The Perfect Couple: Spoilers Plot Summary and Character List

The Perfect Couple: Spoilers Plot Summary and Character List will help you get the most out of the NEW Netflix Adaptation of The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand. There’s a lot going on in this story about a shocking murder at an upscale Nantucket wedding. Let’s discuss the book and the adaptation!

What’s in The Perfect Couple: Spoilers Plot Summary and Character List?

A Character List for the book (which also explains what seem to be some small character changes between the book and the Netflix series).

DOWNLOAD my character list here for FREE so you can consult it while you watch!

A Plot Summary of The Perfect Couple (book)

Spoilers for the Ending of The Perfect Couple (book)

Analysis of The Perfect Couple book vs series

The Perfect Couple: Main Character List

If you’ve read The Perfect Couple you might feel a bit confused watching the Netflix series, as there have been some character additions and subtractions, plus a few name changes!

• Ed Kapenash: police chief (Dan Carter in the Netflix series)
• Benjamin “Benji” Winbury: the groom
• Celeste Otis : the bride (Amelia Sacks in the Netflix series)
• Merritt Monaco: wedding guest and maid of honor
• Greer Garrison Winbury: mother of the groom
• Tag Winbury: father of the groom
• Thomas Winbury: groom’s older brother 
• Abigail “Abby” Winbury: pregnant wife of Thomas, the groom’s brother 
• Will Winbury: NEW character in the Netflix series, a younger third Winbury brother
• Bruce and Karen Otis: the bride’s parents (Bruce and Karen Sacks in the series)
• Shooter Uxley: best man (Shooter Dival in the series)
• Chloe: the police chief’s daughter
• Nick “The Greek”: police officer (Nikki Henry in the series)
• Featherleigh Dale: sister of Tag’s best friend (Isabel Nallet in the series)
• Roger Pelton: the wedding planner
• Elida: the Winburys’ housekeeper (Gosia in the series)

Download my The Perfect Couple character list here for free!

The Perfect Couple: Plot Summary (book)

The Perfect Couple (book) has a past/present format. The present-day narrative takes place in early July 2018, while the past narrative takes place 1-2 years earlier, in 2016 and 2017.

Present Day (morning of the wedding)

The Nantucket police chief gets a call about a drowning. The victim is Merritt Monaco, on the island to attend a wedding. The best man is also missing.

Present (day before the wedding)

The parents of the bride arrive on Nantucket and are picked up by Greer Garrison Winbury, a popular author and the mother of the groom.

Wedding planner’s police interview

At 5:45 AM Roger, the wedding planner, arrived to check the rentals. He heard screaming at the beach and found Celeste (the bride-to-be) trying to pull someone out of the water. He called 911 and the paramedics came.

Abigail Freeman Winbury (groom’s sister in law) police interview:

• Abby only recently met the victim at the bride’s bachelorette weekend. Celeste is the assistant Director of the Bronx Zoo and Merritt (the maid of honor) worked in PR at the zoo.
• Abby saw Celeste and Merritt in the Rose Garden late the night before. Merritt was crying, and Celeste was comforting her.
• The police ask Abby about a kayak on the beach, but she said it belonged to Tag (the groom’s father) and he doesn’t let anyone else borrow it.

One month before the wedding:

Merritt, Celeste and Abby arrive from NYC for the bachelorette weekend. Merritt makes a pass at Tag. When Greer can’t attend a charity event the next night she suggests that he invite one of the bachelorette party girls and Merritt accepts.

Morning of the wedding

• Someone tells the police chief that Shooter, the best man turned up at the ferry in the morning with his luggage.
• Shooter claims he spent the night with the bartender at a local inn. The chief asked why he brought all his luggage and he seems nervous and doesn’t want him to check his alibi.
• The police chief learns that Shooter at the dock trying to make the ferry but missed it.

Day Before the Wedding

• Greer gets an email from her editor that her new publisher has rejected her manuscript and want it rewritten completely.
• Greer on the lookout for a silver ring that she assumes her husband bought for his mistress. But
• Greer finds Merritt sobbing in the laundry room and notices a silver ring on her thumb.

Two years before the Wedding

• Celeste and Benji are going out on their first date.
• Merritt is excited she is dating a bartender after being involved in a messy affair with  married man.

