The Perfect Couple (2018) is a mystery romance by New York Times best-selling author Elin Hilderbrand that is set in scenic Nantucket, Massachusetts. The novel opens with a tragic death and a canceled wedding at the height of Nantucket’s busy tourist season. With a mysteriously dead maid of honor, a devasted bride, a missing best man, and a groom’s family intent on guarding its secrets, the Nantucket investigators have their hands full. As Chief Ed Kapenash leads the investigation, it becomes clear that the wealthy, perfect world of the novel’s characters hides many dark realities.

Within weeks of its publication in 2018, The Perfect Couple topped the New York Times bestseller list. Breezy in tone, yet filled with sharp social observations, the novel is Hilderbrand’s 21st book and her first mystery involving a death. Hilderbrand has been called the “queen of beach reads,” referring to the idea that a reader could quickly read her books while sitting at a beach (Heaney, Kate. “How Elin Hilderbrand Became the ‘Queen of Beach Reads.’” The Cut, 2019). The Perfect Couple is being developed as a limited series by Netflix.

Hilderbrand lives on Nantucket with her three children and her husband. She is the author of over 20 best-selling novels, including Barefoot (2007) and the Castaways (2009), and many short-story collections. Hilderbrand studied writing at Johns Hopkins University and is a graduate of the fiction workshop at the University of Iowa.

This study guide follows the Hodder Books, London, 2018 Kindle edition.

Plot Summary

On the morning of the day Celeste Otis is to wed Benjamin “Benji” Winbury on Nantucket, she discovers the body of her maid of honor, Merritt Monaco, floating in the sea. The best man, Michael Oscar “Shooter” Uxley, is missing. A distraught Celeste cancels the wedding. Ed Kapenash, the chief of Nantucket Police, and Detective Nick Diamantopoulos begin investigating. As Chief Kapenash and Nick interrogate members of the wedding party over the course of a day, the narrative also flashes back to multiple timelines in the past. These flashbacks reveal the connections between Merritt, the Winburys, and the Otises.

Tag and Greer Garrison Winbury, Benji’s father and mother, are extremely wealthy. Their older son, Thomas, is married to oil heiress Abby. The Winburys own homes in London and Manhattan and a huge waterfront estate on Nantucket. Greer is a popular and prolific writer of murder mystery novels. In contrast, Celeste’s parents, Bruce and Karen Otis, hold more modest jobs and live in the town of Easton, Pennsylvania. Celeste is the assistant director at the Bronx Zoo. The now deceased Merritt, who was Celeste’s best friend, worked for the zoo’s public relations department.

Celeste and Benji’s romance takes a turn when Celeste and Shooter fall in love. Around the same time, however, Karen is diagnosed with terminal cancer. To ensure her mother lives to see her settled, Celeste decides to shelve her feelings for Shooter and marry Benji. Greer takes over the wedding planning, arranging the wedding at Summerland Estate, the Winbury home on Nantucket. When Merritt accompanies Celeste to a visit to Nantucket, she feels a spark of attraction with the much-older Tag. Tag and Merritt begin an affair that lasts several weeks. By the time Tag decides to break it off, Merritt is pregnant. Tag wants no role in the pregnancy and plans to write Merritt a check to stay out of his life. Though Merritt tells Celeste about the affair, she does not tell her best friend she is pregnant.

Chief Kapenash and Nick’s investigation reveals barbiturates—a kind of sedative drug—in the pregnant Merritt’s blood, yet no drugs have been found on Merritt’s person or in her room. Witnesses say Merritt was upset and crying the night before her death. Shooter, missing since the same night, turns up. However, when Chief Kapenash questions him about an alibi, Shooter runs away again, only to be caught at the ferry leaving Nantucket. Shooter confesses that he was evading the police’s questions because he did not want to draw attention to his plans with Celeste. He and Celeste are in love and had finally decided to elope the morning of the wedding. Shooter had left Summerland to wait for Celeste at the dock. Celeste only spotted Merritt’s body because she was leaving the house to meet him. When Celeste reveals to the police that Tag and Merritt had an affair, suspicion shifts from Shooter to the Winburys. Tag admits to the affair but flatly denies killing Merritt.

Chief Kapenash and Nick get a new lead when Featherleigh Dale, a family friend in town to attend the wedding, claims Merritt asked her for a glass of water the night before she died. Police suspect the water Merritt drank may have been drugged, accounting for the barbiturates in Merritt’s blood. Unable to locate the glass, a key piece of evidence, Chief Kapenash and Nick are forced to announce Merritt’s death an accident. Celeste leaves Benji for good. Shooter plans to wait for Celeste to find her way back to him. The mystery of Merritt’s death begins to resolve when Greer finds her own pillbox—containing heavy sedatives—missing. The box is ultimately traced to the room of Thomas and Abby. Greer overhears Abby accuse Thomas of continuing his long affair with Featherleigh. Greer realizes that it was Abby who stole her pills and drugged Featherleigh’s water so Featherleigh would not sleep with Thomas. The glass ended up going to Merritt. A drugged Merritt must have accidentally drowned. Greer decides to take the secret of Abby’s accidental involvement in Merritt’s death to her grave to protect her family.

The last scene of the novel reveals Tag taking Merritt on a kayak ride on the sea so they can talk privately. Tag tells Merritt their affair was just a distraction, brings her to shore, and walks away. Hurt and angry, Merritt throws a ring Tag had given her into the sea. When Merritt cuts her foot on a broken glass on the beach, she returns to the water to wash off her wound. She spots the ring on the shallow ocean floor and dives to retrieve it. Extremely sleepy from the spiked water she accidentally drank earlier, Merritt faints in the sea and drowns.