How the series “The Perfect Couple” differs from the book

ATTENTION: This article contains spoilers for Elin Hilderbrand’s book The perfect couple and all six episodes of Netflix’ The perfect couple.

There’s nothing better than summer on Nantucket – lobster, beach days and… murder?

The idyllic setting of the Queen of the Beach read Elin Hilderbrand’s novel The perfect couple is devastated when the maid of honor at Nantucket’s wedding of the year is found dead. The book, published in 2018, will now be seen on the big screen in a new Netflix series starring Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Meghann Fahy, Dakota Fanning and more. The novel’s story is set over the Fourth of July weekend and includes several flashbacks told from the perspective of various characters. The six-part series, now streaming on Netflix, is set over the weekend of the planned wedding and is interspersed with interviews with investigators.

While the basic outline of the story (and the killer!) remains the same as in Hilderbrand’s original crime thriller, the TV version changes and adds several details, including a dramatic reveal in the finale that is nowhere to be found in the novel. Read on as we explore the biggest changes between The perfect couple Book and show.

The basics

First off, there are some basic facts about the characters that have been changed for the small screen. First off: The main character of the book is named Celeste Otis. The Celeste of the novel is described as blonde, shy, and reserved. In the Netflix series, Celeste is changed into Amelia Sacks, who is brunette and much braver—the Celeste of the book would never run into the front yard in just her bra, for example (though she would probably go to great lengths to save an insect from being squashed, too). They both work at a zoo, are incredibly close to their parents, and have complicated romantic feelings for Benji. But we’ll get to that later.

The Windbury family looks very different in the series. Yes, Greer (Kidman) and Tag (Schreiber) are super rich and have successful sons – but in the book they only have two sons, Benji (Billy Howle) and Thomas (Jack Reynor). The character Will (Sam Nivola), the Windburys’ youngest son, does not appear in the book.

While Fanning is just as insufferable as Thomas’ wife Abby in the series, the Abby in the book is a little more reserved. She is described as having a southern accent and red hair and comes from a family that has been wealthy for generations. In the book, she is also pregnant and it is revealed that she has suffered several miscarriages. She is just as suspicious of Thomas’ infidelity in the book.

The Merritt-Tag relationship

While Merritt’s death is the impetus for the entire plot, the character is not quite as present in the series as she is in the book. In the book, we get a lot of backstory about Merritt (Fahy) and her relationship with Tag. Merritt is the PR head of the zoo where Celeste works, but before that she was a rising star at a well-known PR firm. One of the founders of that firm groomed Merritt and forced her into an inappropriate relationship with him. When his wife (who happens to be the other When Merritt (co-founder) found out, she was fired and blacklisted. That’s how Merritt came to work at the zoo, where she met Celeste.

Merritt first meets Tag when she visits Nantucket for Celeste’s bachelorette weekend the spring before the wedding—and Tag is obsessed with her. So obsessed that he shows up at her doorstep in the middle of the night one night because he can’t stop thinking about her. He buys her a trendy thumb ring (which isn’t nearly as expensive as the bracelet in the show) and plans a romantic outing for Merritt’s birthday, but when he sees Thomas in the lobby bar of the hotel they were planning to stay at, he calls the whole thing off. The breakup devastates Merritt, who has just learned she’s pregnant.

The Thomas-Isabel relationship

Isabel (Isabelle Adjani) is Featherleigh Dale in the book, a British (not French) friend of the Windbury family and, frankly, a major freeloader. She and Thomas do have an affair in the book, but she is much more into him, whereas in the series it seems to be Thomas who is more into Isabel.

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The Shooter-Amelia-Benji love triangle

As in the series, in the book, Celeste spends a day with Shooter at the house in Nantucket before Benji arrives (they just don’t get there on a private jet in the book), and the two fall in love almost immediately. When Benji proposes to Celeste, Shooter helps arrange everything – but gives Celeste a note saying, “In case you have any doubts, I’m in love with you.” Celeste struggles internally with whether to stay with Benji or leave him for Shooter, and her fear of the situation causes her to stutter badly. On the morning of the wedding, Celeste and Shooter had planned to run away together – but as Celeste was on her way to meet Shooter, she found Merritt.

Background of the shooter

In the book, Shooter Uxley is Benji’s best man, not Shooter Dival, and their backgrounds are extremely different. While the series’ Shooter comes from a prominent Indian family, the book’s Shooter has a tragic backstory, never went to college, and is a self-made man. The book also ends with the hope that Shooter and Celeste will get together rather than ending their romantic relationship altogether.

The local police team

Michael Beach’s police chief Dan Carter is Ed Kapenash in the book. The character Kapenash appears in several of Hilderbrand’s novels set on Nantucket. And Detective Nikki Henry is not in the book. Instead, there is a detective character named Nick, known as “The Greek,” who is described as bald. very handsome and a ladies man. Kapenash goes to Nick when he needs someone to talk to.

Amelia’s parents

Amela’s parents are portrayed similarly in the series and the book: her mother is battling terminal cancer and is taking pills with her to Nantucket so that she can take her own life with dignity after the wedding. What we don’t learn in the series is that Celeste’s father Bruce once had an emotional affair with a man, which Karen finds out on the wedding weekend.

Greer’s career

In the book, Greer is a successful novelist, but on paper her career is stagnant rather than blossoming. (The dramatic book launch scene in Episode 5 is absent in the book.) In the novel, we learn that Greer, who started writing crime novels out of boredom while pregnant with Thomas, recently submitted her next book to her publisher, who is giving her two weeks to rewrite it before it’s shelved. After Merritt’s death, however, she all but gives up on finishing it.

Greer’s background

In the sixth and final episode, Greer reveals to her family that she started out as an escort – which is how she met Tag – and that the mysterious man who crashed her book launch party is actually her brother, whose gambling problem she secretly funded. The family is completely shocked by this news – as will readers of the book. In the book, Greer comes from a wealthy English family, the Garrisons, and this part of her backstory does not exist.

The murderer

Abby is actually the culprit in both the series and the original novel, but the circumstances leading to Merritt’s death are quite different. While in the series it is revealed that Abby deliberately drowned Merritt to protect her own baby’s future inheritance, leading to her arrest, the book ends with the police declaring Merritt’s death an accident. And while in the series Thomas steals pills from Amelia’s mother, in the book it is Greer’s pills that go missing.

Here’s what happens in the book: Over the course of the weekend, Greer notices that her pillbox of sleeping pills is missing. On the night of the murder, she had taken it downstairs to get a glass of champagne to help her sleep. Eventually, the housekeeper (named Elida in the book) gives her the box back, saying she found it in the trash can in Thomas and Abby’s room. Greer then overhears an argument between Thomas and Abby about his affair with Featherleigh, in which Abby tells Thomas that she saw Featherleigh waiting for him. Greer realizes that Abby had seen her in the kitchen with the pillbox, and that her daughter-in-law must have stolen a sleeping pill and “decided to put the old girl to sleep… to keep her from fooling around with Thomas.” The book suggests that Merritt’s death was actually an accident—Abby didn’t mean to kill Featherleigh or anyone else, and she may never realize that it was the sleeping pill intended for Featherleigh that ended up in Merritt’s glass. On the night of the rehearsal dinner, Merritt throws the ring that Tag gave her into the ocean out of anger when he makes it clear that he won’t get back together with her. She regrets it and goes in to get the ring. But by this time, the sleeping pills in her body have already kicked in and she can’t make it out of the water.

The perfect couple is now streaming on Netflix.