Ep 717 - Bad Summer People, by Emma Rosenblum

Summary

Overdue Ep 717 – Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum (Aug 25, 2025)

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Overdue, Andrew and Craig dive into Bad Summer People, Emma Rosenblum’s juicy debut novel set in a tight-knit, affluent Fire Island beach community. Their chat explores Rosenblum’s social satire of rich New Yorkers behaving badly during a single summer—complete with affairs, small-town politics, tennis drama, and murder. The hosts dissect both the novel’s gossipy pleasures and its nuanced (and sometimes messy) take on moral ambiguity, the nature of community, and privilege, while touching on Fire Island’s real-world reaction to becoming this novel’s inspiration.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Summer Vibes and Book Setup

• The episode opens with classic Overdue banter about the end of summer and the pressures parents feel around camps and school breaks ([02:42–05:20]).

  • “To see when that time is gonna come... regardless of whether Daddy needs five more minutes for something or not, it’s Henry time.” – Andrew [04:31]

• Bad Summer People is introduced as a “bad people behaving badly book” set in a fictionalized Fire Island town ([05:38–06:09]).

  • “I don't wanna draw equivalency between people who make over-ambitious book lists and the people in this book who are really awful.” – Andrew [05:38]

2. Emma Rosenblum: Media, Satire, and Controversy

• Rosenblum’s background: New Yorker, former executive editor at Elle, and chief content officer at Bustle ([07:47–10:19]).
• Her debut novel emerges from summers spent in Fire Island’s insular, real-life community.
  • On inspiration: “Austin was a very good observer of wealthy people. She was very funny about it.” – Andrew, quoting Rosenblum [08:24]
• Naming controversy: The original draft used real residents’ names, leading to local uproar and gossip ([16:47–18:03]).
  • “Apparently people here are sending around my book.” [17:25]
• The hosts delight in how the novel’s release stirred up the actual community, feeding into a “White Lotus meets Succession” vibe ([15:04–19:21]).

3. Setting: The Small-Town Beach Microcosm

• The fictional Salcombe (a stand-in for Saltaire, Fire Island), a self-contained, car-free, generational enclave ([23:06–24:57]).
• Explores the peculiarities of communities where everyone inherits both houses and social roles.
  • “It's all a bunch of camp friends.” – Andrew [25:01]
• The insularity and lack of anonymity breeds constant surveillance and gossip.

4. Structure and Style: Ensemble Cast & Social Satire

• Book framed as a whodunnit: opens with a dead body, then jumps back in time to build suspense ([26:30–27:51]).
  • “It starts like an episode of a TV crime procedural... and the question is, which of these people's body is it?” – Andrew [26:46]
• Multi-POV chapters spotlight various perspectives: the “main four” (Lauren, Jason, Sam, Jen), the tennis pro Robert, the single party-planner Rachel, the elderly Susan, and the town gay kid Micah ([30:12–38:57]).
• The novel’s strength: Each character is tightly drawn, distinct, and immediately recognizable.
  • “Even if they're not deep, you get a really good sense... who all these people are.” – Andrew [40:22]

5. The Characters & Their Web of Secrets

• Lauren: Superficial, married to Jason, having an affair with Robert.
• Jason: Disliked by many, desperate, and cheating with Jen.
• Jen: Charismatic outsider, married to Sam, cheating with half the cast.
• Sam: Perceived as a “good guy,” embroiled in a workplace MeToo accusation (handled with messy ambiguity).
• Robert: Outsider tennis pro, social climber, skimming from the club, feeling used ([33:01–35:38]).
• Rachel: Perennial gossip, emotionally stuck, carries secrets.
• Susan: Elder busybody, brings intergenerational perspective.
• Micah: Young gay man, semi-outsider, “the most pure” character; by the end, he chooses to leave the toxic cycle ([38:14, 58:09]).

6. Themes & Satire

• The novel is a pointed social satire about insular privilege, hypocrisy, and “rich people problems” ([29:07–29:18]).
  • “Nobody in this book has two real problems to rub together.” – Andrew [41:52]
• It skewers the genre’s classics—community as pressure cooker, where “too many people know about too much mess” ([53:29]).
• Issues spotlit include infidelity, in-group politics, self-delusion, class fragility, and a controversial take on MeToo backlash ([48:02–51:01]).

7. Plot Mechanics and The “Bad Summer People” Arc

• The summer builds toward an annual tennis tournament, with social climbing and secrets at full boil.
• Multiple affairs threaten to burst into the open; blackmail, theft, and manipulation follow ([44:38–45:47]).
  • “Lauren... super happy to start sleeping with Robert the tennis pro almost the minute they meet.” [45:04]
• Sam’s workplace scandal is not as it seems—the MeToo accusation is manufactured by his male boss, a narrative choice the hosts discuss as “having its cake and eating it too” ([48:02–50:18]).
• The novel crescendos in classic genre fashion: a “pressure cooker” storm, misdirection around who dies, and all secrets converging at the season’s end ferry ([53:20–55:00]).

8. Murder & Aftermath: Who Dies and Who Gets Away

• The murder: Multiple POVs, misdirection, and not everyone makes it out alive—the dead character’s identity is concealed until late in the novel.
  • “You do not expect the one who dies to have been the one who dies.” – Andrew [54:17]
• Most of the main cast is implicated, none are punished in any meaningful sense ([54:57–57:47]).
  • “At the end... they all get away with it.” – Andrew [54:57]
  • “Nobody’s going to jail. Nobody’s getting what in a perfectly just universe they would deserve to get.” [57:47]
• The community is fractured; some leave, some are permanently ostracized, some “fail upward.”

9. Critical Reflections & Goodreads Reactions

• The hosts review Goodreads' three-star comments: readers' struggle with the unlikeable cast, busy POV-jumping, and the emotional tones of affluent nihilism vs. schadenfreude ([41:02–44:25]).
  • “I'm a big fan of rich people behaving badly books, and we get that in spades here.” – Audrey, Goodreads [42:31]
  • “Everyone is so deeply unlikable. I found myself repeatedly enraged.” – Ranjini, Goodreads [43:44]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It's a book I found on some beach read list... bad, bad rich people in a little Fire Island rich people beach town. And they are all different kinds of bad.” – Andrew [05:55]
• “I would like to do something creative. What if I took this little beach town and gave it a White Lotus slash Succession treatment?” – Craig [15:04]
• “You could write a movie about just people being mad about this book. It'll probably do just fine.” – Andrew [20:15]
• “The thing that this book does well is... you get a really good sense who all these people are, and it makes them easy to keep track of.” – Andrew [40:22]
• “Nobody gets punished... that's kind of the point. Like, even in Succession... bad things happen, but not as bad as dying.” – Craig [57:20]
• “Micah is the one person who... decides, ‘I'm not going back next summer. I'm gonna take a break from this island and these people.’” – Andrew [58:09]

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Important Timestamps

• [05:38] — Intro to Bad Summer People; summary of cast and setting
• [07:47–10:19] — Rosenblum’s career and influences
• [16:47–18:03] — Real Fire Island drama over character names
• [23:06–25:01] — Describing the unique Fire Island summer community
• [26:30–27:51] — Prologue: the dead body, framing the novel as a whodunnit
• [30:12–38:57] — Character by character rundown
• [44:38–45:47] — How the secrets and murder plotlines entangle
• [48:02–51:01] — MeToo subplot and the book’s relationship to contemporary issues
• [53:20–55:00] — The novel’s climax: storm and murder revealed
• [54:57–58:58] — Aftermath: the town’s fallout, who leaves, and final moral ambiguity

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Bad Summer People is a propulsive, wry summer read that thrives on regional specificity, a sharply drawn cast, and the voyeuristic pleasure of watching privilege self-destruct.
• Its satire is clever, if sometimes ambiguous in its critique of rich, “bad” people and their largely consequence-free worlds.
• While the entire cast is unlikeable, their foibles are compulsively readable, helped by crisp prose and a reality-based sting—especially for those familiar with New York’s beach house subculture.
• The ending underlines the genre’s dark punchline: society’s worst rarely see real justice, and next summer, another generation will inherit the mess.