Day of the Wedding: Greer Winbury police interview:

• Greer who says that Merritt probably drank too much or took a pill decide to go for a swim and drowned.
• The police deputy says he found no alcohol or prescriptions in Merritt’s cottage.

One-Two Months Before the Wedding

• Tag vows never to see Merritt again. But he does and they start sleeping together. He knows that Merritt is not emotionally stable, but he doesn’t care. 
• He crashes a date with Merritt’s latest hook up and buys her the ring.
• He comes to his senses and breaks up with her, but she tells him she’s pregnant.

Day of the Wedding

• Chloe, the police chief’s daughter and one of the servers at the party, recalls hearing the father of the groom, telling the maid of honor to get an abortion. He offers to write a check.
• The chief of police still suspects Shooter, the best man. His deputy feels Greer, the mother of the groom is being evasive.

A Year Before the Wedding

On a trip with Benji to Nantucket, Celeste meets Beni’s friend Shooter for the first time and is very attracted to him

Morning of the Wedding

• Karen wakes up certain Celeste does not want to go through with the wedding.
• She overhears tag telling Bruce (Celeste’s dad) about his affairs and that he got someone pregnant.
• Tag asks Bruce if he ever strayed and he mentioned someone that he was attracted to and Karen realizes it’s a man.

Day of the Wedding

• The police deputy is going to interview the bride at the hospital. The nurse says Celeste arrived with a bag packed. 
• Celeste doesn’t want to tell Merritt’s secrets, but the deputy tells her that someone saw them talking in the garden.
• Celeste says that Merritt was going through a break up with a married man.. her future father-in-law. 
• The last time Celeste saw Merritt, she was sitting under the wedding tent with Tag, Thomas, and Tag’s friend Featherleigh Dale.
• The police chief asks Celeste why she was on the beach at 5:30 am the morning of her wedding with a packed bag, but she doesn’t want to answer.

A Year Before the Wedding

• Celeste and Benji return to Nantucket. She realizes she loves Shooter.
• Celeste and Shooter spend the day together while Benji is at a golf tournament.
• Then Celeste and Benji go out for a fancy dinner. He proposes and she accepts

Three Days After the Wedding Date

• Gossip is spreading about the murder. Benji’s ex-girlfriend saw the bride-to-be talking to a dark haired man.
• Tag admits to his family that he took Merritt out in the kayak.
• Shooter tells the police that he was at the ferry the morning of the wedding because he and Celeste were planning to runn away together.
• Tag claims he didn’t kill anybody but Greer still knows that tag bought Merritt a ring. She tells tag that he needs to tell her everything. When Tag gets to the part about Merritt being pregnant she knows he is sunk.
• Then Greer notices that her sleeping pills are missing.
• Tag is questioned by the police. He admits the affair and taking Merritt out in the kayak, but he insists he didn’t kill her. He also mentions that when the group was chatting in the tent the night before the wedding, Featherleigh  brought Merritt a glass of water.

A Month Before the Wedding

• Merritt confesses to Celeste that she is sleeping with Tag.
• Shooter comes to Celeste’s apartment and kisses her.

Days of the Wedding

• The police interview Featherleigh, who says she came across Merritt crying in the Rose Garden. They bonded over their affairs with married men. She admits giving Merritt a glass of ice water.
• The police tell Featherleigh that she was seeing coming back to her hotel at 5:15 AM. She denies it.
• Finally, Featherleigh admits she is having an affair with Thomas.
• Greer tells the police chief that she left her pillbox with her sleeping pills in the kitchen, and that Merritt must’ve found them.

One Day Before the Wedding

• Celeste can’t practice her wedding vows without stuttering.
• The night of Merritt’s death Celeste endsup having pizza with Shooter and he asked her to run away with him.

The Day of the Wedding: Thomas Winbury Interview

• The police chief talks to Thomas. He says he he was part of the drinking group, but went to bed at 2 AM. He also says everyone in the family knew about his mother’s pillbox, but she didn’t share the pills with anyone because she said they were too strong..
• He denies having an affair with Featherleigh Dale. But then admits to sleeping with her on and off. He said she was blackmailing him and also stalking him a bit.
• The police chief asks Thomas if he admits to being the one who put the sleeping pill in the water because he thought Featherleigh was going to drink it. He denies it.

