Bad Summer People

Yes, it’s only October. But my money is on Bad Summer People as the best beach book of the summer of 2023. Set in Salcombe, a made-up community on Fire Island—not the like the gay Pines, more the reclusive and ritzy Saltaire—this book, in the great literary tradition of Peyton Place, has it all: adultery, fashion, tons of gossip, backbiting, lying, hot sex with the tennis pro, tasteful plastic surgery, alcoholism, and even a corpse. Plus the sort of casual racism and classism liberal one-percenters indulge in. It opens with a prologue, set at the end of August, in which a body is discovered face down off the boardwalk. The book then backs up to late June, as the all-white residents arrive from the Upper East side and Scarsdale for the start of a new season. From there we follow the tumultuous summer in chronological order, moving quite handily among a group of narrators, from the above-mentioned Stanford tennis coach to the Filipino nanny to the gay Yale student/bartender and many more. At the gravitational center of the book are Jen Weinstein and Lauren Parker, the “it moms” who married into Salcombe—their husbands are best friends—and oversee the social action. Not another word from me, lest I spoil any of the fun, except to say the identities of both the victim and the murderer pack quite the punch. This book really hits the sweet spot for popular fiction and will appeal to a broad swathe of readers.