Big Summer

What's inside (8 sections)

1. When Drue chose Daphne
2. The bar night and six years of quiet
3. Daphne on her own in New York
4. An invitation you should probably refuse
5. Parties and cracks before the fall
6. Grief and the Cavanaugh tangle
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I picked up Big Summer because I wanted something warm after a run of heavy books, and Jennifer Weiner usually gives me that mix of humor and ache. First published in 2020 by Atria Books, with 368 pages in the first hardcover, this one starts like a friendship story and turns into something darker on Cape Cod. It follows Daphne Berg, a young woman in New York building a life as a plus size influencer, and Drue Cavanaugh, the rich and magnetic friend she has not spoken to in six years.

Short version: Drue asks Daphne to be maid of honor at her society wedding in a waterfront mansion. Daphne says yes against her better judgment. The weekend brings parties and old tension, then Daphne wakes on the wedding morning to find Drue dead in the hot tub by her room. What follows is grief and police questions that reframe everything Daphne thought she knew about Drue.

I finished it in a few sittings. Parts charmed me. One stretch frustrated me enough that I put the book down and paced around my kitchen. Most of it kept me turning pages because Daphne feels like someone you could actually know.

When Drue chose Daphne

Daphne and Drue meet in sixth grade, and Weiner gets that age exactly right. Daphne has won a scholarship place at Lathrop, a private school where most kids have more money and smoother hair. Her parents have pushed for the spot because they see how bright she is. She walks in trying to be invisible and Drue spots her anyway.

Drue is everything Daphne is not in those hallways. Pretty and sure of herself, with a family house on the Cape and a father whose name opens doors. Robert Cavanaugh has money and charm. Drue moves through school as if the rules bend for her, because often they do.

What binds them is not obvious at first. Daphne is funny in a quiet way. She notices things. Drue likes being noticed by someone who is not competing with her. Daphne likes being chosen by the girl everyone else wants near. Their early friendship has sleepovers and long phone calls. It also has small tests. Drue decides where they sit. Drue decides who is in and who is out that week. Daphne goes along because the alternative is eating alone.

Darshi sees it before Daphne does. Darshi is Daphne's other friend, steady and plainspoken, the kind of person who will tell you when you have spinach in your teeth and when your best friend is using you. She warns Daphne that Drue keeps score. Daphne hears her and files it away without acting on it. I recognized that dynamic. When you are twelve and lonely, a warning can sound like jealousy even when it is care.

Food runs through these chapters in a way that tells you about each household. Daphne's father teaches her to eat with curiosity, to try oysters and strong cheese and dishes with names she cannot pronounce. Meals with him feel like play. Her grandmother comes at food from the opposite side, with rules and worry about weight. Drue's world treats food as decoration, pretty plates that no one finishes. Daphne, growing bigger than the other girls, learns early to read a room for judgment before she reads a menu.

School years pass in a blur of loyalty and hurt. Drue can be generous. She lends Daphne dresses that actually fit her generosity with a sharp edge. She defends Daphne once against girls who mock her size, then later repeats a version of the same joke when she wants a laugh. Daphne forgives her every time. She tells herself friendship with someone like Drue costs something.

The bar night and six years of quiet

The break, when it comes, is public. Both women are out of college by then, living in the city orbit, trying to be adults. They meet at a popular Manhattan bar with other people around. Details of who said what matter less than how it lands. Drue humiliates Daphne about her weight in front of others, going for the tender spot she knows best. It is cruel in the precise way only an old friend can manage.

Daphne walks away that night and does not look back. No calls. No replies. She does not even follow Drue online to keep tabs, which in our age is its own kind of discipline. Six years pass.

I thought Weiner handles the silence well. She does not make Daphne noble about it. Daphne nurses the memory. She replays what she should have said. She also builds a life that does not include Drue, which takes effort at first and then becomes habit. When old mutual acquaintances mention Drue's parties or trips, Daphne changes the subject. The wound closes over but stays tender.

This is also where the book sets up its questions about forgiveness. Is it strength to cut someone off, or is it fear? Can you miss a person who treated you badly and still trust your judgment? Daphne does not have clean answers. She tells herself she is done. Part of her keeps a list of what Drue owes her, not money but acknowledgment.

My one gripe here is pacing. The school years get a lot of pages, and some scenes repeat the same point. Drue charms and Daphne yields. I got it the second time. The third and fourth passes slowed me down. Still, the repetition does a job. By the time the bar scene arrives, you feel tired for Daphne in a way that makes her later choice to return understandable and maddening at once.

