Read these The Perfect Couple reviews for juicy and mysterious scoop you’ll gasp over from both the book by Elin Hilderbrand and the Netflix adaptation. I’ve read the book, watched the TV show, and followed along the process closely for years now, as an avid Hilderbrand fan.
You’ll learn details, opinions, and fun facts to keep you entertained in both your reading and viewing experiences. Spoilers are also hidden, so you won’t see them if you don’t want to, but you can also choose to be spoiled. Learn what lurks under the surface of The Perfect Couple below.
Plot Overview
- Genre: beach read; Book #3 of 4 in the Nantucket Book Series
- Age Rating: best for adults due to adult content and themes
The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand has content with drugs, death, infidelity, and cancer.
Whether you are reading the book The Perfect Couple and/or watching the Netflix adaptation, this is all you really need to know about the plot:
A young couple is getting married on the island of Nantucket. The groom is from a very wealthy family with a massive waterfront estate there. His mother is a famous mystery writer. The bride is from a Pennsylvania family of lesser wealth, and she works at a zoo.
The morning of the wedding, a dead body is floating in the water, and it’s one of their own. As you try to figure out whether the death was an accident or murder (and if so, whodunnit?), you learn that all the major players have secrets, making them far darker than their glossy exteriors.
The Perfect Couple: Review of the Book
My Rating: ★★★★★
The Perfect Couple is not a true story, but rather, a fictional story set at a wedding on Nantucket. It’s one of my top 3 best Elin Hilderbrand books, and I’ve read nearly all of Elin Hilderbrand’s books.
The reasons are simple: while the reader gets the same Nantucket setting and “rich people problems” we know and love from the “Queen of the Beach Reads,” we also get the intrigue and high emotions of a wedding and a death investigation. This heightens every aspect of the plot and keeps the reader extra immersed.
I thought the ending was weak given the suspense building up to it, but I still adored this escapist book and consider it to be one of the best beach reads of all-time.
The Perfect Couple: Review of the Netflix TV Show
I binged all six episodes of the adaptation in two days and am here to share 10 thoughts/fun facts to enhance your own viewing experiences:
1. The Opening Scenes
When I watched the first 30 seconds filled with summer scenes of Nantucket and “Nantucket Island” by Willie Wright playing, I had chills!!!
After spending so many years reading Hilderbrand’s books and visiting the locations (I visit Cape Cod/Martha’s Vineyard/Nantucket every summer), seeing it all play out on TV felt surreal.
2. Filming Locations
It actually filmed in Chatham, Massachusetts, which is the loveliest little town on the mainland in Cape Cod, due to the transportation difficulties of filming an island.
I highly recommend visiting Chatham for one day or more! It’s very quaint and charming in town– with New England flair, of course. It’s our favorite Cape Cod town.
They did show Nantucket’s Mitchell’s Book Corner briefly, though! I have visited there a few times, and Elin Hilderbrand does her weekly summer book signings there.
The coastal New England vibes were displayed well overall, but the police station was way off. It had the dark and cold feel of an urban station, whereas in reality these types of governmental buildings there are more quaint and match the New England aesthetic.
3. Casting Standouts
Truly, everyone was perfect in their roles.
First, Nicole Kidman can do no wrong. I’ve heard some viewers complain that she always plays the same type of role (the rich and unhappy wife), and I think that’s a fair criticism, but I also think it’s because she’s so good at it.
Dakota Fanning as the groom’s sister-in-law, Abby, was also a real standout. I haven’t seen her in so long, and beyond her delightfully awful mean girl performance, it was just nice to see her all grown up.
4. Casting Crossovers With Other Book Adaptations
More bookish fun facts about the characters:
Nicole Kidman has also played Celeste in the Big Little Lies adaptation. (I heard this was why the name of The Perfect Couple‘s bride, Celeste, was changed to Amelia for the adaptation.)
Amelia is played by Eve Hewson, who is Bono’s daughter, and who also starred in the Netflix adaptation of the book Behind Her Eyes.
Lastly, the actress playing Chloe, Mia Isaac, played Covey in Hulu’s Black Cake adaptation.
