Malibu Rising - Taylor Jenkins Reid

Fiction

Rating: 8.5/10

It’s August 1983, the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party at her Malibu home, no surprise there given the title. This story is about one unforgettable night for the members of a family that will irrevocably change who they are to each other and who they thought they were to themselves.

Nina and each of her three siblings prepare for the bash by letting the reader catch glimpses of their backstory and their present-day.  Slowly unfurling the secrets all four of them are keeping, secrets that won’t survive the night.  

This page turning family saga is everything a girl like me could want in a summer read. As always with this author, you have superbly drawn characters and an impeccable sense of time and place. Reid never shy’s away from ensuring her characters are complex, in the ways that they are flawed and the ways they are admirable. Further she does a flawless job of intertwining the present day narrative with a timeline that traces the tragedies of their past.

This book reminded me of the gripping and sprawling reads I would devour in the summers of my younger years. An absolute gem! 

Book Pairing(s): Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Seven Days In June by Tia Williams, Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave