CHARACTER
The Five-Star Weekendby Elin Hilderbrand

Electra Undergrove

Electra Undergrove

Quick Facts

Who They Are

Bold, polished, and weaponized, Electra Undergrove is the kind of suburban sovereign who understands that power is performance. She rules by invitation and exclusion, and in the novel she converts social savvy into narrative force: orchestrating disruptions that fracture the carefully staged peace of Hollis’s weekend. Electra doesn’t merely stir drama—she is the drama, a living stress test for the other characters’ curated identities.

Personality & Traits

Electra’s defining feature is control. She curates her image with the same precision she applies to her social maneuvers, leveraging appearances, secrets, and timing to dominate a room and a story. Her antagonism is purposeful: each intrusion exposes what other characters would rather keep hidden.

  • Socially dominant: The undisputed leader of the Wellesley group who sets the calendar and runs “rock and roll football” parties, using access as power.
  • Manipulative strategist: Reaches out to Brooke with a casual Facebook invite, then at Slip 14 extracts the weekend’s itinerary and guest list while planting the ominous “Atlanta” seed.
  • Vindictive disrupter: Crashes Nautilus and later Galley Beach, timing her entrances (even dressing in the suggested colors) to maximize humiliation and spectacle.
  • Gossip-monger with a weaponized feed: Casually serves up damaging intel—like Charlie Kirtley’s sexual misconduct lawsuit—because information is her currency.
  • Meticulously performative: Reinvents herself with an asymmetrical, cherry-cola haircut, a boob job (“buoyant spheres”), and power-costuming—from a clingy blue patio dress to dramatic black-and-white zigzags—finished with giant Kris Jenner sunglasses that literalize her watchful judgment.
  • Cutting and belittling: Lines like “And you’re her… what?” reduce rivals to roles and reinforce her social dominance.

Character Journey

Electra is a static force with dynamic impact. From a deceptively breezy online overture to increasingly theatrical confrontations, she stays consistent—relentless, stylish, and unsparing—while the people around her are forced to evolve. By weaponizing what she knows about Matthew and Gigi, she detonates the central secret and compels Hollis’s circle to confront the gap between who they are and who they pretend to be. Electra doesn’t change; she changes the temperature of every scene she enters.

Symbolism & Thematic Role

Electra personifies the dangers of curated identity and hierarchical friendship. She is the queen bee whose power depends on appearances, gatekeeping, and timing—an avatar of performance over sincerity. Set against the novel’s push toward genuine Friendship and Connection, her perfectly staged entrances function like a reckoning: the past arriving, uninvited, to collapse everyone’s façade.

Key Relationships

  • Hollis Shaw: Once social equals, Electra now resents Hollis’s glossy success and the control she exerts over her narrative (Hollis even blocks her from Hungry with Hollis). Electra’s interruptions are aimed at puncturing Hollis’s public image, proving that the “brand” can’t protect her from the truths she’d rather curate away.

  • Brooke Kirtley: Brooke is Electra’s chosen mark—isolated, eager for belonging, and therefore susceptible. Electra’s faux-reconciliation funnels Brooke’s trust into intel, which Electra then turns into public humiliation. The betrayal exposes how Electra exploits intimacy for leverage.

  • Gigi Ling: Electra targets Gigi at the weekend’s peak, rebranding a private history into an onstage accusation. The confrontation isn’t about truth-seeking; it’s about spectacle and control, with Gigi’s reputation used as the instrument for destabilizing the group.

  • Matthew Madden: Electra’s leverage over Matthew is observational rather than emotional; she once saw him with Gigi in Atlanta and sits on that secret until it will do the most damage. He becomes proof that Electra’s power lies in timing, not empathy.

Defining Moments

Electra’s plot beats are master classes in escalation—each step tighter, louder, and more public.

  • The Facebook invitation: A breezy “Let’s grab a drink” masks a tactical reentry into Brooke’s life, establishing Electra’s M.O.: friendliness as a prelude to extraction.
  • Drinks at Slip 14: She collects the Five-Star Weekend itinerary and guests while casually hinting about Matthew in Atlanta—a planted grenade that will later detonate. This confirms her as an information predator, not a penitent friend.
  • The Nautilus confrontation: Electra crashes dinner, outing her meeting with Brooke and revealing she knows the schedule. The move isolates Brooke and warns everyone that privacy is already compromised.
  • The Galley Beach reveal: In coordinated colors, Electra accuses Gigi of being with Matthew in Atlanta. By choosing a crowded lunch, she ensures maximum collateral damage and pushes the weekend past the point of performative harmony.

Essential Quotes

“I’ll be on Nantucket too. Let’s grab a drink at Slip 14.” This sounds casual, but it’s the opening gambit in Electra’s larger strategy. She frames the rendezvous as spontaneous and friendly to lower Brooke’s guard, turning a drink into an intelligence-gathering session.

“And you’re her… what? Her Wellesley best friend?” The clipped, condescending phrasing reduces identity to rank and role—the social ladder in a single sentence. It’s Electra asserting dominance while nudging rivals into competition.

“Brooke and I had drinks yesterday at Slip Fourteen and she shared the itinerary for your little weekend, so I thought I’d pop by to see how it was going.” Electra weaponizes Brooke’s trust to humiliate her and destabilize the group. The diminutive “your little weekend” punctures Hollis’s curated spectacle, signaling Electra’s disdain for the whole enterprise.

“I just stopped by because late last night, I realized why you look so familiar. I met you with Matthew in Atlanta. You two were coming out of the Optimist when my husband, son, and I were going in.” The faux-innocent preface masks a calculated reveal. By anchoring the accusation in a vivid, verifiable setting, Electra gives the secret credibility and theatrical flair.

“Know that this woman, your friend, your star, was with Matthew in Atlanta. They were together.” In the climactic line, Electra reframes Gigi from “friend” to threat, collapsing personal affection into public indictment. The emphasis on “your star” mocks the group’s idolization and forces a painful collision between authenticity and image.