(By the way, these are all great books and adaptations if you want to expand your binge-reading and watching!)
5. The Chief
We don’t meet the famous Chief Ed Kapenash from many of Elin’s books on the TV show. Since he floats through so many of her novels in pivotal ways, I was really excited to finally see him!
On the show, the chief is Dan Carter, a widowed dad of teen, Chloe.
6. The House
The house is a character in its own right in the book. I thought the exterior was spot on, but the interior didn’t have all the Nantucket vibes I hoped for. It’s such a unique place stylistically, and that wasn’t always captured in exquisite detail.
I was thinking more along the lines of Emily Gilmore’s Nantucket estate in the reboot of Gilmore Girls.
7. The Opening Dance
The most debated topic about the TV series so far has been the opening credits, which are a choreographed wedding dance on the beach. It’s a love or hate thing; I personally hated it.
While the song, Meghan Trainor’s “Criminals,” was catchy (and stuck in my head now), the dance itself felt so cringeworthy to me, particularly because it doesn’t match the very upper-crust and reserved vibes of Nantucket at all. It felt like it belonged more at a laid-back, tropical destination wedding.
I would have preferred something more along those lines of the rehearsal dinner scene, where the vibes were so quintessential Nantucket, from the champagne to the preppy Nantucket reds.
The dance was meant to show a lighter take on the “whodunnit” plot and perhaps inspire some viral social media content, but the cast was not enthused about it and had to come around to the idea.
8. Changes From the Book
There are a lot of changes from the book to the TV series. Without revealing spoilers, here are a few:
- Celeste becomes Amelia.
- Featherleigh becomes Isabel.
- Detective Nicholas Diamantopoulos becomes Detective Nikki Henry.
- There’s a third brother, Will, in the TV series.
- The ring becomes the bracelet.
- Greer’s career is in distress in the book, whereas it’s thriving in the TV series.
I didn’t mind these changes, and I think it’s because I’m a few years removed from the book. I’ve participated in a few social media threads in which more recent readers were far less enthused about the differences.
9. Thoughts on the Ending
In one word, the ending of the TV show was satisfying— more so than the book!
In the book, it’s determined that Merritt died from an accidental drowning. Abby had placed a sedative pill into Featherleigh’s water so that she wouldn’t sleep with Thomas, but Merritt unknowingly drank it. After cutting her foot, she walked into the water to wash it, fainted, and drowned.
In the TV series, Merritt is intentionally killed by Abby. Since Merritt is pregnant, the Winbury boys will no longer receive their trust fund money in a few weeks when Will turns 18, but rather once Merritt’s baby becomes an adult in 18+ years. Abby is greedy for the money (particularly given Thomas’s bad investments), drugs Merritt, entices her into the water, and drowns her intentionally. She is arrested.
10. Overall Rating: Is it a good TV series?
My Rating: ★★★★☆
The Perfect Couple on Netflix was delicious, delightful, and worth the wait! (It’s the first adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s books.)
One star was removed for the oddness of the dance scene and the occasional lack of attention to detail in regard to the real life vibes of Nantucket.
However, overall it was juicy, salacious, and utterly bingeworthy.
It’s a good series for those who haven’t read the book, those who read it a while ago and forget the details, and those who read it more recently but don’t that it doesn’t totally follow the book.
About Elin Hilderbrand
about
A Pennsylvania native, Elin Hilderbrand, is a Nantucket-based American author known for her bestselling beach read books, novellas, and short stories. Her captivating novels blend romance, high-class drama, and picturesque Nantucket settings.
While Elin Hilderbrand is now tecnhically retired from writing, next up in development are an adaptation of her Winter in Paradise series and an adaptation of her novel, The Five-Star weekend.
More Elin Hilderbrand Posts
If you can’t get enough of Elin Hilderbrand’s juicy plots, check out these posts next:
- Elin Hilderbrand’s Book Series
- Swan Song Book Review (The next book in the Nantucket series)
- Swan Song Book Club Questions
remember, it’s a good day to read a book. – jules