Daphne on her own in New York

Adult Daphne lives in New York and pieces together work that barely pays. She nannies to cover rent. She posts outfit photos and honest captions about dressing a larger body when most stores stop at a certain size. Slowly, people start to follow her because she looks like them and talks like a friend instead of a catalog.

Leela notices. Leela is a fashion designer starting a plus size line and she hires Daphne to model. This is not a fairy tale contract. The pay is modest. The shoots are long. The clothes sometimes arrive pinned in back because the sample sizes still run small. But Daphne loves it. She stands in good light in clothes made with care and feels seen in a way school never allowed. Her following grows. Sponsors send boxes. She learns to pose and to answer comments with warmth while ignoring the cruel ones.

Her private life is less polished than her grid. Her apartment is small. She leans on Darshi, who still makes time to ask hard questions. Daphne's father remains a soft place, calling to ask what she ate. Her grandmother still worries aloud about health in a way that sounds like criticism. Daphne has learned to ask her own body what it needs, a practice that takes daily work after years of diets and shame.

What I liked here is how workmanlike Daphne's rise feels. No viral miracle. No rich stranger rescuing her. She answers messages late at night. She steams dresses in a tiny bathroom. She says yes to small paid posts that hardly cover the subway fare because they might lead to more. It is unglamorous and true.

If you want constant plot, this middle section may feel slow. I did not mind because Daphne's voice carries it. Yet I wished Weiner had trimmed a few influencer strategy passages about lighting and tags.

An invitation you should probably refuse

Then Drue walks back in. Six years after the bar, she calls and then shows up, still lovely, still polished, with an ask so large it stuns Daphne silent. Will Daphne be maid of honor at her wedding? The society wedding of the summer, waterfront mansion on Cape Cod, guests with names Daphne recognizes from headlines.

Daphne's first answer is no. Of course it is. Darshi says absolutely not, in clearer language. Daphne has built self respect the hard way. Why hand Drue the power to wreck it in a weekend?

Drue pushes. She apologizes in her way, which is florid and a little slippery. She talks about old times. She says Daphne was her truest friend. She dangles cute single guys among the groomsmen. And she offers something practical. Money for Daphne's time, plus photo chances that could help Leela's line get real attention. For a woman counting dollars between nanny shifts, that matters. Daphne strikes a deal with herself as much as with Drue. Go, be professional, leave with the check and maybe a little closure.

I groaned at her yes and I understood it. Curiosity is powerful. So is cash when rent looms. Weiner does not pretend Daphne is purely noble here. Daphne wants to believe Drue has changed. She also wants the weekend she could never afford on her own.

The chapters where Daphne packs capture that push and pull. She tries on dresses. She answers Darshi's worried texts with jokes. She boards the trip telling herself she is armored now.

Cape Cod arrives in full postcard force. Big shingled house near the water. Lawn that looks ironed. Tents and staff setting up for days of events. Drue greets her with tears and a hug that feels real and performative at once. Other bridesmaids are thin and glossy, kind in the distant way of people who have never needed to be warm to get by. Daphne smiles and takes photos and feels twelve again, grateful and off balance.

Parties and cracks before the fall

The night before the wedding is a lavish party, the kind where the champagne never empties and small plates circle without pause. Weiner loves this stuff, and she writes it with a sharp eye. Who stands near the host. Who gets introduced and who gets skipped. What the flowers cost without anyone saying so. Drue, in a departure from her usual fancy tastes, has asked for chicken fingers and fries to be ready late for guests coming home after dancing. It is a sweet touch, human and a little surprising, and Daphne clocks it as the Drue she once loved peeking through the hostess.

Daphne feels out of place until she meets Nick. He is handsome in an easy way, funny, attentive without trying too hard. He says he knew Drue as a kid at sailing camp. They talk about the house and the water and how strange big weddings are. He listens when Daphne talks about her work instead of glancing at her size and then away. For a few hours, the weekend feels like it might be fun after all.

Under the lights, trouble hums. Daphne overhears Drue fighting with her father about money. Robert Cavanaugh sounds strained and on edge. Rumors move around the tent about his business and his infidelity. Lily, Drue's mother, smiles tightly and drinks a little too much and fusses over details no one else cares about. The groom, Stuart, drifts through with the polish of a man used to cameras. He once starred in a dating show built around single women competing for his attention, and he carries that history in his grin. Daphne catches odd moments between Stuart and others that she cannot parse yet.

Late, Daphne comforts Drue after the party noise fades. Drue is shaky and scared in a way that does not match the perfect bride act. Daphne holds her and feels the old pull even as part of her brain flags how Drue only softens when she needs something.

Daphne spends the night with Nick. It is tender and a little drunk and hopeful. She falls asleep thinking maybe the weekend gave her one good thing. She wakes to quiet and an empty bed and a sense that something is off. Then she finds Drue.

