Bad People Summer by Emma Rosenblum was a storyline that kept me turning pages! I couldn't wait to find out what crazy event was going to happen next in the summer beach town of Salcombe on Fire Island. This group of wealthy one uppers were constantly pulling the rug out from one another. The drama this beach town offered was that of secret lovers, affairs, betrayals, murder and above all else tennis! Emma Rosenblum managed to tell several stories within one book without losing its reader. I will say I did NOT see the ending coming! Great easy read, lovely narration overall a great first read for Emma Rosenblum!

I don't know if I've read a book with a more befitting title than Bad Summer People. This is the perfect read for summer, with a veritable Who's Who of unlikable characters. From misfit housewives to wild husbands and a tennis coach, all heck breaks loose while unofficially trapped on an East Coast island in the summer. The lengths these characters will go to in the effort to preserve their lives from their own horrible choices is hilarious. These truly are, Bad, Summer, People. I highly recommend!

I'm very indecisive if I even enjoyed this book or not. There is no character build up what so ever. Leaving characters very flat. The only drama really in this book is affairs, affairs and more affairs. A book being told in almost ten different perspectives you'd think more drama and gossip. The book fell flat for me especially in the end

This book just didn't do it for me, I felt like the characters were all carbon copies of the other one and had no real depth to them. The one outsider was, predictably the main suspect. And the "mystery-thriller" aspect of this book just wasn't that mysterious or thrilling. I did like the narrator, and I felt like the story flowed well, not dragging on. It just never had a real moment that sucked me in and made me want to feel like I HAD to finish listening. Overall it was an okay book, well written, just not my favorite.

Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum is a gripping novel set in a small community on Fire Island. The author does an excellent job of capturing the essence of the town and its inhabitants, painting a vivid picture of the insular nature of the community. While the characters are not particularly likable, they are well-developed and intriguing, making the book a page-turner.
January LaVoy, the brought the characters to life and conveyed the tension and suspense of the story. She drew me in and kept me engaged throughout the book.
Overall, the combination of Rosenblum’s storytelling and LaVoy’s excellent narration, Bad Summer People is a compelling and entertaining audio book that is well worth a listen.

This is a deliciously fun beach read! I loved the seaside setting of this novel, and particularly liked the fact that it was a slightly offbeat location: Fire Island. The small and very interesting community that surrounds the main characters provided a backdrop of gossip and intrigue. The action takes place over the course of a single summer, from the day that the Manhattanites arrive in June to their departure on Labor Day (and a bit beyond, in the epilogue). All of the events—the tennis playing, beach time, and socializing over drinks— lead up to the death of one character…but there is so much cheating, back-stabbing, secret-keeping, and other bad behavior that the reader is left wondering just who finally snapped and just who was killed. There are so many suspects! I found this audiobook very engaging and I highly recommend it as a great summer read for those who enjoy the bad behavior of rich, spoiled people at their summer houses. Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this audiobook.

I have to start by singing the praises of January LaVoy, who narrates this audiobook.

Holy moly, she is a dream narrator! I must have checked the credits at least five times to confirm that she was the only voice telling this story. She made it feel like there was a full cast, and I had no trouble discerning character perspectives. Bravo!

If you're entertained by rich people behaving badly, then this could be your perfect beach read. I would have preferred deeper character development and faster pacing in the plot, so it wasn't a favorite for me. However, I'm sure we're going to see it everywhere this summer!

