Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Malibu Rising is THE must-read novel of Summer 2021. I think that’s clear by now. We’ve seen Taylor Jenkins Reid’s latest Los Angeles story of celebrity and heartbreak on the New York Times bestseller list, Jenna Bush Hager’s Today Show Book Club, and every summer-themed #bookstagram post the Internet has to offer. This one certainly lives up to all the buzz.

Malibu Rising is the story of the Riva siblings, four beautiful California kids who’ve grown up in the shadow of their absent father, superstar singer Mick Riva. The novel centers around family heartbreak and secrets, all of which come to light on the night of the Rivas’ annual Malibu party. Over the course of the evening, Riva family secrets come to life amidst the backdrop of celebrities, wannabes, and the spark that lights a Malibu wildfire.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a fantastic storyteller, and she weaves an absolutely fascinating world of interconnected characters (Mick Riva is one of the titular Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and one of the rock stars who partied with Daisy Jones and the Six). If you love Eighties memorabilia, Hollywood gossip, or a great beach read about family dynamics. This one gets five whiskey glasses from me; it’s a fast, fun read!

If you’re interested in Taylor Jenkins Reid’s celebrity novels, read in this order:

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

• Daisy Jones & The Six

• Malibu Rising

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That Summer by Jennifer Weiner

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: Daisy Shoemaker can’t sleep. With a thriving cooking business, full schedule of volunteer work, and a beautiful home in the Philadelphia suburbs, she should be content. But her teenage daughter can be a handful, her husband can be distant, her work can feel trivial, and she has lots of acquaintances, but no real friends. Still, Daisy knows she’s got it good. So why is she up all night?

While Daisy tries to identify the root of her dissatisfaction, she’s also receiving misdirected emails meant for a woman named Diana Starling, whose email address is just one punctuation mark away from her own. While Daisy’s driving carpools, Diana is chairing meetings. While Daisy’s making dinner, Diana’s making plans to reorganize corporations. Diana’s glamorous, sophisticated, single-lady life is miles away from Daisy’s simpler existence. When an apology leads to an invitation, the two women meet and become friends. But, as they get closer, we learn that their connection was not completely accidental. Who IS this other woman, and what does she want with Daisy?

From the manicured Main Line of Philadelphia to the wild landscape of the Outer Cape, written with Jennifer Weiner’s signature wit and sharp observations, That Summer is a story about surviving our pasts, confronting our futures, and the sustaining bonds of friendship.

HerKentucky review: (Content warning: This book includes themes of rape, assault, and trauma and could trigger some readers.)

I honestly can’t remember a time in my adult reading life that I didn't love Jennifer Weiner’s novels. I read her debut novel, Good in Bed, nearly twenty years ago and was immediately hooked on her compelling writing style. Ms. Weiner writes smart, witty female protagonists better than anyone. (Fun Fact: Ms. Weiner briefly wrote a pop culture column for the Lexington Herald-Leader!) Of course, I picked up her latest novel, That Summer, on its publication date, knowing little more than that it took place in part on Cape Cod, with a callback to last year’s fun, fast-paced Big Summer. It’s a Jennifer Weiner beach novel, I thought, it’ll be fun and lightweight. Instead, I found myself devouring a story that’s part Lifetime movie, part Promising Young Woman, and part Christine Blasey Ford’s Congressional testimony.

That Summer is a smart, well-written story — one I couldn’t put down — but it’s far from a lightweight beach book. Ms. Weiner intertwines the stories of two women named Diana — one a corporate consultant, the other an anxiety-ridden housewife on Philadelphia’s Main Line — who forge a friendship seemingly based on their very similar email addresses and the misdirected messages that each woman receives. The ensuing story is a complex #METOO era tale of sexual assault, culpability, privilege, and the aftermath of trauma. Ms. Weiner explores ethical implications and psychological impact with skill and clarity, while making (most of) her characters imminently likable and relatable. The work manages to be funny and sweet at times, while presenting a complex story of revenge. It isn’t quite the breezy beach thriller I’d expected; in fact, it’s far better.

As a longtime fan of Ms. Weiner’s work, I find that one of her greatest storytelling strengths lies in the quirky details with which she imbues her characters. That Summer delivers odd, likable characters in droves — a prairie-core teenager who skips class at her swanky private school to make and sell crafts on Etsy, a banker-turned-Cape-Cod-restaurant-owner, and a teacher with an almost compulsive need to save all the children. These so-odd-they-have-to-be-real characters add a goodnatured twist to a story that ventures at times into dark territory.

That Summer is a must-read for my fellow Jennifer Weiner fans and for anyone who enjoys plot twists, quirky characters, or smartly-written depictions of tricky relationships.

Purchase That Summer on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election.

There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other?

Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere--through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise--until Mallory learns she's dying.

Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love.

