Summer Reading is the story of three women whose disparate lives intersect in the Hamptons. Lissy Snyder, a beautiful and emotionally needy newlywed, is the unwilling stepmother of her husband's hostile children. Her eavesdropping housecleaner, Michelle, a local, is resentful of the moneyed arrogance of the vacationing 'invaders' and can't get a commitment from her fisherman boyfriend. Solitary, bookish Angela Graves, leader of the Page Turners, a book group attended by wealthy young summer residents, harbors the shameful memory of a disastrous affair she had long ago. Over the summer, Angela encourages her book group to identify with the heroines of novels by Trollope, Flaubert, and Charlotte Brontë. But can reading, as she proposes, really influence the choices people make and even change the course of their lives?