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Recommended for listeners who enjoy:

• Social satire
• Ensemble, multi-POV storytelling
• White Lotus, Succession, or Big Little Lies
• Dissecting contemporary privilege and community dynamics

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Next Episode Tease:
Craig will read The Four Million by O. Henry (“the short story guy, not the candy bar guy”)—expect a classic turn in structure, and another dose of literary mischief!

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Transcript

[Andrew]

This is a headgun podcast.

[Craig]

In Artificial Wisdom by Thomas R. Weaver. Salvation has a price. Is humanity willing to pay it?

[Andrew]

In a climate ravaged landscape where AI and humans vie for political power, a journalist must unravel a murderous plot that will either upend the world or save it. Ooh. In 2050, investigative journalist Marcus Tolley is grieving his wife and unborn child 10 years after they perished in a a deadly heat wave that gripped the Persian Gulf. Now the whole planet is both burning and drowning, and the nations of the world decide to elect a global leader to steer humanity through the climate apocalypse. The final two candidates, a former US President and Solomon, the first artificial intellect to hold political office.

[Craig]

Wait a second.

[Andrew]

Whoa. AI Politicians. As election day races closer, Craig Solomon's creator is murdered, and it's up to Tully to find the culprit. Soon, Tully is unraveling a conspiracy that goes to the highest levels. And as the investigation heats up and the planet hurdles ever closer to the brink, T must find the truth and convince the world to face it. Because salvation has a price. But is humanity willing to pay it?

[Craig]

I don't know if we're willing to pay. I said that earlier and I wasn't sure and you just said it and I'm not.

[Andrew]

Still not sure. I'm not sure. You're gonna have to read this book and figure it out.

[Craig]

Okay? You will have to read it. So I'm calling our listeners to action. Artificial Wisdom is a pitch perfect near future thriller wrapped in a murder mystery. It's a masterclass in playing an intimate story out on a global stage stage dealing with the big societal issues of climate change and technology alongside genuine human drama. It adds to the growing conversation about AI by presenting a speculative world in which humanity is trying to determine if surrendering control to an AI in the interests of solving climate change is in the best interest of humanity and the planet. I just think that our listeners might want to read Artificial Wisdom by Thomas R. Weaver.

[Andrew]

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy.

[Craig]

Of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy.

[Andrew]

Away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.

[Craig]

Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hey everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew. Summer's over. Well, summer's end.

[Craig]

Listen, it's ending.

[Andrew]

Summer's not technically over, I guess. What's the last day? September something.

[Craig]

It's usually Labor Day, right? Oh, no. Do you mean like the.

[Andrew]

The equinox the season of summer. 9-20-2 is what the search engine says.

[Craig]

So you've got about a month, little less than to be a bad summer person.

[Andrew]

But I don't. I don't think of September as, like, a proper summer month. You know, I don't think, oh, it's September. Time to go to the beach. Time to. It's. It's summertime. Like, I know people do that stuff.

[Craig]

In September, but it's not what September is for.

[Andrew]

But I'm not. I'm not. People don't say, like, if you're. If it's February and someone mentioned September to me, I'm not like, oh, fun in the sun. September.

[Craig]

September is for dancing around. Like the dad in the Staples commercial. It's the most wonderful time of the year. The kids are going back.

[Andrew]

My dad did play that song.

[Craig]

I bet he. That sounds exactly like your dad.

[Andrew]

On the first day of school, he would put it on the computer and just play it really loud on a real repeat because he liked that ad so much.

[Craig]

Sometimes ads are good. Sometimes.

[Andrew]

As a dad, though. As a dad, though, I get it.

[Craig]

Oh, yeah.

[Andrew]

Now I get, like, at the time, I was like, okay, this isn't that. This is stupid. But now I'm like, I love you. I love you.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And I will go to some lengths to not have gaps in between school and camp, because it's a lot like. Especially working from home is a lot. Like, if Daddy is home, even if somebody else is here with Henry, it's just like, what's Daddy doing? Can I check on. Can I check on Daddy? What time exactly will Daddy be done? And at that, I'm gonna be watching the clock all day.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

To see when that time is gonna come. And I'm gonna go upstairs and regardless of whether Daddy needs five more minutes for something or not, it's Henry time.

[Craig]

It's Henry time.

[Andrew]

So I get it. That's what I'm saying. Summer's over. What's your. What's. How. How are you feeling about it?

[Craig]

I'm feeling fine. Summer's. It's over. It does. Didn't really change Simon's schedule, so I don't. I'm not quite at Staples dad yet. I aspire to get there, but it's mostly. We didn't make it to a splash pad this year. I sort of feel bad about that. We did other.

[Andrew]

We made it to lots of. We made it to all kinds of splash pads to make up for it. So we averaged out pretty good, I.

[Craig]

Think, between the Two of us, wonderful.

[Andrew]

But it wasn't, it was like Henry went with the camp, went to, took him to a lot of splash pads. Like I wasn't, I wasn't involved.

[Craig]

I was gonna say, well, let's talk about a book, Andrew, here on our book podcast where each week one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it. Lots of folks make lists of all the books they're gonna read this summer in their free time. And many of them are bad summer people. They don't get to them. What's the name of the book that we read?

[Andrew]

The name of the book is Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum. I don't wanna draw equivalency between people who make over ambitious book lists and the people in this book who are really awful.

[Craig]

Okay, yes. This is a bad people behaving badly book is my understanding.

[Andrew]

Like bad, bad rich people in a little fire island rich people beach town. And they are all different kinds of bad. And many of them do not see themselves as bad, but they all are bad.

[Craig]

Okay, sure.

[Andrew]

In different ways.

[Craig]

I can't wait to find out more.

[Andrew]

It's a book I found on some beach read list like I think. And I think that was the case with Mrs. Caliban too.

[Craig]

But this is, this is very different.

[Andrew]

This is a different book from Mrs. Caliban.

[Craig]

Suffice to this from my understanding, you know, it's Rosenblum's debut novel. She's written two more since Very Bad Company in 2024 about the band, I guess, I don't know. And Mean Moms in 2025, the sequel to Mean Girls. Well, that would be good. And I believe a freakier Friday.

[Andrew]

Like I think Mean Moms could be. Mean Moms could.

[Craig]

Well, Mean Girls went the other way route where it became a musical and then they made it into a movie musical. It did that thing which they have not done too well. No, they did. They might have made a Freaky Friday musical. I don't know.

