49 pages • 1-hour read
Every Vow You Break: A Novel
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Chapters 15-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of violence, emotional and psychological abuse, gender discrimination, cursing, infidelity, and sexual content.
Chapter 15 Summary
Abigail reunites with Bruce for lunch. When they return to their cabin, they have impersonal sex. At dinner, Abigail feels watched by the mostly male guests. They socialize with Alec and Jill. Later, Jill confides that her ex-fiancé is also on the island and that she has lied to Alec about her past. They make plans to meet at the pool the next day.
That evening, Abigail sneaks into an office to call Zoe. Zoe reveals that Scott is actually Eric Newman, whose wife, Madeleine, drowned on their honeymoon. Abigail recalls how Eric had called her Madeleine. A staff member catches Abigail but confirms an emergency plane can be arranged if needed.
Chapter 16 Summary
The next morning, Abigail tells Bruce she plans to meet Jill at the pool but privately resolves to get off the island. She and Bruce walk to a seaside cliff, where Abigail builds a small cairn and pockets a distinctive white stone. Bruce brings up the topic of children, but Abigail wants to have that discussion after the honeymoon ends. She drifts off, and when she awakens, she finds Bruce talking with Eric Newman. Abigail confronts Eric, who claims Scott is his middle name and deflects questions about his late wife. After Eric leaves, Bruce considers the idea that Eric recognized her from her bachelorette party, and while Abigail doesn’t dismiss the possibility, she does claim that she has no memory of him. Though he appears unconcerned, Bruce assures her that they can avoid him. Later, Abigail goes to the pool, but Jill never arrives.
Chapter 17 Summary
That evening, Abigail notices Jill and Alec’s table is empty. Later, a scratching sound awakens Abigail in her cabin. Outside, she finds Jill in a blood-stained nightgown. Jill seems terrified and doesn’t recognize Abigail before fleeing into the woods. Concerned, Abigail chases after her but loses sight of her. She wakes Bruce, and they go to the main lodge for help. Chip Ramsay informs them that Jill and Alec left the island that afternoon. He suggests Abigail had a dream and points out she is now the only female guest. He promises to have the woods searched at dawn, but Abigail is doubtful. She returns to the cabin with Bruce.
Chapter 18 Summary
Abigail wakes to find Bruce at the main lodge talking with Chip and a private detective, Bob Kaplan. They inform her they have spoken to Jill in California, which appears to be proof that Abigail’s experience was a dream. Kaplan adds that a search of the woods yielded nothing. Abigail insists she and Bruce leave immediately. Bruce agrees and goes to arrange a plane. While he is gone, Abigail goes into the woods to look for evidence of Jill. She searches the area where she last saw her but finds nothing. Eric Newman emerges and tells her he also saw the woman in the blood-stained nightgown.
Chapter 19 Summary
In the woods, Eric says he reported what he saw. He reveals no plane landed or departed the previous day, meaning Jill and Alec could not have left. Eric apologizes for stalking Abigail, explaining it was a delusion driven by her resemblance to his deceased wife. Abigail rejoins Bruce at their cabin. Bruce says their flight is delayed until morning. An argument breaks out as Abigail questions the resort. Bruce becomes enraged, calling her a “spoiled bitch” (182). Shocked by his hostility, Abigail resolves to find her own way off the island.
Chapter 20 Summary
Abigail confronts Chip about an alternate flight, but he insists none are available. She questions Porter, who seems surprised to learn Jill has left. Desperate, Abigail goes to the office to use the landline. Her attempts to call Zoe and 911 fail, as the line appears to be dead. Mellie enters the office and whispers that Jill is still on the island. She urges Abigail not to cause trouble until the plane arrives. As Mellie leaves, she gives Abigail a final warning: “Don’t trust your husband” (191).
Chapter 21 Summary
Later, Abigail finds a path in the woods to a clearing with a firepit and a sign for “Silvanus Woods,” carved with a man’s face made of leaves. Unnerved, she returns to her cabin and searches Bruce’s bag. She finds a silver ring engraved with the same Green Man symbol and a book inscribed to Bruce from his “brother” Chip. Terrified by Bruce’s connection to the resort’s imagery, she decides Eric may be her only ally and goes to his cabin for help. Eric confesses their meeting in California was not a coincidence; an anonymous client paid him to meet and seduce her.
