Book Review: It Happens in the Hamptons by Holly Peterson

Who doesn’t love a cheesy Lifetime movie? I’m a huge fan of them myself, and sometimes I give into the guilty pleasure of following along some whacked-out tale that gives me the warm fuzzies at the end. That’s kind of how It Happens in the Hamptons by Holly Peterson is. This novel is pure guilty-pleasure reading. It’s a very quick read, perfect for sitting with by the pool this summer.  Have fun with a romp in the Hamptons, living large alongside Katie Doyle. 

About It Happens in the Hamptons

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (May 9, 2017)

In the Hamptons, everyday people are as complicated and fascinating as millionaires…

When Katie Doyle moves across the country to the Hamptons, she is hoping to find summer employment, new friends for her young son, and a chance to explore a new love affair with George, a dazzling investor. What she finds is a strange cocktail of classes, where society’s one-percenters vacation alongside local, hardworking people who’ve lived in the Hamptons for generations. Though she’s looking forward to her move, Katie is wary about mingling in her boyfriend’s East Coast elite circles. She soon discovers Southampton isn’t all that it seems to be on the surface—and neither are the people who live there.

As George takes Katie on a whirlwind tour of country clubs, haute couture, and lavish events, Katie is amazed to witness sudden whims becoming dire needs, extramarital affairs blossoming right and left, and people purchasing friends and loyalties like a pair of shoes. Even the middle-class townspeople maintain determined façades while maneuvering like sharks among the wealthy summer invaders.

The more Katie becomes immersed, the more she learns the stories of both the upstairs and downstairs, the upper crust and middle of the road. The combustion between classes becomes explosive as the summer tears on. Betrayals, a sexual predator, and a missing person lost in murky waves drive the reader on a racing Learjet through impossible twists and turns before landing at the shocking conclusion. When Katie meets Luke, a marine biologist and teacher, he makes her what it is she really wants as she understands the life she’s begun for herself is built on shifting Hamptons’ dunes.

Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About Holly Peterson

Holly Peterson is the author the May 2017 social satire fiction release, It Happens in the Hamptons. In 2016, she curated an outdoor cooking book, Assouline’s Smoke and Fire: Recipes and Menus for Outdoor Entertaining. In 2014, she published The Idea of Him and of the New York Times bestseller The Manny in 2007.  She was a Contributing Editor for Newsweek, an Editor-at-Large for Talk magazine and an Emmy Award-winning Producer for ABC News, where she spent more than a decade covering everthing from trials of the century to global politics. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, Town and Country, The Daily Beast, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle Decor, Departures and numerous other publications.

Find out more about Holly at her website, connect with her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.