I feel like I need to go put on my Tennis Whites,croakies and pop my collar to write this review. This has a lot of elements that I LOVE!
Rich People who are lying to each other, trying to hide their dark secrets, crushing on their friends spouses and caring more about who wins the Women's 4.0 doubles tournament that the dead body that turns up on the island they "Summer" on. *Yes I love when books have characters that "Summer". I'm selling this pretty well aren't I?
Some of the downsides to this book is there is a large cast of characters that are pretty tough to distinguish between, I did this on audio, but I would suggest writing down the characters and who they are married to & who they are sleeping with (Yes that was a AND not an OR). Very plain names, all country club ready so hard to remember who was who at times.
The way the whole murder "Went down" was kinda silly , so I guess the ending was an "unforced error"
I also did not enjoy the check of the box characters if you know what I Mean.....totally did not add to the book in anyway....
I would not recommend this book unless you love domestic rich people drama (like I do).
I enjoyed the author's writing and look forward to more books by her. Let's just hope she spends her off season working on that second serve so we don't end up with a Double Fault.
Thank you Netgally and Emma Rosenblum for the opportunity to review this audiobook for an honest review that are my own thoughts.

Welcome to another episode of rich people don’t know what to do with their time and lives so they ended up hooking up with each other’s husbands and tennis coaches. The only bonus in this story was their midlife crisis cost someone their life. So yeah, title is extremely fitting: no embellishment, no sugarcoating. They were just bad summer people.

Everyone took that first ferry to Fire Island to start their summer. Everyone was ready to talk about themselves incessantly and play tennis as of that was the only mean to establish dominance over other during that specific summer. They were in for flings, adultery, and outright lies. Sleuths were back too to nail down not fitting members of community. While I appreciated there was someone to keep everyone on their toes, so summer did not become a reason to forget civility; sometimes you need to remember where to stop.

At the end bad summer people did bad things, but the ones who were sneaky managed to get away with all they had done without a hitch. Because money… so yeah, it will be a good summer read while frying yourself on the beach
Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review this book

This was a lovely book about extremely rich people having a lot of sex and playing tennis. Everyone is terrible and they all pretend to be friends.
It could see this has a TV show or a soap opera. I miss those.
I couldn't relate to any of the characters but that's probably a good thing here. You dont want to be like these people.
I am glad as a poor we are allowed to just hate one another and be open about it.

This was a wonderful debut. Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.

Oh and the narration was perfect. I mean phenomenal.

This would be a perfect summer read! I listened to the audiobook and it was a little hard to follow in the beginning because of all the characters but I loved it as it went on and the twist at the end. It really is full of your typical east coast "bad summer people" who descend upon a shore town only to take over and ruin the summer and its traditions. I loved it. I highly reccomend that if you want a fun beach read, you read this book!

I wasn’t entirely sure what to think when I first start this audiobook. I’m glad I picked it up.

Basically it’s like a racier version of Dirty Dancing but with tennis and more sex…oh and lots of terrible people.

It’s constant drama amongst the pretentious elite, that you’d probably want nothing to do with…it’s like a train wreck that you can’t turn away from. It’s great. Totally enjoyable.

The story is told in multiple POVs. There were a lot of characters in this book, but I didn’t find it hard to keep them all straight.

I was interested in seeing all of the different relationships change as the story progressed.

It was a perfect beach read or end of summer read, full of drama, cheating, lying, stealing and sex.

If they ever make this a movie they’ll have a blast casting it!

Okay so this was giving me thriller vibes based off the synopsis. When I started this one, it began with finding a dead body. I was definitely intrigued enough til around 30%.

I’ll admit keeping track of characters and their names is one of my biggest issues with Books. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes I have to focus really hard. With this one, I had to focus too hard that I lost some of the plot. It wasn’t easy because everyone is kind of a piece of crap and unlikable.

And I don’t mind the rich people behaving badly micro trope. But not a lot happened!! I loved the narrator and that was probably what kept me reading instead of DNF. But this was kind of a let down? More of a drama than a thriller. Not the best, not the worst… just okay.

I thoroughly enjoyed Emma Rosenblum's "Bad Summer People." While I struggled a little with the novel's slow start, I was soon completely absorbed with all of the happenings among the rich and wretched summering on Fire Island. I loved getting each character's insight to all of the various happenings and feeling like an insider on all of the various terrible but totally believable behaviors among the island's visitors. This was a perfect summer read, full of intrigue, trouble, and drama.
So fun!

