friends about the wedding being real, and scamming brands out of giving her free stuff? Two wrongs don’t make a right and all?
However 1) the brands were sort of getting what they paid for and 2) the killer was one of the people being scammed out of free swag so she can hardly complain. And if I am wrong about this wedding scamming: Drue, I sincerely apologize to you.
I just read the book a few years later and found this page, and I have to just say a few things about Leela:
First of all, I feel like the author didn’t drop nearly enough breadcrumbs to justify Daphne’s big aha moment that Leela was the killer. All we knew of her at this point was that she was a sweet, talented designer who maybe had some mean girl experiences in school. Nothing that would make Daphne suddenly need to see Drue’s class photo to confirm a hunch that Leela was the girl who took the SATs.
Second, Leela didn’t just find somebody to make clothes on her behalf. The clothes she gives Daphne are like the most amazing clothes ever. Each piece fits Daphne better than anything in her wildest dreams. Who is this hidden designer and why don’t they have a thriving career of their own?
But this is what bothered me most of all: Why would Leela even want to connect with Daphne in the first place? She already had her plan. She’d hired the hit man to poison Drue’s drink. The police would obviously identify suspects at the wedding. Leela was going to be miles away, under an assumed identity, with no connection to anyone at the wedding. Wouldn’t her partnership with Daphne only create a connection that could potentially link her in some way to the wedding? It seems like Leela would have absolutely nothing to gain and everything to loose from involving Daphne at all, right?
Hi-
Those are really great points regarding Leela and I am glad you took the time to make them. I agree with you on the set-up. If, at the end of a mystery, you need to spend a ton of time explaining why the guilty person did it, then you didn’t properly set things up!
Yes, and especially if the elaborate explanation doesn’t even make sense. Leela said she built up her whole career as part of a plan to get back at Drue. But the clothes business had nothing to do with how she actually got her revenge. She just found some hit man on the dark web! Jennifer Weiner strikes me as a smart writer and I don’t understand how she and her editors let this book go to press without realizing that the explanation for the whole story made no sense!
Hi book lovers!
Overall the book is too descriptive and sometimes I had to force myself to read it.
So there are some things in the book that don’t make sense to me:
1) Drue had a brother… wouldn’t it mean that Emma and Alex his half siblings too?
2) The purpose of the fake wedding. When Daphne met Corine And Stuart at the hospital Stuart told her that Drue and him got married 6 months ago and wouldn’t it meanthat Drue already got access to the trust fund? So it looks like the only purpose of the “wedding” was to get some money by collaborating with different brands, designers etc and not to get access to the trust.
Also I was able to guess some plot twists. For example I kinda knew that Drue was gonna get killed. After she had the argument with her dad Daphne came to her room and when she left she saw a stranger at the door. I kinda figured that something was gonna happen to Drue and she would probably get killed by the stranger Daphne saw.
I was thinking that Lela could be the killer because at the very end she called Drue asking if she needs some clothes for the funeral. which made me think that she would wanna kill Drue to give her clothing brand more exposure…