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Release date: May 5, 2020

Publisher: Atria

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Blurb:

Six years after the fight that ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shocked when Drue Cavanaugh walks back into her life, looking as lovely and successful as ever, with a massive favor to ask. Daphne hasn’t spoken one word to Drue in all this time—she doesn’t even hate-follow her ex-best friend on social media—so when Drue asks if she will be her maid-of-honor at the society wedding of the summer, Daphne is rightfully speechless.

Drue was always the one who had everything—except the ability to hold onto friends. Meanwhile, Daphne’s no longer the same self-effacing sidekick she was back in high school. She’s built a life that she loves, including a growing career as a plus-size Instagram influencer. Letting glamorous, seductive Drue back into her life is risky, but it comes with an invitation to spend a weekend in a waterfront Cape Cod mansion. When Drue begs and pleads and dangles the prospect of cute single guys, Daphne finds herself powerless as ever to resist her friend’s siren song.

A sparkling novel about the complexities of female friendship, the pitfalls of living out loud and online, and the resilience of the human heart, Big Summer is a witty, moving story about family, friendship, and figuring out what matters most.

Review:

Raise your hand if you’re a Jennifer Weiner super fan! I know there are tons of us out there and rightly so, I swear I would read absolutely anything she writes and I would probably love it, even if it’s just a grocery list. She’s just THAT good. Something else impressive about her? She’s able to shake things up and write something new for her and she did an incredible job with it here.

The first half of this one feels like classic JW, you have two female friends with a rocky relationship and you slowly learn about the complexities of said friendship via Daphne’s POV. At about the halfway point things take a sharp turn, (it’s what I alluded to about the author trying something new) and it was unexpected and fantastic and that’s really all I’ll say to steer clear of spoilers. I will say that while there are some heavy topics explored, weight, social media backlash, etc this is still very much a beachy, summery read with depth. It was a great escape for me and per usual I found myself adoring and relating to the characters that the author crafts and loving every single page of this one. Highly recommended by me!

Overall rating: 5/5

Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.