[Andrew]

Actually, that reminds me, it's just like I was listening to the Empty bowl, the cereal podcast.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

That Justin McElroy does.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

His, his co host on that mentioned the time when Netflix's show the Queen's Gambit got a board game based on it when famously it's a show about chess, which is already a game. And yeah, Mean Girls, the movie about the musical, about the movie inspires the same sort of thing in me as the Queen's Gambit, the board game, all of Rosenblum for 15 bucks. That's not expensive.

[Craig]

It's not bad.

[Andrew]

Average playtime, 15 minutes. You'll blast right through this.

[Craig]

Better than chess. All of Rosen Bloom's novels do seem to fit into this bad people doing bad things ethos. But she is not a novelist. Prior to now being a full time novelist, she spent a long time doing other things first. Let's talk about some of that. She was born in 1981, grew up in Westchester County, New York. Parents were a lawyer and a real estate agent. She studied English at Tufts. Tufts University, I think. It is not college Tufts, I just wrote.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I believe it's Tufts University. Yes.

[Craig]

She talks about studying Austin and Wharton in those classes. Says that Austin. This was in a 2025 interview with publishers Weekly, making the connection to her own work. Austin was a very good observer of wealthy people. She was very funny about it. She also made her characters into real people in a way that I hope I do. Talking about how you can dislike a character or find their, you know, find them reprehensible but understand that maybe they're, you know, they're, there's nuance. They're. They're a human.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And when I, when I come out, words blazing against, against the bad people in this book. I had a good read of this.

[Craig]

Okay, great.

[Andrew]

I most, I mostly enjoyed this. You mentioned that there are some comments controversy around it. I'm sure we'll get to it.

[Craig]

Oh, only in the run up to it, but sure. Yes.

[Andrew]

Okay. I have some like vague thoughts about what it might. What it might be about. But yeah, I think the success of the book is that it draws its characters really distinctly and well. And that's what makes it fun is you are comfortable knowing that you're supposed to hate like all but maybe one or two of these people.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yep, yep, yep.

[Andrew]

Because that's what the author wants you to do.

[Craig]

Do. After she studies at Tufts, she goes back to New York City. She gets a job at Glamour magazine. Later works at New York Mag and Bloomberg Business Weekly. I think was working as the executive editor of Elle magazine for a few years and then got picked up by Bustle, which I keep wanting to call the Bustle, but it's Bustle.

[Andrew]

Lose the the. Yeah, maybe cooler. Maybe it used to be the Bustle. And then Justin Timberlake came and first.

[Craig]

As editor in chief and then as chief content officer at the Bustle Media Group.

[Andrew]

Bustle be one of those sites that I've. I've never at any point known what its deal is supposed to be. I think originally it was Supposed to be like a women led, like.

[Craig]

Yeah, so it was founded, but then.

[Andrew]

It get, you know, they get. They get bought by a media conglomerate that owns 10 other media conglomerates and it becomes a big.

[Craig]

Yeah, it has become its own little media conglomerate that has like, you know, snatched up other things along the way. So I don't think it's had its big like, buyout yet of somebody else buying Bustle. It was founded in 2013. Brian Goldberg, co founder of Bleacher Report. And he wanted like a sports site that had a lot of audience community writing, which is similar model that I think he used with Bustle early on, wanting to make a site specific, you know, targeted for women readers in the, you know, mid 2010s world of Jezebel and Refinery 29 and stuff like that.

[Andrew]

And a lot of those media companies were successfully raising a bunch of capital money at that point. Yeah, that was the heyday of, of BuzzFeed. That was when like, Vox Media was a new like up and coming up thing that was. And you know, some of those are still around. Some of them are not like they. It was a. It was a different time. Worked in media through that and continues to work in media.

[Craig]

Apparently bought, shut down and then sold Gawker after Gawker, you know, was after the Hulk incident. Yeah, yeah, unfortunately. So she is working at Bustle and she wants to do something creative. As she told one interview, my job now is pretty managerial. I oversee our editorial and creative and fashion teams. But I'm not in the creative nitty gritty like I used to be. I was an editor at various places. I decided to try fiction. Why not? It sounds easier than nonfiction.

[Andrew]

Okay. You know, it's one way to besmirch somebody's craft, I guess.

[Craig]

This is also from Women's Wear Daily, the interview. Her background as a journalist came in handy in other ways too. Having written numerous celebrity profiles, writing fiction suddenly felt like, quote, getting to make it the best version of the kind of interview that you do every day where someone is saying the perfect kicker. Because in real life that doesn't happen, but in fiction it can. That's an interesting.

[Andrew]

I get that.

[Craig]

I get that as a. Like, I write about people all the time, or at least I used to. And what if you could just like, control what they say and you can like, make it the best version of these people that you're writing. That's interesting.

[Andrew]

Which kind of wear is women's wear?

[Craig]

W E A R. W E A.

[Andrew]

R. Not like women's wear. Women's wear or daily declarative, like women's wear daily. Where is it?

[Craig]

So this novel comes out of, she's spending, you know, summers in this small community on Fire Island, Saltaire, New York. If you don't know about Fire island, it's a barrier island off of Long Island, New York, with European settlers coming in as early as the 16th, 17th century saying, this is a cool beachfront property. Let's kick everybody out.

[Andrew]

Even then, it had a reputation as a gay hotspot.

[Craig]

It did.

[Andrew]

I'm making that up.

[Craig]

But that's true.

[Andrew]

But that is its main, like, culturally, Fire, like a drive by reference to Fire island is usually about how gay people go there and hang out. Which is which? Everybody in the book is like, yeah, everyone says that, but it's just kind of a. It's not all like that.

[Craig]

Mid 20th century gay enclaves are established, you know, on Fire Island. What?

[Andrew]

You just make it sound like, oh, the settlements the people have gone to.

[Craig]

Like, that's a word that came up in my research. Lots of novels have been written and set there. But this little town, Saltier, New York is not. That's just kind of a tiny, sleepy beach town is what multiple people have referred to it as. It is like not people who. There are big restrictions on Airbnbs and short term rentals on this island. It is largely the like couple hundred people, if that, who live there in this town.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And then the beach, the beach vacations that you and I have experienced are like the opposite of that. You go to a place that's like 75% Airbnbs.

[Craig]

Correct.

[Andrew]

And 25% NIMBY locals who are really upset about offshore wind turbines for some reason.

[Craig]

And so she is sitting there on this summer, like, you know, doing her day job, just happening to be at Fire island in the summer with her family and thinking, I would like to do something creative. What if I took this little beach town and gave it a White Lotus slash succession treatment? She names both of them specifically as to when she was kind of working on the book. Those are the two biggest recent, you know, critically acclaimed shows about rich people behaving poorly.

[Andrew]

Sure. I would say a lot more White Lotus than succession. Sounds like, like, mostly because it's, it's, it's taking place over a summer vacation. So it's kind of innately removed from like there, there's some characters who are going through a professional thing, but it's.

[Craig]

Not, that's not the stakes.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's remove, it's removed from work stuff, mostly sure, sure.

[Craig]

And she starts writing this novel. She does pitch it to her prior agent who she'd been talking to about nonfiction stuff. And he's like, I don't know about this. And so she looks up Kevin Kwan's agent. He's the guy who wrote Crazy Rich Asians. And his agent is like, this is great. And like, sells it in a week.

[Andrew]

Purportedly crazy rich white people.

