There’s an impeccable sense of balance in Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Malibu Rising, a natural order in which every action meets its equal and opposite reaction ... Part of the fun of Reid’s recent novels is the way she reveals the machinery of celebrity life ... Reid’s sense of pacing is sublime as she introduces and dispenses with a revolving door of characters to approximate the chaos of a rager where sloshed A-listers couple up in the closets and waiters pass trays of cocaine.
Structurally, Malibu Rising is tight and propulsive ...Each sibling has their own storyline, subplots that have a gossipy and compelling, if slightly obvious feel ... Their parents’ story is equally engrossing, in a Netflix bingeworthy kind of way ... Malibu Rising is finely crafted commercial fiction, escapism in high definition, a quintessential beach read.
With this book, Taylor Jenkins Reid delivers a multifaceted perspective on family, love, fame and what it takes to start over ... One of the downfalls of the story was that it promised so much with this party, yet the delivery fell short for me. It delved a lot in the shallow side of Hollywood with an emphasis on the excessive drinking, the sex scandals, the drugs and the violence, which almost made me lose track of what was important. It almost made the book lose its substance.Malibu Rising is a fast-paced story that explores what it takes to be a parent, with all its intricacies. At its core, it is about how you can love someone with all your heart and still mess up horribly. What matters, in the end, is that you commit to loving them, you show up each time and you try to do better.
Reid’s dialogue wants to capture the tone of the young, the beautiful and athletic, but much of it feels lazy to the point of being cringe-worthy. The dialogue and interior monologue can be juvenile, filled with repeated expletives that can’t be quoted here, but wear thin and detract from the overall effect, rather than adding to the portrait of these characters, as Reid presumably intends. It was fine and fitting in Reid’s previous book, Daisy Jones & The Six a fictional oral history of a rock band. But Malibu Rising is a different kind of novel, with a voice that could have used elevating.
In Malibu Rising, Reid capitalizes on her winning formula to create another bona fide hit, this time spinning a decadent family drama that revolves around a single life-changing day in 1983 ... Reid provides additional depth and nuance by intertwining the siblings’ 1983 narrative with a timeline that traces the tragic relationship of their parents, June and legendary singer Mick Riva. Malibu Rising is packed with plenty of scintillating scandal, but Reid cultivates real empathy for her characters ... a juicy, irresistible book that will sweep readers away.
Reid’s descriptions of Malibu are so evocative that readers will swear they feel the sea breeze on their faces or the grit of the sand between their toes. The Rivas have a believable sibling dynamic, and the family members are complex and delightfully flawed (especially Mick, whose bad decisions reverberate throughout the novel). A compulsively readable story about the bonds between family members and the power of breaking free.
Reid (Daisy Jones and the Six) unfurls a fast-paced and addictive story of a group of celebrity siblings in Malibu ... Reid’s handling of the various arcs is impressive, but the novel’s climactic scenes verge on melodramatic. Still, this page-turning indulgence hits the spot.
