Of course, we’re itching to discover what happens to the (all grown up) central characters of this story: Nina, Jay, Hud, and Kit. It’s the relationships here that draw us in and tug on our heartstrings in such a way that the pages just keep on turning. Yet unfailingly, Malibu Rising returns to its central theme of sibling bonds and found family. What Jenkins Reid has achieved here is a propulsive plot that one moment dazzles with Hollywood excess (think drug benders and people swinging from chandeliers) and laid-back beach vibes the next. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.” Taylor Jenkins Reid “She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. Hope, there is hope, and overall, Malibu Rising is a book about resilience. Within the pages, we see that, yes, the cycle of dysfunction often repeats a generation later, but also that it can be broken. Malibu Rising touches on alcoholism, child abandonment, and just all-around family dysfunction, yet there is nothing despondent about this read.

Humiliation and heartbreak eat away at her as her kids grow up in the cold shadow of their father’s fame with none of his financial spoils. June is left to raise Nina, Jay, Hud, and Kit while running her parents’ restaurant and reading about her ex-husband’s latest marriage in magazines. Over the next two decades, Mick climbs the ladder of fame to dizzying heights, yet a family man (like his father before him), he is not.

For those of you who haven’t, add those books to your to-be-read stacks - they are story gold! For those of you who’ve read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & the Six, the name Mick Riva will ring a bell. One of them gets their wish, and, surprisingly, it’s the rockstar one. June with ambitions of having a family and never working another day in her family’s beachside restaurant. June and Mick Riva got married young (emphasis on the young). Even if the location doesn’t evoke such wistfulness in you, Malibu Rising is a delicious family drama, and the quintessential summer read. Malibu Rising is set in the 80s, and I can’t say how much changed between those two decades, but the vibe of saltwater and ocean spray of driving along the Pacific Coast Highway of lemon-juice highlights and forever rinsing sand from your hair… Gosh, the nostalgia while reading this one was real. As a teenager in the 90s, I spent many summers in Southern California.

Malibu rising about