[Craig]

Yeah, basically. And so she's working on the manuscript and, you know, sending it in for edits. They start shopping it to TV and film studios. Of course, already it gets leaked to residents of the island. Oh, she has not changed the name of the town in her draft.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

She has started using the names of people on the island just as, like, shorthand for herself. But it has.

[Andrew]

You could do that in your notes, but that should not. That should not make it into your manuscript. You were asking for a control F mishap. You misspell somebody's name one time and you are screwed.

[Craig]

Apparently the characters, you know, most people say are not one to one to any actual people on the island, but the names definitely are, uh huh. And people. There was a little mini uproar about it where she don't.

[Andrew]

Maybe she don't go to that island no more.

[Craig]

You know, probably not everyone got wind of this. She told the Guardian, or she wrote in the Guardian, rather, a family friend had approached my sister on the tennis courts with a chuckle and said, I heard my wife dies in your sister's book. I hope she. I hope she falls off the tennis deck. I immediately sent my agent a panicked email with the subject line, apparently people here are sending around my book. She didn't seem too concerned. All buzz is good buzz, I guess, you know.

[Andrew]

Huh.

[Craig]

And then there were.

[Andrew]

That is not the kind of controversy that I thought might result from this book being released.

[Craig]

There were people. And then like in her telling in the Guardian, because she wrote a whole article about it, people just kind of start. It became like a Stephen King novel where now everybody's behaving like, angrily to each other. All the, like, simmering conflicts of the island have been brought to bear because everybody's reading the draft of this book that makes them all look bad. And then there were people who were willing to talk, to tell, like, interviewers that they felt insulted that they weren't in the novel, which is my favorite character type. So, like, there were. There was a Business Insider article. There were multiple articles as this book was coming out or had just come out that were like, this sleepy town went bonkers when it became the subject of a novel like as part of the. It wasn't, you know, spawn con or anything, but was like a neat hook as you're pitching this new book from somebody who's not had a published novel.

[Andrew]

Before, you know, well, there's nothing, there's nothing that New York based media companies and the people who work at them like more than a story that's all about that.

[Craig]

Yep, uh huh. Yep.

[Andrew]

All about them and the little islands where they go and they own beach house.

[Craig]

So yeah, she kind of owns the, the white lotus of it all is not a one to one to this community, but it's the community that she knows. And so she used the like summer rhythms, you know, the traditions and the little, you know, things that might be on the calendar as a way to anchor her storytelling. And that's how we find ourselves here with her finally having changed the names, of course. A little later in the process I.

[Andrew]

Get recommended the, the nothing. Nothing's one to one like that. That deflection would not mollify me if I were in the position having been written about because it's like either you thought this about me or something about my real self like inspired you to think these things about. About somebody. Like it's just not. There's no way to read it as flattering.

[Craig]

I don't know which is. And I have seen movies and seen plays that are basically about this. It's just a fertile subject for people to, you know, have a lot of anger and feelings and you could write a movie about just people being mad about this book. It'll probably do just fine.

[Andrew]

Yeah. So has this been option? Feels like it could be.

[Craig]

I think it. That, I think it has been. That's why the, the script was getting, or the, the manuscript was getting passed around.

[Andrew]

I'm just, I'm gonna, I'm gonna spin the overdue movie adaptation wheel. I'm gonna say there was a deal announced, I don't know, like within a year after the book came out. Then there's no, there's been no news since the deal was announced.

[Craig]

Is Michelle Geller attached?

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

A deadline article from April 25th. So.

[Andrew]

Okay. Okay.

[Craig]

That's relatively recent.

[Andrew]

All right. No, that's. That seems to be a movie that's actively in development.

[Craig]

Okay. All right. We'll see if it becomes a proper TV show. Who knows? Anything can happen.

[Andrew]

Oh, is it a TV show?

[Craig]

That's what they're saying.

[Andrew]

All right. All right. Can't wait to get like five, five episodes of Something can't wait to get one season of five episodes or maybe like three seasons of five episodes each space two and a half years apart with no previously on given at the beginning of each subsequent we just became.

[Craig]

The BBC all of a sudden.

[Andrew]

I don't know, we stopped knowing how to do it.

[Craig]

Well, maybe we just need to take.

[Andrew]

A quick break and our forefathers fought and died in the Revolutionary war to make 22 episode 53 minute TV episodes and now we've lost that.

[Craig]

We have. It's true. John Adams fought for it. Well, let's take a quick break. Maybe all the TV executives can take a quick break and they'll figure it out in the interim. Maybe, maybe. Quick time to choose a meal deal with McValue. The $5 McChicken meal deal. A $6 McDouble meal deal or the new $7 Daily Double meal deal. Each with its own small Fries drink and Four Piece McNuggets. There's actually. I'm just excited for McDonald's.

[Andrew]

Price and participation may vary.

[Craig]

Okay, Andrew, we're back. I'm ready to live vicariously through what is surely an enjoyable summer where nothing untoward happens. Everybody's vacation goes as predicted and planned.

[Andrew]

Yeah, everybody comes and has a great normal vacation just like they do every year.

[Craig]

Great regular summer folks.

[Andrew]

Sequel. So the, the backdrop to this, this book as as you mentioned it's a small, it's a small town on Fire Island. In this book it has been named Salcombe S A L C O M.

[Craig]

B E. She plucked it from a British novel or some, some British something she says is where she got the new name.

[Andrew]

Yeah, obviously it used to be that town that she herself used to go to. But we don't, we, we don't talk.

[Craig]

We don't talk about that anymore.

[Andrew]

This is a, it's a, it's a proper island. So it's not like a Jersey shore thing where you drive there.

[Craig]

No. There's no cars or anything. Right.

[Andrew]

Get on the ferry and you have to go. But it's an island where most of the people who, who are there like came there as kids and they, they inherit their parents houses and it's, it's, it's a community where everybody pretty much knows each other. Like there are ways to, to buy into the community if someone puts a house up for sale. But generally like you know a solid contingent of the people who go every year are just people who go every year and you, and you watch, you know the, the 40ish parents become like the 60 year olds. People who are hanging out and drinking become like the old, you know, the old retirees. It's just a place where everybody. Everybody goes and knows everyone and watches everyone live each other's lives. And so as. As happens when you've got a place like that, there's a sort of summer campy, you know. You know, the concept of a camp friend, like somebody who, you know, you don't go to school with, but you see them every summer and they exist in this little, like, cordoned off version of your life.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

That may or may not overlap with the rest of your life that you live the rest.

[Craig]

Well, like these.

[Andrew]

It's all. It's all. It's a bunch of camp friends.

[Craig]

It's a bunch of camp friends.

[Andrew]

I. I mean, yeah.

[Craig]

I would not be surprised, though it's not a requisite for me enjoying this book. If you're carrying the camp for an analogy forward that, like, people are presenting themselves differently here on Fire island than maybe they do at home. And that might cause some consternation.

[Andrew]

I think. Not. Re. Not always. It's.

[Craig]

That, to me, is big camp friend, though. It's like you can kind of be a different person.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Yeah, a little bit.

[Andrew]

That's not something the book is really playing with. Like, it's. These are people who, like this. This island inspires a specific vibe.

[Craig]

Oh, okay.

