Book Review: "Malibu Rising" by Taylor Jenkins Reid
“Malibu Rising” by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Thank you to Netgalley for the advance e-copy.
Synopsis: Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.
The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.
Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.
And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.
By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come rising to the surface.
Rating: 4.5
Trigger Warnings: parental death and abandonment, heavy drug use
Review: I don’t want to sound like a hipster here, but I have been a fan of Taylor Jenkins Reid since before “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo", and so I’ve been both excited and a little apprehensive about this one since I saw the synopsis last fall. Excited because duh - you read the description above, and apprehensive because “Daisy Jones and the Six” was good but not great for me (please don’t kick me off bookstagram for saying that). Now that you know way more about my TJR reading habits than you should, I guess I should get into my review of one of this summer’s hottest releases.
I loved it.
To me, a fantastic summer read should be soapy and fun, a book that completely removes you from reality and enmeshes you in a story line to the point that you read it while walking to the kitchen to get a glass of water, just so to not miss a few seconds before you finish the book. I have been lucky to have several books I’ve read like that this summer, and “Malibu Rising” quickly rose to the top of that list.
In writing her books, TJR thinks of almost everything: what’s happening in the background, what the characters are eating or drinking or wearing, what even the most minor of characters are thinking. In this book, we spent time with the Riva siblings on what may be the craziest night of their lives. Nina, Hud, Jay, and Kit Riva are supremely close siblings, and they just happen to be the children of an Elvis-type singer, Mick Riva. The story takes place along two timelines: the evening of Nina’s annual end-of-summer party in Malibu, and then in the past, tracing how the siblings ended up where they are. There were twists and turns in both, and I honestly was surprised by who actually started the fire.
Even though this book had quite a bit of action in it, the characters created by TJR are the best part of the book for me. Everyone is a complete character, and I loved seeing how they interact and come to some big realizations over the course of the novel. Yes, parts of it felt like a cheesy late 1990s teen movies (“Can’t Hardly Wait” immediately comes to mind), but I have a soft spot for those movies of my youth. Go in with your eyes open to the potential for sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, and I feel confident you won’t be disappointed.
TL;DR: A character study, a picture of rock and roll and early 1980s decadence, and a nostalgic look at California surf culture combine to make a quintessential summer read.
If You Liked This, Try These:
“The Final Revival of Opal and Nev” by Dawnie Watkins (Bookshop | Kindle | Shannon’s Review)
“People We Meet on Vacation” by Emily Henry (Bookshop | Kindle | My Review)
“City of Girls” by Elizabeth Gilbert (Bookshop | Kindle | My Review)
“Good Company” by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (Bookshop | Kindle)
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