Is this a thriller, a coming of age story or something in-between? Let’s discuss in my post that will include spoilers, a plot summary, and a discussion of the ending of White Ivy by Susie Yang!
Spoilers and Plot Summary for White Ivy
Spoiler Review for Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell
Are you looking for a plot summary or spoilers for Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell? Want to discuss the ending of Invisible Girl? Grab a coffee, pull up a chair, and let’s talk about the book!
Spoilers for Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner
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
Spoiler Discussion for A Good Marriage
Have you read A Good Marriage by Kimberly McCreight and are looking for a plot summary, a synopsis, or spoilers? Then you’ve come to the right place! Come join the Spoiler Discussion for A Good Marriage!
Plot Summary for A Good Marriage
First, let’s do a brief synopsis of the events in The Good Marriage. Obviously there are spoilers ahead. Below that will be the spoiler discussion!
Lizzie, a young lawyer who lives with her boyfriend in Park Slope, Brooklyn, gets a frantic call from her friend Zach. Zach needs legal help as he was arrested for assaulting a police office at the scene of his wife Amanda’s murder.
Amanda was found dead after a neighborhood swingers party, held after a group of parents at a Brooklyn private school all sent their kids to summer camp.
The school records at the school have also been breached and parents blackmailed.
Lizzie goes to Zach and Amanda’s house, which has been broken into. She finds Amanda’s journals and an ovulation test.
At her own home, Lizzie finds a mysterious earring in her boyfriend Sam’s bag.
Lizzie finds out from Amanda’s journals that Amanda had a stalker. This was possibly her father, as she was sexually abused by him.
Maude, the party host, says she was with Zach at the time of the murder.Zach denies sleeping with Maude.
Sam doesn’t know whose earring was in his bag. He has substance abuse issues and memory problems.
Lizzy learns that though Zach was supposedly a successful tech guy, he was actually broke.
Amanda’s father is dead. She killed him years ago after he attacked her best friend Carolyn and tried to molest her.
Zach was the hacker. He was blackmailing many parents at the school (because he needed money) and also blackmailing Lizzie, who had lied to her employer, to be his lawyer.
Who was the killer in A Good Marriage?
Amanda was killed by Kerry, Sarah’s husband, a neighbor who was also obsessed with her and stalking her. Kerry and Sarah were also parents at the school. Amanda thought it was her father stalking her (even though she’d killed him).
Carolyn is, in fact, dead and has been since Amanda’s father killed Carolyn. Then Amanda killed her father. Amanda seems under the delusion that Carolyn is still alive. She has imagined Carolyn’s entire adult life, complete with a job, and has regular imaginary conversations with her.
Sam goes to rehab.
Spoiler Discussion for A Good Marriage
Wow, there was a LOT going on in A Good Marriage. Maybe a little too much?
I did like the Big Little Lies aspect of this book and I found it slightly similar in format (with the investigators’ reports used at the beginning of each chapter) and the whole “neighborhood with dirty little secrets” element.
I think my main issue with this one its I can’t say I liked any of the characters that much, or was very invested in them.
And there was a lot of who doing what to whom when going on. It was a lot: Amanda’s backstory, Zach and Lizzie’s backstory.
Did you think Kerry being the killer kind of came out of nowhere? He wasn’t a very major character.
Talk to me in comments! I want to know what you think! If you want to join the discussion, leave a comment. I will reply to every comment, so if you also want to subscribe to the discussion and be notified of either my replies and other people’s comments, click the arrow next to the little envelope above the comment box and leave your email address.
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Are you looking for other spoiler reviews? Come to my master page of all my spoiler discussions!
Spoiler Review for the Golden Cage
If you love dark revenge stories, this one, about a woman who gave it all up for love only to be traded in for a younger model, might be just the thing. Check out my plot summary and Spoiler Review for The Golden Cage!
The Golden Cage by Camilla Läckberg. Translated by Neil Smith. Published July 7 2002 by Knopf.
Plot Summary of The Golden Cage
Even though The Golden Cage has an alternating past/present format, I’m going to summarize the past and then the present.
