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

There’s nothing like summer on Nantucket: lobster, beach days, and… murder?

The idyllic setting of Queen of the Beach Read the novel by Elin Hilderbrand The perfect couple is shocked when the maid of honor at Nantucket’s wedding of the year is found dead. The book, published in 2018, is getting the small-screen treatment with a new Netflix series starring Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Meghann Fahy, Dakota Fanning and more in an ensemble cast. The novel’s story is set over the Fourth of July weekend and features several flashbacks told from the perspectives of several characters. The six-episode series, now streaming on Netflix, is told over the course of the intended wedding weekend and is interspersed with interviews with investigators.

While the broad outline of the story (and the killer!) remains the same as in Hilderbrand’s original whodunnit, the TV version changes and adds several details, including a dramatic revelation 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, there are some basic facts about the characters that have been adapted for the small screen. First things first: the main character in the book is named Celeste Otis. The Celeste from the novel is described as blonde, shy, and reserved. In the Netflix series, Celeste is changed to Amelia Sacks, who is brown-haired and much bolder—the Celeste from the book would never run onto the lawn in her bra, for example (although she would probably go to great lengths to save a bug from being squashed). 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 with successful sons – but in the book they only have two sons, Benji (Billy Howle) and Thomas (Jack Reynor). The character of Will (Sam Nivola), the youngest of the Windburys, does not exist in the book.

While Fanning, as Thomas’ wife Abby, is just as obnoxious as she is in the show, the book’s Abby is a bit more subdued. She is described as having a southern accent, red hair, and coming from her own generational wealth. She is also pregnant in the book and is revealed to have suffered multiple miscarriages. She is also just as suspicious of Thomas’ cheating in the book.

The Merritt-Tag Relationship

Although Merritt’s death is the starting point for the entire plot, the character is not as present in the show as he is in the book. In the book, we get a lot of background information about Merritt (Fahy) and her relationship with Tag. Merritt is the head of PR at the zoo where Celeste works, but before that she was a rising star at a major PR agency. One of the founders of that agency preyed on Merritt and forced her into an inappropriate relationship with him. When his wife (who happens to be the other co-founder) discovered this, Merritt was fired and blacklisted. That’s how Merritt ended up working at the zoo, where she met Celeste.

Merritt first meets Tag when she visits Nantucket for Celeste’s spring bachelorette weekend before the wedding—and Tag becomes obsessed with her. So obsessed that he shows up on 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 (nowhere near as expensive as the bracelet on the show) and plans a romantic getaway for Merritt’s birthday, but when he sees Thomas in the lobby bar of the hotel where they’re supposed to be staying, he calls the whole thing off. The breakup devastates Merritt, who has just found out she’s pregnant.

The Thomas-Isabel Relationship

Isabel (Isabelle Adjani) in the book is Featherleigh Dale, a British (not French) friend of the Windbury family and, to be honest, a big profiteer. She and Thomas do have an affair in the book, but she is much more interested in him, while in the show Thomas seems more into Isabel.

Sign up for Entertainment weekly‘s free daily newsletter for the latest TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars and more.

The Shooter-Amelia-Benji love triangle

As in the series, in the book, Celeste spends a day with Shooter at the Nantucket house before Benji arrives (they don’t get there by private jet in the book), and the couple falls in love almost immediately. When Benji proposes to Celeste, Shooter helps make the arrangements—but leaves Celeste a note that reads, “In case you had any doubts, I’m in love with you.” Celeste struggles internally with whether to stay with Benji or leave him for Shooter, and her anxiety about the situation causes her to develop a severe stutter. On the morning of the wedding, Celeste and Shooter had planned to elope together—but on Celeste’s way to meet Shooter, she finds Merritt.

Background of the shooter

In the book, Benji’s best man is Shooter Uxley, not Shooter Dival, and their backgrounds are vastly different. While the show’s 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 on a note of hope that Shooter and Celeste will eventually get together, rather than calling off their love affair entirely.

The local police team

Michael Beach’s Chief of Police Dan Carter is Ed Kapenash in the book. The Kapenash character appears in several of Hilderbrand’s novels set on Nantucket. And Detective Nikki Henry does not exist in the book. Instead, there is a detective character named Nick, known as “The Greek,” who is described as bald, terribly handsome and a womanizer. Kapenash goes to Nick when he needs to get someone talking.

Amelia’s parents

Amela’s parents are portrayed in a similar way in the show and the book, with her mother battling terminal cancer and taking pills to Nantucket with the plan to kill herself with dignity after the wedding. What we don’t learn in the show is that Celeste’s father, Bruce, once had an emotional affair with a man, something Karen learns during the wedding weekend.

Greer’s career

Greer is a successful novelist in the book, but on paper her career is faltering, not flourishing. (The dramatic book launch scene in episode 5 does not exist in the book.) We learn in the novel that Greer, who began writing mysteries while pregnant with Thomas to stave off boredom, recently sent her next book to her publisher, who gave her two weeks to rewrite it before it hit the shelves. 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’s secretly funding. The family is completely shocked by this news—as are the readers of the book. In the book, Greer comes from a wealthy English family, the Garrisons, and this part of her backstory doesn’t exist.

The murderer

Abby is indeed the perpetrator in both the show and the original novel, but the circumstances leading to Merritt’s death are quite different. While it is revealed in the show that Abby intentionally drowned Merritt to protect her own baby’s future inheritance, leading to her arrest, the book ends with the police calling Merritt’s death an accident. And while in the show Thomas steals pills from Amelia’s mother, it is Greer’s pills that disappear in the book.

Here’s what happens in the book: Over the course of the weekend, Greer notices that her pillbox, containing sleeping pills, is missing. The night of the murder, she had taken it downstairs to get a glass of champagne to help her sleep. Eventually, the housekeeper (called Elida in the book) gives it back to her, 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, during which Abby tells Thomas that she saw Featherleigh waiting for him. Greer realizes that Abby saw 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 messing with Thomas.” The book points out that Merritt’s death was indeed an accident – Abby did not mean to kill Featherleigh or anyone else, and she may never realize that it was the sleeping pill meant for Featherleigh that ended up in Merritt’s glass. The night of the rehearsal dinner, Merritt throws the ring Tag gave her into the ocean in anger when he makes it clear that he won’t be back with her. She regrets it and goes to get the ring. But by then the sleeping pills have kicked into her system and she doesn’t come out of the water.

The perfect couple is now available on Netflix.