[Andrew]

But they do. They all also are mostly, like, aware of each other, like, professionally and socially because they live in New York or they did live in New York. Some people still live in the city, Some people have moved out to the burbs, but everybody's kind of peripherally aware of what everyone else is doing in the way that you kind of can be in the. The social media age where you can, like, you know, some. Sometimes you're actively gossiping about people, but sometimes you're just kind of following whatever it is that they're doing from afar.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Staying abreast of it that way.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

But it's a, you know, it's a town where most of our characters have just, like, gone every year. And the. The expectation is that they'll continue going every year forever. And this book is about the year that. The year that changed everything. Kind of love it, or, you know, a year that changed everything for some people.

[Craig]

Just walk it back a little bit, just in case.

[Andrew]

So the prologue that the book opens with is a dead body has been found. And it starts like an episode of a TV crime procedural where some kid who you never hear from for the entire rest of the book is the one who finds the body.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

And then you jump back in time and the question is, which of these people's body is it? And, like, who's responsible for it?

[Craig]

Okay, so I saw White Lotus. I understand.

[Andrew]

Yes, yes, it's extremely a white lotus opening. I was thinking of Bones, but I'm usually am.

[Craig]

Well, but that's like every episode of Bones, right?

[Andrew]

In. In White Lotus, it has. It has a. The flavor is slightly different because you do not know who the. You don't know who the body is. But you've seen some of the main characters before.

[Craig]

A body who aren't. Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

You're like, well, who is this guy? Oh, when this guy shows up, it must mean we're getting a little bit closer to the body.

[Craig]

Yes, okay, fair enough. But this is like pure. Like, you don't even know this person.

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah, you don't need to know who this kid is. It's fine. Whatever they mentioned, they mentioned him again, like, toward the end of the book after the murder has happened, like in the continuity of the. Of the main story. And I had to go back to the prologue to be like, is this. This. This is the kid who. This kid who found the body? Right. Like, it's just not a. Not a memorable little. Little character.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

But it's not meant to be. So the rest of the book is split up into a few distinct parts with time jumps in between. You're covering this entire summer from, you know, the. The beginning of summer when everybody comes out to Labor Day is, I think.

[Craig]

Favorite holiday Labor Day is.

[Andrew]

And Labor Day ish. Observed. And it's. It's not a thing where it, you know, each part is delivered from the same characters perspectives in the same order.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

But you have a lot of different point of view chapters that most mostly are centered on a few different people. And then occasionally you'll get a perspective from outside the main group that's mostly just meant to, like, I think, give you some insight into how like, the rest of the community might be perceiving the events that the main people are doing or like just trying. Trying to. To do a little more. Like, here's. Here's a. Here's a person who everybody in the town perceives one way. And then I'm gonna give you like one chapter from their perspective so maybe you can think a different thing about them.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

And a lot. A lot of what the book is doing is like, create. Commenting on the difference between like, perception and reality and what happens when satire is collide yeah.

[Craig]

Satire is the world is the word that gets tossed around, both from Rosenblum and general reviewers who enjoy the book. Some sort of social satire of this class of people and their picadillos, I suppose.

[Andrew]

Picadillo always sounds to me like some kind of a weird, spiky fruit that I don't want. Like a dirt, like a durian, you know?

[Craig]

Yeah, I don't want picadillo. I know the fruit. I know the type of fruit that we don't want.

[Andrew]

I could get a picadillo soda from somewhere, but I wouldn't like it.

[Craig]

Ooh.

[Andrew]

What?

[Craig]

But we. But. Yes, but someone in our. In your friend circle is like, have you tried? The picadillo soda is so good. And you're like, this is a flavor that you made up, and I hate it.

[Andrew]

So the main perspectives that we're gonna get. I'm just gonna run through the characters who are big movers and shakers.

[Craig]

Okay, sure.

[Andrew]

You've got Lauren Parker and her husband, Jason Parker.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And then Sam Weinstein and his wife, Jen Weinstein.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

So this is a nexus of four people who are very important. Jason and Sam are childhood friends from way back, but Jason doesn't like Sam as much as Sam likes Jason. Sam's parents were. Had a very extended and messy divorce that led to Sam just, like, hanging out with Jason and his family and his people all the time. And people generally liked Sam more than they liked Jason. Like, it may have had its roots in, like, look at that poor kid, sympathy, but he just does generally seem to be a more charismatic, like, more. I don't want to say a better person because there is some stuff that he does in this book that's like, not. That's, like, not amazing.

[Craig]

People perceive him to be a better person.

[Andrew]

Yeah, people perceive him to be a better person. He does seem to be more. I don't know, like, empathetic. And he puts people at ease in a way that Jason absolutely does not.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Lauren is Jason's wife. She is, like, hot and blonde but kind of superficial. And he. Jason does not. Jason frequently will look at her and be like, she's so pretty. I wish I liked her better.

[Craig]

Oh, boy. Fun.

[Andrew]

Jen is. She's not. Jen is from sort of outside the, like, the. The old money circle she kind of married in. So some people in town sort of have an innate distrust of her, but she always knows, like, the. The right thing to say to the right person. And, you know, this strikes a couple people as phony, but most people just, like, perceive her as like a nice woman. She's super hot. Jason is sleeping with her. Fun slept with her like 10 years before when she and Sam had first started dating. And then there's a long break and then they took, they. When the book opens, they took up again about a year ago and have been meeting like semi frequently or semi regularly I guess.

[Craig]

So pretty excited to come back to the island.

[Andrew]

Yeah. But, but Jason, Jason is like in love with her and Jen is like, I've been cheating on Sam with everybody all the time, everywhere.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

Because this is just like, this is just a thing that I, that I do and I don't think that much about it.

[Craig]

Okay. So none of this is going to go good for anyone. I'm sure.

[Andrew]

You've got Robert Hayworth who is slightly younger. He's 32. I think he's slightly younger than most of the other people in the book are. Again, like I said 40ish. Like just passed or just approaching. Okay, Robert's a little bit younger. He also is not from old money, not from around here. He was really good at, really, really good at tennis. Like he got into a good school and did good, good tennis and then went out to California and taught celebrities how to tennis for a while. And he, he comes from a family without a lot of money and like a couple of siblings who just like run like small businesses. And he, he kind of views himself as, as superior to them. But also he's gotten to a point in his life where he's like, I just kind of thought that with all the people I've been in proximity to and like the one rich girl I dated that one time where we broke up, I just, I, I feel like my, I, I am missing the boat on social climbing. I feel like I should have climbed into a higher social strata by now. But he had, he had been taking care of his parents for a couple of years as the book opens and then he gets a job as like the resident 10 Pro on in Sal come in this fire island town. Okay, so he's coming, he's coming in as a newbie. He's got a little bit of a chip on his shoulder because I think he looks down on all these like rich lifers who are at this.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

On this island. Like he. Tennis is a big, is a big sport and there's like a big tennis tournament that a lot of the action like later in the book revolves around.

[Craig]

Oh, you mean it's a big sport on the island. I was like, I mean, yes, it's a Big sport.

[Andrew]

Tennis is a bit. Have you heard of it? Have you heard of this sport where they. They hit a ball with these. With like little nets over a big net? It's called tennis and it's sweet. It's taking the world by storm.

[Craig]

The word net is in tennis.