THE GOLDEN CAGE: PAST
Faye is actually “Matilda,” and arrived in Stockholm from a small town in 2001. She was leaving behind a tragic past: an abusive father who was sentenced to life in prison for killing Faye’s mother.
Faye reinvents herself in Stockholm and meets Viktor. When he finds out she’s seeing a new guy, Jack, he snoops in her room and finds out about her past. After he confronts her, she kills him by starting a fire when he’s sleeping.
Faye and Jack are inseparable. Both of them are students in business school. Jack’s family was poor and he’s determined to succeed. When Jack and his friend Henrik start a company, Faye is supportive. When they are running out of money, she takes a leave from school and works as a waitress to support them.
The company succeeds. Faye and Jack marry and have a daughter, Julienne. He pressures her to be a stay at home mother and trophy wife.
THE GOLDEN CAGE: PRESENT
Jack has become extremely controlling about everything. Faye is planning his birthday party and decides to invite an old favorite musician of his to perform. Jack finds out, yells at Faye for being so embarrassing and hires an event planner to take over the party.
Faye meets the musician at a movie theater and has sex with him.
Faye finds out she’s pregnant. She doesn’t seem to consider the possibility that the baby is not Jack’s but okay.
Jack says he doesn’t want more children and tells her to terminate the pregnancy. He doesn’t show up at the clinic to pick her up, so Faye calls her female friend Chris to come and get her.
Faye has been monitoring Jack’s internet history and knows he likes porn. But she believes he’s faithful, or wants to believe it.
Faye decides to take Julienne on a trip. But when Julienne gets sick, Faye returns home to find Jack having sex with Ylva, a colleague.
Jack wants a divorce. He and Ylva move in together and share custody of Julienne with Faye. He enforces their prenup, which says that Faye gets nothing beyond child support.
Faye find a place to live and befriends Kerstin, her landlady. She starts a dog walking business to make money.
Faye gets Chris to help her start a beauty business called Revenge – dedicated to women who’ve been betrayed by men.
Faye gets Julienne to help her install spyware on Jack’s computer. She anonymously sends information she finds to a journalist, which derails the IPO that Jack’s company is planning.
Jack is fired. Faye sleeps with him and sends photos to Ylva, who is pregnant. Faye continues to spy on Jack and when she finds naked photos of Julienne on Jack’s computer, she frames him for their daughter’s murder. Then she and her daughter flee to live a new life elsewhere.
Spoiler Discussion for The Golden Cage
So this was a really fun, page-turning revenge story. But it was also one of those books that raised more questions than it answered. Was it the translation? Was it me? Let’s figure this out.
Why did Faye kill Viktor?
He read her diary, in which she must have written about her mother’s death, her father being in prison and her brother’s suicide. And he threatens to tell Jack. She didn’t want her past exposed. But…
What actually happened to Faye’s Mother?
She disappeared and her body was never found. Because of Faye’s father’s history of abuse, it’s assumed that he killed her. But did he? Faye is rather vague on this. Or did Faye’s mother run away and Faye decided to frame him? Or did Faye kill her mother and brother to “save” them, like she (sort of) did with Julienne? Hmmm….
How does Faye manage to create an empire out of dog-walking money?
Yeah, this was a hard one to swallow. I think maybe she should have had a secret stash of money somewhere. And why did she sign a prenup that gave her nothing after years of marriage?
Faye: feminist heroine or psychopathic villain?
Faye grew up in an abusive home, but stays with Jack even though he’s gone from the man of her dreams to extremely controlling (and a probable cheater). When she has proof that he’s cheating on her, she suddenly flips out and begins the revenge plot. In the midst of punishing him, she discovers photos of Julienne on his computer and decides to frame him for Julienne’s murder. This discovery changes the revenge plot to a desire to protect her daughter at all costs.
In addition, Faye murdered Viktor (to protect her secret) and also her landlady Kerstin’s husband (because he’s also abusive and might be let out of his nursing home).
In the end, this all got kind of muddled for me: Faye’s past is terrible and I understand that she wants to put it behind her. But did Viktor really have to die so Faye could be with Jack? Then Jack is so terrible that it’s hard to believe Faye stayed with him.
Goodreads seems to suggest this is the first in a series. Is Faye coming back for more revenge? Is her father getting out of prison and telling us a different story? Will Jack prove his innocence and track them down? Anything seems possible.