Chapters 15-21 Analysis
These chapters orchestrate Abigail’s psychological descent, transforming her anxiety into terror through a systematic campaign of isolation and manipulation. The theme of The Weaponization of Trust as Psychological Manipulation becomes an active assault on her perception of reality. The resort’s staff and her own husband collaborate to invalidate her experience of seeing the injured Jill. Chip Ramsay’s calm insistence that the Greenlys have left the island, supported by Bruce, is a classic gaslighting technique designed to make Abigail doubt her sanity. The subsequent introduction of a “private detective” adds a layer of false authority, framing Abigail’s perception as a delusion to be managed. This psychological entrapment is reinforced by physical and technological isolation; the failure of the resort’s landlines severs her connection to Zoe, her only external validator. With Jill missing, Mellie is the only other woman on the island, and her furtive warning, “Don’t trust your husband” (191), serves as a crucial turning point. While it confirms Abigail’s suspicions, its cryptic nature hints at a conspiracy, deepening Abigail’s isolation.
Concurrent with Abigail’s entrapment is the erosion of Bruce’s carefully constructed persona, a key development in The Unraveling of Performed Identities. Initially presented as a stable provider, Bruce’s identity fractures under the pressure of Abigail’s refusal to accept the resort’s fabricated narrative. His attempts to placate her shift from gentle dismissal to overt frustration, culminating in a moment of verbal abuse when he calls her a “spoiled bitch” (182). The suddenness of this outburst reveals the misogynistic entitlement concealed beneath his performance of the modern husband. His rage is triggered by her failure to remain a passive participant in the world he controls, exposing how his affection is conditional upon her compliance. This unraveling reframes his previous generosity—paying off her loans, orchestrating the honeymoon—not as acts of love but as investments in an asset he expects to control. His identity as a benevolent partner is exposed as a mask for a controlling man.
The setting of Heart Pond Island evolves with the plot’s escalating horror, as it transforms from a symbol of rustic luxury to a gilded cage. As Abigail ventures deeper into the landscape, she discovers a clearing marked “SILVANUS WOODS” with an etching of a man’s face made of leaves (194). This Green Man imagery, echoed on the silver ring she finds in Bruce’s bag, connects the island’s male inhabitants to a primal mythology of masculine power. The woods cease to be a simple forest and become a ritualistic space, a theater for an unraveling conspiracy. Abigail’s own realization that she has moved from a psychological thriller to a story about an insular, cult-like community highlights her conscious awareness of the shift. The island is therefore not merely a backdrop but a character in the narrative: a living prison where nature is invoked to justify a brutal, man-made order.
The dynamic between the female characters in this section explores the formation and suppression of female alliances within a patriarchal system. The brief, confidential conversation between Abigail and Jill in the lodge represents a fleeting moment of solidarity. They find common ground in their shared unease, creating a potential bulwark against the resort’s male-dominated atmosphere. The narrative deliberately extinguishes this potential. Jill’s failure to appear at the pool, followed by her terrifying, bloody appearance and subsequent disappearance, violently severs this bond. The systematic denial of Jill’s presence is not only an attack on Abigail’s sanity but also a symbolic erasure of female solidarity. Mellie’s later intervention provides another form of fractured alliance; her whispered warning is an act of resistance, but its brevity highlights the extreme danger of female collaboration within this environment. She can offer a clue but not a solution, placing the burden of survival back on Abigail.
The narrative craft in these chapters relies on a controlled acceleration of suspense, layering minor inconsistencies to build toward major psychological fractures. Early chapters are marked by subtle dissonances: the impersonal nature of her intimacy with Bruce, the awkward encounter with Eric, and Jill’s failure to arrive for their meeting. These events create a foundation of unease. The plot then pivots on the horror of Jill bleeding, a moment that shatters the veneer of civility and initiates a cascade of revelations. The subsequent chapters are structured as a series of reveals that dismantle Abigail’s support systems: the discovery of Eric’s true identity, the gaslighting from Bruce and Chip, the non-functional phones, and Mellie’s chilling confirmation of a conspiracy. The section culminates in Eric’s confession that he was hired for a fidelity test. This final revelation re-contextualizes the novel’s inciting incident as the first move in a premeditated plot.
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