[Andrew]

Tennis is a big sport on the island. Okay, but, but. And Robert is like, yes, I've. I've come to teach. To teach these people how to slightly improve their serve. I've never met a group of people who think and talk more about tennis who were also not very good at tennis. He thinks the amount. The amount of. Of space this occupies in these people's minds is totally disproportionate to their actual skill at the game of tennis.

[Craig]

Sure. Are most of these people not doing work while they're here, are they?

[Andrew]

Yeah, they're not. They're not really. They're not doing work. Okay. They're summering.

[Craig]

Great. Okay. Just checking. Sure.

[Andrew]

There's Rachel Wolf, who is a she. She is single. She is like 42. She is. She dated Sam for like one summer before. He said, I just want to be friends. But she still kind of carries a torch for him, you know? And she is. She's good at putting a party together, but she is gossipy. She is starting to feel her age in a way that makes her seem kind of pathetic to herself and to the people around her. Sometimes those are the big ones. And then we got a couple of more minor characters who I mentioned now so we can talk about them later. Susan Steinhagen is an old lady. She's like 70 something. Her husband was the mayor of the town, but had died a few years before the action of the book. And she is perceived as this big, like, loudmouth busybody who every. Everybody knows. She knows everybody. She's around everywhere. She always seems like she's speaking like a couple of decibels louder than anybody else would like her to be speaking. We only get like one POV chapter from her.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But she's around a lot in all the other POVs.

[Craig]

That feels like the right for a novel. Mostly about folks in their 40s messing each other up to have the like. And there's the 70 year old that we're all annoyed by. And then a little ways in you go, here's. Let's get behind those eyes and see what's going on.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And we can look down on these people from a different mountain.

[Andrew]

And another perspective that is sort of in that same sort of basket is this is the last Named character. I'll probably mention Micah Holt is a like early, early twenties gay boy who is. His, his parents have the house here. He's been here every summer. He's a kid who has grown up and he sort of, he still thinks that all of these, these 40 year old adults like these, these were the people who he kind of had around to like observe and to, to look up to and to, to think were like cool people when he, when he was growing up.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Now he's a 22 year old. He has kind of, you know, he has a, he has a summer job around the island. He's kind of a bartender. Like he's in a position to see and hear a lot of, but we don't, you know, he doesn't have a ton of arc. He just kind of serves as another, as Susan sort of does, another perspective from outside. And I think that Micah is like as close as the book gets to an actually like pure character who comes away from it like not unsullied, but feeling bad enough about the things that he knows about to like make a change in his life that puts him on like a better trajectory.

[Craig]

Okay, sure.

[Andrew]

So, so that's the. I mention all those characters and maybe, you know, they all have mostly these like, these names that could be very like, who are all these white people with all these interchangeable white people names? Like, how am I supposed to keep any of them straight? I've had that complaint about. I don't know how many books that I've read for the show is like, they're just all these people with like top 10 baby names who are not, not distinct enough from each other for me to, for me to remember who they are. And the thing that this book does well. And if you want to talk about three star reviews at some time.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

At some point soon I do need to go get the guitar off the wall, but. Yep, I was just making sure it was on the wall. The thing that this book does well is that I don't think any of these character archetypes are breaking any kind of new ground in terms of the way that they're portrayed or like the kind of person that they are. But. And they're not, they're not like super deep. They're not people who you want to spend a lot of time with. But what she does is both through the POV that you're actually like seeing through at the time and in how those characters describe the other POV characters as they observe them. You know what I mean?

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

You get a good, you get, you do get a really good sense really early on of just like who all these people are, and it makes them easy to, to kind of keep track of.

[Craig]

Okay, sure.

[Andrew]

Is. Each person has. Yeah, each, each person has a handful of, of strong memorable characteristics. They all, they all have kind of a distinct lane that they, they carve out. And even, even the. There are a bunch of other characters who are mentioned, even some who get small POV chapters I'm not going to talk about. But like, everybody is like, oh, it's that guy, you know?

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

No, everybody's. Everybody's just a distinctive kind of guy in the book.

[Craig]

Wanted to get the guitar because I've got some, I've got some guys here. They're all guys, but they're Goodreads guys. They have reviews that are all numerical and all of these reviewers have chosen to give their review three stars. Three stars on the website Goodreads. Andrew.

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah. Three star Goodreads review.

[Craig]

So first Kevin. I love a succinct, concise.

[Andrew]

First Kevin. No, sorry, Kevin, first of his name.

[Craig]

Kevin says, unlikable people with rich people problems. That's the review. That's, that's always.

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah. Oh, they've absolutely got rich people problems. Like everybody. There are people who are like, well, she just leaves me with the kids all by myself. Ignoring the, like, live in nanny who comes and actually raises their kids. Like, it's. No, nobody in this book has a single. Nobody in this book has two real problems to rub together.

[Craig]

Except the dead person that I want to know more about.

[Andrew]

Except the dead person. But yeah, okay.

[Craig]

Audrey says.

[Andrew]

And even she, even the dead person is coded in a way where, like, the book minimizes how bad we have to feel about.

[Craig]

Of course it wouldn't work if it didn't.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Audrey says, I'm a big fan of rich people behaving badly books and we get that in spades here. We get chapters from different POVs and there are lots of characters. So, yes, it did take me a bit to get everyone down and to get into the book. Each chapter gives us a little of backs, a lot of backstory on each character, which bogged me down. I understand it was a storytelling choice. Seemed to be a choice that worked for you, Andrew. But I could, I could conceive of it being a little like, maybe do you need, do you. Do you feel like the cast is too big? Maybe if you're reading this book, you didn't.

[Andrew]

But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it probably has A lot to do with like the speed at which you read, how if you are taking notes as you read so you can talk about it on your book podcast.

[Craig]

Once the story got going, I was hooked and enjoyed all the devilish choices these people make. I did have my suspicions and did enjoy how it ended. A fun binge able time. That's Audrey. So I do want to know more about the devilish choices and the suspicions. And Rangini says, to be fair, the title does tell you what this book is about. I'm not allowed to be mad at having to actually read about bad people summering, but I can't help it. Everyone is so deeply unlikable. I found myself repeatedly enraged. The privilege, the attitude, the decisions are all awful. And again, to be fair, that's the point of the book. It just doesn't mean I have to like it. Ranjini, you don't have to finish the book. Props to you for trying.

[Andrew]

That's fine. Just. Just because. Just because I was generally able to meet the book where it wanted to meet, it does not mean that you have to do that. And like you. And you can. You can find this book has interchangeable white people syndrome. Like you.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

You don't have to agree with anything that I'm saying. I completely get those critiques.

[Craig]

Sure. Well, tell me more about how the plot winds up and winds down, because that seems to be what makes this book work after the. You know, these are some bad people. A lot.

[Andrew]

Yeah, a lot. A lot of it is just like this. This is a super insular community. Like, everybody knows what everybody else is up to, and a lot of them are up to stuff that would sort of blow things up if they got caught at it. So Jason, and. Jason and Jen sleeping together.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

While behind Jason's ostensible best friends back. Like, that's. That's a situation that's going to go bad.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Lauren, having noticed that her husband Jason is acting shifty, not around a lot, is super happy to start sleeping with Robert the tennis pro almost the minute that they meet each other.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And to keep doing it and to be kind of reckless about it in a way that makes Robert feel a little used. But not like the. The way that you keep out of Robert's corner is that he feels used about it, but, like, does not stop doing it and does not really seriously entertain stopping doing it.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Robert has been told that the tennis pro the year before was fired for some combination of like, public drunkenness and skimming money off the top. And somebody explains to him how the old tennis pro is skimming money off the top. And he was like, well, this guy, like most tennis pros, like, like most of, you know, working people who I consider myself better than, was an idiot, and I am a smart boy, and I will be able to skim money off the top in a much smarter way that will be much harder to detect.