Drue is floating dead in the hot tub attached to Daphne's room. Nick is gone. The morning light is too bright. Staff scream. Phones come out. Daphne stands there in borrowed sleep clothes with her mind refusing to order events. I felt sick reading it, not because it is gory but because it is so abrupt after the soft night before.

Police arrive fast. Detective McMichaels asks questions that sound routine and land like accusations. Where were you. When did you last see her. Who else was in your room. Daphne answers as best she can and sounds guilty to her own ears even though she has done nothing. Darshi drives up from an academic conference in Boston when Daphne calls, furious and scared for her friend. The wedding guests cluster and whisper. The tents that looked festive yesterday look ghoulish today.

The investigation narrows quickly toward Emma Vincent, a caterer working the weekend. Police arrest her for Drue's murder. Daphne is relieved and uneasy at once. Relief because an answer means she can breathe. Unease because Emma seems like a small piece in a larger pattern Daphne can sense but not yet name. The wedding, Daphne learns, was elaborately built with sponsors, companies placing products and clothes and drinks in exchange for posts from Drue and Stuart across their platforms. What looked like love on display starts to look like a business plan.

Here's where I part ways a little with the book. The turn from beach party to police procedural is bumpy. Emma's arrest lands fast for a case with this many rich people hovering. If you read a lot of mysteries, you may feel the cops settle too soon.

Grief and the Cavanaugh tangle

Darshi does what good friends do. She brings snacks and blunt questions. She does not let Daphne romanticize Drue now that Drue is gone. She also does not let Daphne blame herself for sleeping through whatever happened outside her door. Together they start pulling threads because Daphne cannot rest until she understands what that last tearful night meant.

They find Nick hiding in another room of the crowded property. He is rattled and defensive. He swears he did not kill Drue. He says he slipped away at dawn because he panicked about being found where he did not belong. He was never truly invited, he admits. He crashed the weekend to get back inside a house that matters to him.

His story comes out in pieces. He grew up in the very house rented for the wedding events. His mother owned it years ago. She was killed when he was small. Relatives took him in, an aunt and her husband who raised him and gave him a different last name. Hearing that Drue would marry near that address stirred something he could not ignore.

Emma's mother adds the next jolt when Darshi and Daphne track her down. Both Nick and Emma, she says, are Robert Cavanaugh's children from brief affairs years ago. Robert's summers left more than gossip. They left people.

Lily's collapse makes bleaker sense in this light. Drue's mother ends up hospitalized after a breakdown. Daphne visits and sees not a villain but a tired woman who spent decades managing appearances while her husband strayed.

Stuart's shine dulls too. Daphne overhears him with a woman he once proposed to on his dating show. The sponsored wedding idea curdles further. Drue faked much of the romance for media attention while the real relationships strained.

Daphne has to decide what to do with all this. Darshi, skeptical to the end, still lands on a decent line when she says everyone deserves justice no matter how badly they behaved. Daphne keeps showing up for Drue after death in a way she could not in life, answering police calls, sitting with Lily, refusing to let the rich family machine smooth the story into something clean.

The closing movement is quieter. Daphne reckons with being the lucky one, a word she once used for Drue. As a kid she thought luck meant money and beauty. As an adult she sees her own luck differently. A father who taught her pleasure in food. Work that lets her be visible. A friend like Darshi who drives through traffic because she called.

I found the ending moving even though I wanted more room for Emma and Nick. Stuart stays thin, more symbol than man. The sponsored wedding reveal stretches belief if you poke it. The last hundred pages tie family threads fast.

Who should read this? If you like Weiner's earlier books about complicated women, especially Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, you will feel at home. If you want a pure cozy mystery or a restrained literary novel about Cape Cod summers, this hybrid may annoy you.

I closed it thinking about friendship more than murder. How early bonds shape what we accept later. How social media lets us curate closeness while avoiding it. How forgiveness can look like staying and can also look like walking away for six years to save yourself. Daphne does not end the summer with tidy lessons. She ends it braver, kinder to her own appetite, clearer about who shows up. That felt like enough, and a little like the summers that change you without asking permission.

FAQ

When was Big Summer published?

Atria Books published it on May 5, 2020 in the United States. The first hardcover runs 368 pages, ISBN 9781501133510.

Is Big Summer part of a series?

No. It is a standalone novel. Daphne Berg's story starts and ends here, though it shares themes with Weiner's other friendship novels.

Who does Daphne lean on after Drue's death?

Her loyal friend Darshi drives from Boston to support her, and she also reconnects with Nick as they untangle the Cavanaugh family secrets.