The Summer Place
by Jennifer Weiner
Publication date 5/10/22
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the middle of winter I was able to escape to Cape Cod by reading an early edition of The Summer Place. I think this may be my favorite Jennifer Weiner book. This book was packed with secrets and most of the chapters left me wondering where this book was going. I liked that the pandemic was part of the plot but not overdone. This complex storyline includes 3 generations and the character development was incredible. I also enjoyed that the story unfolded by different characters in each chapter, I loved the diverse voices especially the beach house!! The pages are filled with humor, forgiveness, courage and strength. Add this to your to be read list you will not be disappointed!!

This review will be posted on my goodreads and Instagram blog.


Thank you to Atria Books for providing me with an ARC thought NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Another winner by Jennifer Weiner. When secrets long buried start to surface after a daughter announces her wedding, will the family be torn apart, or will they stay together?
The Summer Place is a great story about family and the secrets we keep and how they can catch up with you in the end. Great character development and an easy-to-follow plot. The end did get a little crazy, but over all this was a great book.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. I don't know that I would recommend this to anyone. I read the entire book and when I was done I was just so flabbergasted by the way it ended. Just bizarre relationship swapping and................ just bizarre.

Jennifer Weiner is the absolute queen of developing characters that seem like real people and putting them in realistic situations! The Summer Place is a Covid era contemporary fiction story that is set during the summer of 2020 as Sarah and Eli's daughter prepares to get married at the family beach house on Cape Cod. The writing is impeccable, the characters feel real and the story pulls you in and makes you want to keep reading!

This was a good summer read about multi-generational complex family relationships told from different points of view, including oddly enough, the summer house on Cape Cod. I would have liked to see more development of some of the characters like the matriarch. The main characters did get annoying at times, and the house chiming in every now and then felt out of place. I liked it, but didn’t love and felt the ending was a little too neat.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4490506854

I enjoyed this book and the storyline. I liked the idea behind the book about how your past Impacts your future. I wasn’t as engaged in this book at times due to a death in the family. It was very well written.

Not my favorite book, still one of my favorite authors. The story hinges on some extreme coincidences, and while there are many emotionally intense scenes, I didn't feel like the fallout from those emotional choices and family secrets really mattered. I will still read basically anything Jennifer Weiner writes, though.

Thanks to @netgalley and @atriabooks for my gifted copy of The Summer Place, by Jennifer Weiner! This book is out on May 10th, just in time for summer reading season.

In The Summer Place, we meet Ruby, a young woman who just got engaged! And, as the story unfolds, we meet various members of her family as they confront both wedding drama and drama from the past resurfacing.

I had mixed feelings about this book. While I love how Jennifer Weiner tells a story, this wasn’t my favorite book of hers. She truly is a master at weaving a story with lots of different viewpoints, storylines, and even timelines. However, I thought she tried to cram a little too much into this book, and it got difficult to keep things straight from time to time.

If you like a family drama with lots of moving parts, this will be right up your alley!

Jennifer Weiner is an absolute master of the perfect beach read! I was apprehensive to read a novel based on the current COVID era as typically I read to forget about current events. However, this one really works.

Lots of moving parts in this book as it starts and I thought I might need a family tree to remember who was related to whom. Eventually it all sorts itself out. Here are the characters:

Let’s start with Sarah. Sarah is married to Eli and has been happily for 14 years. Suddenly Eli is acting strange and aloof and she is hurt by the change between them…especially since he won’t talk about it. They are getting on each other’s nerves, too – well Eli is getting on Sarah’s nerves – during the lengthy pandemic quarantine. Those flipflops and the sound they make slapping around the house are enough to drive anyone batty. So much so that when a friend from the past resurfaces, she starts to question the road not taken.

Eli, married to Sarah, has a revelation about a relationship he had over 20 years ago and is worried that the repercussions from that relationship that he only became recently aware of, will completely derail his entire family.

Ruby, daughter of Eli, stepdaughter of Sarah – suddenly announced her engagement to boyfriend Gabe, who has been living with Ruby, Eli and Sarah. All is not going well; however, post decision, and even Ruby is questioning whether she wants to marry.

Veronica, aka Ronnie, Sarah’s mother and grandmother to Ruby is 80 and worried about the legacy of her wonderful home on Cape Cod and whether it will still be the draw to bring the family together when she’s gone. Ronnie – a published author of a couple of wildly successful novels when she was young – and who suddenly stopped publishing what she’d written for reasons known only to her – just wants her family to be happy. She is excited for Ruby and Gabe’s wedding at the house because it means the family will gather again.

Sam, Sarah’s twin brother, is a recent widower and taking care of his wife’s son, Connor while grappling with questions about his identity.

Rosa, Gabe’s mother, raised Gabe as a single mom and gave up her dreams of the theater to raise her son in California.

Everyone is gathering at the Cape house for the wedding with all of the characters’ backstories intersecting and creating tension as well as hope, love and relief for all.
A worthy read – such great characters and a plot with many intersecting sub-plots and interdependencies. Highly recommend. This is my third or fourth Jennifer Weiner read and I haven’t been disappointed yet.