[Craig]

Okay?

[Andrew]

So he almost. He instantly is like, oh, skimming money. That puts me in the mood to skim some money. And he starts doing the thing that the other person got accused of and. And thinks, well, I'm too. I'm too smart to get caught at this. So he's. He's doing that. He's sleeping with Lauren.

[Craig]

The. The Sam Bankman Fried of fire.

[Andrew]

I mean, yes, yes.

[Craig]

We just need a better class of criminal.

[Andrew]

Rachel has, is like the only one who knows who is sleeping with everybody, okay. And she's really bad at keeping a secret. And will she be able to sit on all of this knowledge that she has about everybody while also being way too head up about the tennis tournament for somebody who seems really aggressively mid at tennis?

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

She having. Without a spouse or kids or whatever.

[Craig]

She has really nothing else to do.

[Andrew]

She is. She's really put. Wrapped a lot of her personality up into. Into this tennis tournament because they came so heartbreakingly close to winning last year and. Sure. This year.

[Craig]

Yeah. What if they did?

[Andrew]

What if they did?

[Craig]

Is any of these, like, giving you murder? Like, how does the book sprinkle in? You know, someone died. Like, how is it foreshadowing?

[Andrew]

I read the first part of the book and then took a break for a few days and then came back to it. And I did honestly forget that it opened with somebody dying for a while because I was just reading about all the. The stupid people doing stupid things.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Sam has been accused of me too, at work.

[Craig]

I love accused of me too.

[Andrew]

He's been accused of me too.

[Craig]

Oh, my God.

[Andrew]

A young woman who was on his team has accused him of forcibly kissing her. And he denies it. And everybody, everybody's like, sam's a good guy. He would. He wouldn't do that. Like, no, nobody believes it of Sam and the book. Like, this is. This is one weird kind of thing that the book does. Trying to have its cake and eat it too a little bit is like, there's one guy who's a. Who's like, who's kind of a crappy person who likes to talk about how, like, affirmative action has gone too far and he shows up to events in A Cancel Cancel culture T shirt. And the. The Sam situation ends up like. The way it ends up playing out is that a woman did falsely accuse him of sexual misconduct at work, but it was because Sam's male boss put her up to doing it. So it is. It is doing. Oh, it's doing a weird thing.

[Craig]

Still doing a me too.

[Andrew]

It's. It's doing a me too has gone too far, but secretly, it's a man's fault.

[Craig]

Like, you know what I mean?

[Andrew]

Like, it's trying to do, like, what the real problem is. The men whose lives are being destroyed by being falsely accused. Like, it is still kind of playing that card a little bit, but it's not making it about some lying woman who's out for money or status or revenge or whatever.

[Craig]

Interesting.

[Andrew]

Yeah. It's adding an extra thing on top of it that I think I read it. I was like.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

In all of the MeToo has gone too far discourse that I have digested. It's true that I've never run into the specific. I've never run into the. The. The David Brooks column that's like. Well, everybody's like, the bosses of their boss is gonna. They're gonna start using women to. To get back at subordinates.

[Craig]

Correct.

[Andrew]

Who they don't like.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

That's a specific flavor of backlash that I'm. That I'm familiar with. But it is one. Like when the book brushes up against a couple of these things that, yes, rich white people who come and hang out in this Fire island community would absolutely get together at cocktail parties and be like, man, I don't know about culture.

[Craig]

Correct.

[Andrew]

Yes, 100% would do that. And the book wants to look down at people who do that a little bit, but it doesn't really want to.

[Craig]

It doesn't sound like it wants the book to be about that.

[Andrew]

No, it doesn't want the book to be about that. Like, that's just what. That's what's going on in Sam's life at the same time as all this other stuff.

[Craig]

Okay, okay. Okay. Yeah, that's. That I was wondering, too. Like, I. Without reading the book, and I'd kind of only been skimming reviews. I knew it was a contemporary book, but this genre of community torn apart by either a tragedy and. Or secrets is so, like. I don't say well worn pejoratively, but it is just well worn. Like, we've read a bunch of them, you know, like, also just like, what.

[Andrew]

If it was good that this community got torn up?

[Craig]

There's Also that, like, what is. What if. Wait, okay, well, this community had it coming. Is a little me too backlashy for me. Okay, sure.

[Andrew]

I'm just doing like a meta thing. We're a bunch of layers deep on.

[Craig]

This now, but it is just interesting that, like, having. What are the hallmarks of it? Feeling 21st century. Like. And that. That to me is at least interesting, though. Yeah. Of course they'd be talking about cancel culture and me too. And they'd be keeping tabs on each other through more modern means. Whereas, like, we've read Peyton plays. Like, even Jaws has some of this nonsense going on. Like the sleepy.

[Andrew]

That shark. That shark tried to cancel all those people shark.

[Craig]

Really?

[Andrew]

By eating them.

[Craig]

It's true. Anyway, how does it like hashtag believe.

[Andrew]

Women when they tell you that they are being eaten by a shark? You have to close the beaches. You have to close the beaches. Hashtag believe women.

[Craig]

Oh, my God. What. Where does this book go? How does it. Yeah.

[Andrew]

You asked about the murder thing and. Yes, once I remembered that the murdered thing had happened. Yeah. You are watching and trying to figure out. Okay. Especially as the book draws to a close and this is. There are a couple of kind of like. I don't want to say ham fisted, but a couple of like, not nuanced metaphors and like, things that the book does. There's a big. There's a big freak storm that happens at the end of the book as all of the. The mess and all these people's lives is coming to the forefront. And it's. It's just interesting how the. The weather is kind of reflecting their own internal and external turmoil. But as. So the book.

[Craig]

Sometimes authors do things.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Sometimes others do.

[Craig]

Sometimes it's okay.

[Andrew]

But you. You are just like. It is a. It's a pressure cooker and it is. You're just wondering when. When is. Even if you don't remember whether somebody got murdered at the beginning of the book, it's just like, what is all the. What's all the mess gonna. What's it all gonna do when it. When it starts coming out into the open, as it inevitably will? Just like too many people know about too much mess.

[Craig]

Correct. Sure. Do you have to spoil it if you don't want to.

[Andrew]

The. Yeah, the book does some, like, misdirection about, like, who got killed and why. I think I will.

[Craig]

Does it even with. It's like withholding pretty late even who dies. Right.

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah. You think that. You think that somebody else dies for like a.

[Craig]

That's cool.

[Andrew]

A Chapter and a half. I like that the book has a couple people do the same sort of. They both take a dive off the boardwalk on a bike basically. And one of them dies and one of them does not. And it's not. You do not expect the one who dies to have been the one who dies.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But basically everybody, like most of the named characters who I have talked about so far were either there.

[Craig]

Or were.

[Andrew]

Like directly involved in the death of this person who dies.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And at the end of the story, they all get away with it.

[Craig]

It sure.

