Bad Summer People

Every summer, the wealthy and well-connected converge on the fictional Salcombe, Fire Island, where Jen Weinstein and Lauren Parker preside over the tennis courts and beach parties as the reigning queens of the season. Their husbands, Sam and Jason, have summered together since childhood despite a lifetime of grudges and buried secrets, while their single friend Rachel Woolf hopes this will be the summer she finally meets her match.

The novel opens with an eight-year-old boy discovering a body on the beach, then rewinds to trace the chain of infidelity, backstabbing, and long-simmering resentment that got the group there. As the season builds toward its Fourth of July climax, each revelation strips away another layer of these friendships' carefully maintained surface.

Emma Rosenblum's debut novel was named a best book of summer 2023 by Bustle, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, PopSugar, Bloomberg, and Vogue, and has drawn comparisons to Liane Moriarty for its blend of dark comedy and domestic suspense among the moneyed and unhappy.