Day of the Wedding: The Police Chief Talks to Chloe

Chloe says she was eavesdropping during the party. She heard Tag tell the maid of honor that he would write a check so she could get an abortion.

Spoilers for the Ending of The Perfect Couple (book)

• The police chief thinks that Tag was the one who dropped the sleeping pill in the water while his deputy thinks it was Greer. They decide to rule Merritt’s death an accident.

• Thomas and Benji argue about their father‘s affair. 

• Celeste tells Benji that she will not be marrying him. Ever.

• Someone sends Shooter a photo of him and Celeste at the pizza place the night of the murder.

• Elida, the Winbury’s maid, gives Greer her pillbox and says she found it in Thomas’s trashcan.
• Greet goes up to talk to Thomas but overhears Thomas and Abby are having a fight.
• Abby knows about Thomas’s affair with Featherleigh.
• Greer is completely shocked. She didn’t know about the affair and decides Abby must be the one who saw Featherleigh getting a glass of water and put the sleeping pills in the water, intending to poison Featherleigh
• But Featherleigh was not getting water for herself. She gave the glass of water to Merritt, who then went out in the kayak with Tag.

Who Killed Merritt Monaco in the book version of The Perfect Couple?

• After Merritt drank the water that Abby poisoned and Featherleigh gave her, Merritt and Tag took the kayak out so they could have privacy to talk. Merritt realizes what a terrible person Tag is.

• Tag heads back to the house, leaving Merritt on the beach.

• On her way back up the beach, Merritt cuts her foot on broken glass and goes to rinse it in the ocean.

• As she is rinsing her feet, Merritt sees her silver ring in the surf where she had flung it during her argument with Tag. She wades in to get the ring, but the sleeping pills kick in. She suddenly feels sleepy, falls over, and drowns.

The Perfect Couple: Book vs Netflix Series

This will be a factual comparison of The Perfect Couple book vs the Netflix Series.

I will save my thoughts and opinions on the Netflix adaptation of The Perfect Couple for a separate review. And I do have THOUGHTS.

The Perfect Couple had very few character changes

As mentioned above, many characters got new names and MANY got new personalities, but the series stuck (mostly) to the original characters, with the exception of Will Winbury, the brand new child of Greer and Tag, and Broderick Graham, Greer’s new sketchy brother

Huge Plot Differences Between The Perfect Couple book and the Netflix series

Here are the most major differences (please correct me in comments if you disagree!)

• Greer asking Amelia to sign an NDA
• Greer wanting to release a statement saying that Merritt committed suicide
• Amelia finding the receipt for Tag’s gift to Merritt (ring in the book; bracelet in the show) and giving it to the police
• Tag sleeping with Will’s French tutor (as there was no Will in the book)
• Tag being happy about Merritt’s pregnancy (in the book he offers to pay for an abortion)
• In the book Shooter and Celeste (Amelia) are planning to run off together and their relationship is a secret
• Shooter being rich and lending Greer money
• Amelia finding Merritt’s bracelet on the beach
• Greer’s sketchy brother Broderick (does not exist in the book)
• All the bizarre antics near the end (wedding cake food fight and Tag’s bizarre rambling at the book event)
• Greer being a sex worker and Tag being her former client
• Merritt’s death. As described above, in the book Merritt was poisoned accidentally with one of Greer’s sleeping pills. Abby intended for the spiked water to go to Featherleigh (Isabel) but Featherleigh gave the water to Merritt, who drank it and then drowned accidentally.
• The Winbury trust being Abby’s motive
• Abby being a stone-cold killer who drugs Merritt and then pushes her head under the water. In the book, she’s upset that her husband is cheating on her when she’s pregnant. We also only understand Abby’s actions from Greer’s POV so we don’t know if Abby intended to kill Featherleigh or just knock her out so she doesn’t sleep with Thomas.

What are your thoughts on the adaptation and all these changes?

I’m doing a review that discusses the changes, readers’ reactions to them, and how the story was changed from women’s fiction to a dark family suspense story. But I’d love to know what YOU think!