Thank you to Flatiron books and MacMillan audiobook for the copies of Bad Summer People, the perfect beach vacation, nacho snacking, sip a margarita/spicy bloody Mary, read (just don't let any guacamole get brown...!).
3 star plot, 4 star narration, 3.5 star mostly escapist fun (with some caveats noted below)

What works? The production is great, strong narration from January LaVoy; a good rich people are (messed) up set of stories, and a series of soapy intersecting secrets. This is the kind of audiobook I really enjoy while driving on a warm day, while taking a long spring walk, or heck even while doing spring cleaning. I do have a fascination with rich people vacation stories and all things NYC, Hamptons, and Fire Island vibes. There are deft touches of humor throughout the story as well, the silly absurdity of privileged people problems.

A few notes for readers: There is a #metoo plot point that didn't quite work for me even though I understood how it developed a character and that part of the narrative, I just find it less my thing when a woman is made out to be a possible liar/untrue when we don't have her part of the story in the narrative. But I also feel that this part of the plot is representative of lived lives and that there are lots of perspectives in every story so just hey it didn't quite work for me. The same for a story of a single woman, I wish she had been more empowered but some of her story also did resonate, such as feeling excluded from other women's lives (I wish that had been explored more or that she had a different narrative).


For me, when there are intersecting stories on audiobook it does require a little effort to remember who is who when chapters jump around, it is a bit easier when reading the physical book, this got easier as the stories and characters developed so take your time with the book and audiobook, Emma Rosenblum develops a soapy plot in a fun way but with all soapy dramas it takes time to set the stage (in my experience anyway).

Definitely recommended for fans of books such as The Hunting Wives and similar soapy rich people messy chaos stories.

I rated this one a 4 out 5 stars. The plot was interesting and the book was well written with a cast of the most unlikable characters I have ever encountered in a book. But that’s okay, as I believe that was the writers intent. Why else would you include a book full of Uber privileged wealthy people summering in their vacation homes? Throw in some infidelity, thievery and murder to sweeten the plot. Any of the unsavory characters in this story are capable of committing the murder and can be a suspect in the readers eyes. That being said, the twist still wasn’t too surprising and I was able to figure things out. My only real complaint about this novel was the large number of characters. In the beginning I was struggling to keep everyone straight and would have preferred a smaller well developed cast.

This book is filled with terrible people! I have a hard time liking any of the characters because they are just poor quality humans, but I am intrigued by all the gossip and drama they cause.
I did think this was well written, and it’s a good summer/beach read type. It did keep my attention, and I was able to read through it quickly. It took me about half the book to keep all the characters and their various misdeeds straight!
Overall, I liked it and would read more by this author!

AWESOME! If you are going through White Lotus withdrawal this is for you!

Salcombe, Fire Island - a place where the rich return year after year for the same parties and same tennis tournaments. This year, there is a new tennis pro and he might throw a spanner in the works! Emma Rosenblum does an excellent job of creating plenty of intrigue as she slowly introduces you to the movers and shakers of the island. A good thriller always includes a death at the end and Rosenblum will keep you guessing and totally entranced in this beach town he said/she said. #BadSummerPeople #emmarosenblum

Bad Summer Prople is filled with sexy times, vacation vibes, backstabbing, money, and a mysterious death! Alternating points of view keeps the story moving along. The audiobook was so good I invented chores to keep listening. I loved it!! Such a fun read!

Bad Summer People is one of those books that at first you can't keep anyone straight--who is married to who, who is the lawyer, who is the hedge fund guy--and then after a while it just all falls into place and the characters all reveal their personalities and you realize that you are invested in these people. But, in this case, I would not want any of these people as friends, none of them are wonderful, (spoiler alert) all of them are sleeping with someone other than their spouse, who you think is the murderer (or at least who seems to be the murderer) only to find out you were wrong all the time. If tennis is your game, you will probably LOVE this book, as tennis is almost an active character. If I got anything from this book it is a red flag to be very careful where I would move on Fire Island.