I want to begin with my love for Jennifer Weiner and her writing. I believe she does an amazing job with stories and drawing her readers into the lives of her characters. Character development is one of Weiner's strong suits, as she truly delivers strong, three-dimensional characters who have depth and purpose.
"The Summer Place" very loosely connects to Weiner's last novel, "Big Summer." I really loved and identified with "Big Summer" but was a little less enthralled with "The Summer Place." I felt like the character's backstories in "The Summer Place" were so in-depth and detailed that they actually slowed down the story a bit, and kept the plot from moving forward, which also threw off the pacing. Was it still an engaging story? Definitely. However, "The Summer Place" has quite a few characters with extensive backgrounds, and I think there was a little too much of a good thing in this novel. I still LOVE Jennifer Weiner and will excitedly jump at the chance to read her next book.

I’m a big fan of Jennifer Weiner's books, especially for beach reads. This did not disappoint! The storyline was a bit more complicated that her other books and so it took me a bit to get into, but once I did but I appreciated it because it made it more complex and interesting! The family drama and secrets are off the charts. That being said, sometimes I felt like they were almost too off the charts which made it far fetched so that is why I didn’t give it a higher rating.

Thank you to Atria for providing this ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Summer Place is the perfect beach read. It follows an idealistic, multigenerational family impacted by the pandemic. The story shows what can happen when the world changes and people change, as a result. The characters are likable, well developed, flawed and carry secrets that will impact their present and will shape their future. The story line is unexpected and the twists and turns caused me to speed read to learn the ending and resolution. A heart warming story that offers escapism and will leave you with the best book hangover.

This book was amazing! Another spellbinding book by Jennifer Wenier. No one writes characters the way that she does. You get so much info about each person you feel like you are apart of the book itself. It was such a fun and lovely time reading this book.

I loved this story. I haven't read all of Jennifer Weiners books, but the ones I have read I've really enjoyed. This book does not disappoint. There is a lot going on so pay attention! It's family drama at it's best. Perfect spring or summer read.

So, I think this is Jennifer Weiner's idea of a family epic; I like it much better than those long genealogy stories. All of the players in this story tell us about themselves, their hopes and dreams, faults and secrets--so many secrets! This book is one big jigsaw puzzle, but instead of pieces, it is people that all twist and turn and eventually fit together. It is a great beach read...or an anytime read and as we are (hopefully) coming out of the pandemic, we can all remember what it was like to have EVERYone at home ALL the time. My one complaint about the book (and it is quite nitpicky) is I could have skipped the house having a conversation with the reader, it was disconcerting for me and briefly would break the spell of the book. But even with that, once again, Ms. Weiner did not disappoint.

The relationships across three generations of family are explored in this Jennifer Weiner beach book that is sure to make a splash this summer. There are a lot of characters to keep track of and a family tree with birth years included might have been a little helpful. But the story is fast-paced and takes us from NYC to LA to Cape Cod as the Levy-Weinberg-Danhauser clan prepares for a family wedding. We get to examine lost loves, old affairs, dreams chased or relinquished, long-held secrets, the search for one's own identity, and the impact of the pandemic on relationships. With the exception of three brief parts where the Cape Cod house acts as narrator - a little gimicky and unnecessary - overall I really enjoyed the book.

When I received an ARC of #TheSummerPlace from #Netgalley I was uber excited. I love Jennifer Weiner, and have read all of her books.

I rushed through everything that had to be done, got my fuzzy blanket, and curled up on the couch ready to be transported...... Then.... Nothing.....

Is this a bad book? Not at all. Was I engrossed? Nope. In fact, I was disappointed.

The story starts with a family - dad, stepmom, and their daughter Ruby. Ruby came home from college due to the pandemic. She brought her boyfriend. A few months later, they are engaged and decide to get married.

Now for the complications - everyone in this story has a secret - Ruby, her fiiancee, the dad, the stepmom, the Uncle, the grandmother, the fiancees mom.... This books starts with most of the main characters telling their story - this takes up over 25% of the book. Then their stories progress are we get closer to the wedding date.

I appreciate that there were some great things about this book. The relationships were complicated and nuanced. Living in such close proximity during the pandemic rang so true. The wife annoyance with the sound of her husbands flip flops was spot on! I would have ripped them off his feet...lol

However..... yes, here comes the bad.... I didn't LIKE any of the characters. and once you found out what some of them were hiding, you were like "really? that's your big secret?" Yawn. I also though the coincidences were just too much. And the infidelities seemed to be glossed over once they were discovered. I would think that was when the drama would begin...

The writing. Excellent. The details - amazing. But overall: Meh...

I have read numerous books by Jennifer Weiner and "The Summer Place" was just as good as her other books. This book is about a family and the twists and turns and love and heartbreaks that happen to all of them. It is about making the most of your life and learning what you want your life to be. All of the characters touched me. I found myself talking about the book to my my friends and family as I read the book. I would definitely recommend this book!

This book has incredible character development which weaves together a story of family dealing with a post-pandemic world. All of the characters are so expertly crafted along the way, which gives the reader a unique glimpse into the struggles each family member is navigating in present time, while also visiting the past experiences of each character. All of the characters’ lives are woven together throughout this book. There is fear, deception, anxiety, anger, love and grief described in such intricate detail throughout the story that I couldn’t help but want the best of these characters. The setting of this book is truly what makes it a summer reading pleasure! I want to plan my own trip to the Cape.

While the setting and character development are exceptional, I can only give this book 3.5 stars. It was not my favorite of the books by this author, and it is not a fun, light summer read, which is more of what I was expecting from the title.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria books for this digital advanced copy.