[Andrew]

And the community does sort of break apart because Sam and Jen get divorced because Sam does find out that that Jen had been sleeping with his former best friend. Jason is accused of the murder in front of everybody as like part of the like Sam and Jen hatch the scheme against Jason as like revenge because Jen is triangulating a lot, trying to be like trying to get Sam back in her corner. And knowing that Sam wants to do something to Jason because of the cheating kind of helps him do that. So the plan for a little bit is to pin it on Jason. He is perp walked in front of this entire community like as they all get on the last ferry out of town for the summer. And so he and Lauren cannot show their faces back in this town again. So they get property somewhere else. Rachel is the one who told everybody who everybody was sleeping with and made everybody really upset and mad in the first place. And so she has moved out to California to be near her sisters after. After doing some self reflection on, you know, the people in this town who are. Who will still consent to be friends with her. Robert has who he almost got caught. I'll tell you what, he almost got caught stealing.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

But what if the person who knew too much was not around anymore? Craig.

[Craig]

Oh.

[Andrew]

So Robert gets a cherry gig with one of the older guys in town, gets a job in New York, uses a little bit of the money that he skimmed off the top to get a nice apartment. Everything's coming up Robert, it seems like he's finally is finally where he wants to be doing what he wants to be doing and getting paid for it. So cool. Good job, Robert.

[Craig]

I don't think I pulled. I didn't pull the Goodreads review that brought it up, but one of the more negative ones was just feeling like they wanted more punishment to have been meted.

[Andrew]

Nobody gets punished.

[Craig]

And that does seem like kind of the point of it too. Like even you look at I. I know succession better than I know white. The white Lotus seasons But, like, yes, bad things happen to those people. But, like, not as bad as dying.

[Andrew]

Nobody. Nobody's going to jail. Like, nobody's doing. Nobody's getting what in a perfectly just universe that they would deserve to get.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

But also in a perfectly just universe, would these people be in these positions in the first place? Well, probably not.

[Craig]

Probably not.

[Andrew]

Micah is the one person who has seen. Who has been, like, sort of party to this murder slash accidental death slash whatever.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

And he decides, I can't tear this town apart by revealing what I know, but maybe I can go do some, like, philanthropic work. And I also. I'm not going back next summer. I'm gonna take a break from this. From this island and these people.

[Craig]

Okay, so maybe one.

[Andrew]

I'm tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives. Like, he goes to Mars, like Dr. Manhattan, and he just decides not to be part of it anymore.

[Craig]

Yeah, okay, sure. So, like, some people don't get to come back. Their lives are different.

[Andrew]

Some people don't get to come back because they have. The community's been. It's been torn asunder by these. All of their bad choices. Some people don't get to come back because they've been murdered.

[Craig]

Yep. And Micah maybe gets to have a different life.

[Andrew]

Micah maybe gets to have a different life, but we're also seeing him in the moment, like, directly after things have happened. And, like, by the time you get to, like, February, who knows what Micah's doing?

[Craig]

Yeah. Will he become a decent summer person? Who knows?

[Andrew]

That's for a sequel to explore, I guess.

[Craig]

She hasn't written that book yet. Yeah. But no, it sounds like Good.

[Andrew]

Good Summer Boy, the sequel to Bad Summer People.

[Craig]

You. Sounds like you had fun, though.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I enjoyed it. It's. It's a good sort of summer coda. It's like you. You do read it, and you read about all these bad people doing all this bad stuff, and. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That I can be done with the season now. Just like all the people in the book are.

[Craig]

I don't want to summer anymore.

[Andrew]

I don't want a summer anymore. I'm thinking about people getting pushed off the boardwalk.

[Craig]

Okay. Okay. All right. Well, anything else?

[Andrew]

I won't reveal to you who the worst summer person is. It's. It's. I mean, it's a. It's a tight. It's a tight race. But I think, just strictly in terms of what they could be charged with if all their misdeeds came to light, there is one person who Comes out ahead of everyone else.

[Craig]

Worst summer person.

[Andrew]

Worst summer person. But I will, I will not reveal to you the identity of the one worst summer person.

[Craig]

All right, well that's for our listeners to find out if they choose to read the book. Or I guess you can send us.

[Andrew]

Or just like read the Wikipedia or whatever. I don't know.

[Craig]

Send us an email overdupodmail.com maybe Andrew will respond. Find us on social media. Verdupod, bluesky, Instagram. That's where we are. Ours is theme song is composed by Nick La Ranges. Andrew, folks want to know more about the show. Where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue podcast.com of course is our Internet website on the information superhighway. AOL keyword overdue. Man, do they still have those? Should we. Have we been missing out on traffic because I never registered our AOL keyword?

[Craig]

Good question.

[Andrew]

Up there on the website we do have the. The books that we have read and the ones that we are going to read. September's schedule is not ready yet but we are going to remember all the books that we read for September.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then also patreon.com overdue pod is our patreon page. You can support the show financially directly there. Get access to bonus. We do some bonus stuff. Some bonus episodes are long read series on things like the Babysitters Club and the Silmarillion and the Iliad. There's just a wide range of of long reads that we've done over many years.

[Craig]

Goosebumps. Goosebumps.

[Andrew]

Yes, Goosebumps. It's almost spooky season so you can refresh yourselves on the Goosebumps books. Access to our Discord community ad, free episode feed, all kinds of other stuff. Patreon.com overdue pod Q&A streams where we just like hang out and play games and chat every month.

[Craig]

It's fun.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Craig, we don't have September fully figured out. Do we figure out what you are reading next?

[Craig]

Yeah, I've just decided we don't have. What are you just unilaterally. I just started reading something I picked.

[Andrew]

We could change it if we want also. Well, I'm already do whatever we want.

[Craig]

I'm reading the four Million by O. Henry. It's a collection of the candy bar guy. The guy who wrote the short stories. Oh, the Gift of the Magi guy.

[Andrew]

Who's the candy bar guy?

[Craig]

Let's see if it's the same guy. I don't think it is. I don't think that he is. No, it's not the same guy.

[Andrew]

Oh, Henry.

[Craig]

But we're gonna be saying that a lot. He wrote the Gift of the Magi, and that's one of the premier short stories in this collection. So I'm excited to share it with you. I've already found another story that, like, pulls the same thing of the Gift of the Magi, but worse in a way that really threw me for a loop. So excited to talk about that.

[Andrew]

I'm excited for you to bring me this short story, but for me not to be able to take advantage of it because I've done something that sort of gives away the thing I would need to use to enjoy the story. I don't know what that would be.

[Craig]

But I sold my microphone to read this book for our podcast.

[Andrew]

I sold my headphones, so no, so I could get a better microphone to talk about the podcast. I don't know. This is a pretty mess.

[Craig]

We're workshopping.

[Andrew]

Workshop. We can workshop.

[Craig]

See us next week. Listen to us next week. We'll have a better version of this joke by then, probably. Andrew, thanks for telling me about bad summer people.

[Andrew]

Thanks for listening, everybody. I hope you had. Hope you had a great summer, people. Hope you're a bunch of hags out there. And until we talk to you next week, please try to be happy. That was a headgum podcast. Running a business means checking a lot of boxes. Let's see, payroll, check. Inventory, check insurance. Ah, good thing Simply Business makes getting small business insurance fast and easy. Check insurance off your [e-mail].