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What did you think? Please tell me in comments! If you want to see my reply to your comments or other people’s thoughts, just click the tiny envelope icon above the comment box and add your email.
Spoilers for One by One by Ruth Ware
Do you want to know the ending for One by One by Ruth Ware? Have you read One by One and are looking for spoilers? Check out my plot summary and spoiler discussion below!
Plot Summary of One by One
If you DO NOT want spoilers, just go read my spoiler-free review of One by one instead!
The founders and core staff of Snoop, a music app, head to a remote chalet in the French Alps for a corporate retreat and some skiing.
Snoop characters: co-founders Topher and Eva, accountant Rik, tech guy Elliot, marketer Miranda, lawyer Carl, “head of zen Tiger Blue, plus assistants Ani and Inigo and former employee Liz.
Staff: Erin, the chalet hostess and Danny, the chef
The group gathers at the chalet. Eva spoils the mood by announcing that Snoop has a buyout offer. She wants to take it and Topher is opposed. This immediately splinters the group into factions.
Topher and Eva each have 30 percent of voting shares, Elliot and Rik 19 percent each, and Liz 2 percent, making Liv the tiebreaker on the decision.
Putting tensions aside, the group decides to go skiing even though bad weather is coming. They get separated on the slopes. Eva doesn’t make it back to the chalet.
The storm causes an avalanche and the rest of the group is trapped in the chalet without power or phone service.
Elliot realizes that the Snoop app can track Eva and they locate her phone signal … at the bottom of a cliff. If this is the case, she is most certainly dead. They try to contact the police.
Elliott then turns up dead in his room, his computer destroyed.
Danny and Erin are completely freaked out as they realize Eva’s death might not have been an accident. They talk to Ani, the person who last saw Eva alive, skiing in the blizzard in her bright red jacket. They are hoping to get clues as to what happened to her.
Ani turns up dead the next morning, smothered with a pillow as she slept.
Topher, who had thought Erin looked familiar, realizes she is actually Daphne, the sister of a former classmate of his who died in an avalanche. Daphne’s brother and her boyfriend died in the tragedy, but she survived.
Everyone left alive (except Liz and Erin, who are each injured) skies off to get help.
Erin realizes that Liz is the killer. Liz pretended to take the ski lift down to the bottom of the mountain right before Eva disappeared. Actually, she hid and waited for Eva and pushed her off a cliff. She took off her frumpy oversized ski jacket under which she had a red jacket just like Eva’s. Then she skied down so that the others thought she was Eva (it was a blizzard!)
Liz then had to kill Elliot because he was using the Snoop app to track the person he thought killed Eva. She killed Ani because she was convinced that Ani figured out she was the killer.
Erin tries to use Elliot’s phone to text for help. Liz has figured out that Erin knows she is the killer, so as Erin waits for help to come, she gets Liz to tell her about the murders. Liz murdered Eva because Eva took her out with a potential investor who tried to assault Liz. Eva know that Liz accidentally pushed him to his death, and blackmailing her.
Liz drugs Erin and texts Danny claiming that Erin is actually the killer. Erin pretends to be drugged, then sneaks out and skis off, in spite of the fact that she has a badly sprained ankle. Liz follows her as they race toward the village but Liz, less familiar with the terrain, crashes and dies.
Topher learns that Eva had a video of Liz murdering the potential investor.
The buyout deal is withdrawn and Snoop goes bankrupt.
Spoiler Discussion for One by One by Ruth Ware
Whoa – that was quite the ride!
Did you guess the killer was Liz? I always thought Liz did it – I had my eye on her from the beginning, as she was so mousy and timid. The other person on my list was Erin. I thought she might have been getting revenge for her brother and boyfriend’s deaths (but that was wrong!)
I was super excited for the cat and mouse game between Liz and Erin. That was pretty suspenseful, as well as the scene when Erin is skiing on a broken ankle, knowing that her life depends on getting to the bottom of the hill in one piece.
The sexual assault and Liz being a murderer and Eva being a blackmailer felt like a lot to me – it felt a little info-dumpy. But I still found this super-suspenseful and fun – I could not put it down!
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