HerKentucky Review: 28 Summers is a novel based loosely around the 1978 Ellen Burstyn - Alan Alda film Same Time, Next Year. Like the characters in that film, Ms. Hilderbrand’s protagonists, Mallory and Jake, meet every year for a weekend affair, watching that film on Sunday nights while eating Chinese takeout. Ms. Hilderbrand, long regarded as the queen of the beach read, sets most of her fiction on Nantucket. In her latest work, free-spirited high school English teacher Mallory lives in the Nantucket beach cottage she inherited from her late aunt. Every Labor Day weekend from 1993 to 2019, she welcomes Jake, whom she first meets as her brother’s fraternity buddy and whom the world later knows as the husband of hotshot presidential candidate Ursula de Gournsey. Their affair spans the eponymous 28 summers, with each character leading a completely separate life — marriage, moves, children, cancer treatment, losing parents — for the rest of the year.

Each chapter of Ms. Hilderbrand’s work describes a summer of Jake and Mallory’s romance. She begins each chapter by asking “What are we talking about in [the year at hand]?”, a device that lists political and pop culture moments in a quick-fire manner, transporting the reader to that exact moment in time. This device also served to remind me that I probably would have found the idea of impossible romance much more dreamy and palatable when I was in my twenties than I do now. The Nineties, after all, were a very different time.

28 Summers is a beautiful beach read with quirky, likable characters. I found myself cheering for not only the star-crossed couple, but even for the male protagonist’s driven, icy politician wife. At the same time, I found myself impossibly heartbroken for the female lead, both due to the terms of their relationship and to her health situation. Pour yourself a glass of cold white wine, stream a 1990s radio station, and be prepared to shed a few tears at the end. This book is a must-read if you love Elin HIlderbrand’s Nantucket novels or if you can remember seeing episodes of Friends on their original network airing.

Purchase 28 Summers on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

The Lies that Bind by Emily Giffin

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: It’s 2 A.M. on a Saturday night in the spring of 2001, and twenty-eight-year-old Cecily Gardner sits alone in a dive bar in New York’s East Village, questioning her life. Feeling lonesome and homesick for the Midwest, she wonders if she’ll ever make it as a reporter in the big city—and whether she made a terrible mistake in breaking up with her longtime boyfriend, Matthew. 

As Cecily reaches for the phone to call him, she hears a guy on the barstool next to her say, “Don’t do it—you’ll regret it.” Something tells her to listen, and over the next several hours—and shots of tequila—the two forge an unlikely connection. That should be it, they both decide the next morning, as Cecily reminds herself of the perils of a rebound relationship. Moreover, their timing couldn’t be worse—Grant is preparing to quit his job and move overseas. Yet despite all their obstacles, they can’t seem to say goodbye, and for the first time in her carefully constructed life, Cecily follows her heart instead of her head.

 Then Grant disappears in the chaos of 9/11. Fearing the worst, Cecily spots his face on a missing-person poster, and realizes she is not the only one searching for him. Her investigative reporting instincts kick into action as she vows to discover the truth. But the questions pile up fast: How well did she really know Grant? Did he ever really love her? And is it possible to love a man who wasn’t who heseemed to be? 

The Lies That Bind is a mesmerizing and emotionally resonant exploration of the never-ending search for love and truth—in our relationships, our careers, and deep within our own hearts.

HerKentucky Review: Nearly every Emily Giffin novel can be summed up in two sentences: Midwestern girl winds up in big city circumstances that are more lavish than her wildest dreams. She acts from insecurity and hubris, making an impetuous decision that nearly costs her everything. Ms. Giffin’s The Lies that Bind, applies that basic plot to the story of 28 year-old Cecily, a Wisconsin native and would-be journalist, who feels an instant connection to Grant, whom she meets in the spring of 2001. They begin an intense affair, and then he totally vanishes after the 9/11 attacks.

Emily Giffin is known for writing novels about complex moral issues. Her characters make questionable decisions, and you either really root for them, or you don’t. In some (Something Borrowed and Something Blue), that technique really works for me. In others (Love the One You’re With and Baby Proof), the characters are so flawed that I kind of hated them and the decisions they made.

In The Lies that Bind, I found the female protagonist to be somewhat willfully obtuse. Her decisions were knowingly shortsighted and selfish. And, yet, I couldn’t put the book down. I felt the nostalgia pull so strongly in this one. I was 25 on September 11th, working at a job that made me miserable and dealing with dating drama and never having enough money. I hated the stupid decisions Cecily made, but I so strongly recalled my own life at that point. Ms. Giffin really transported me to my own life decisions at the time. Enjoy this one with a Sex-and-the-City era Cosmo and a Christina Aguilera playlist, and remember how you didn’t always make the best dating decisions 20 years ago.

Purchase The Lies that Bind on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.