Book Nerds Across America

Goodreads Summary:

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.

Teri’s Review:

I picked up Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner for a summer reading challenge I am participating in. I have seen her books in the stores but just have never picked one up for some reason, and honestly, for the books listed in the month of May for the challenge, this sounded the most interesting, plus I thought it would be great to branch out with my reading a bit.

The book mostly centers around Daphne Berg, her ex-best friend Drue. Daphne is a 20-something overweight Instagram Influencer who becomes somewhat famous when a video of her lashing out at a guy at a bar goes viral. Daphne is fun, is insecure like we all are, especially when her weight is concerned, yet at times she is very accepting of herself and does a great job of putting herself out there on social media and faking it, even when the comments are hurtful. I do however think the writing with Daphne’s character is where I found the most fault in the book. I love the way Weiner celebrates Daphne’s weigh and how it is embraced, I think it is a great encouragement for a lot of readers, however, I also felt she focused on it a bit too much and almost made it what defined Daphne. I just felt that Daphne had so much to offer as a character.

Drue, Daphne’s ex-best friend is your typical spoilt rich bitch, she and Daphne haven’t spoken to each other since the bar fight, mostly because Drue had a large part in it. Drew has burned a lot of bridges with people and has very few friends. She walks back into Daphne’s life and Daphne gives her a second chance.

The first of the book was entertaining, it had a lot of back history between Daphne and Drue, and felt like your typical woman’s fiction or Chick Lit, but about halfway through she shook things up in the most unexpected way. As I said earlier I have never read Jennifer Weiner before so I am not sure if she normally twists so tightly in all er books, but this one moment, this place in the book that totally throws a whole new light on the story kept me reading all night wanting to see how it ended.

Big Summer is entertaining, surprising, funny, and well written and is the perfect book to throw in your bag for a quick read or to add to your list of summer beach reads.