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Malibu Rising

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Start date: April 16, 2022

Finish date: May 16, 2022

Discussion: Buddy Reads 2022

Why we're reading this: April Buddy Read
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Buddy Reads 2022

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What Members Thought

Aug 14, 2022 Erin *Proud Book Hoarder* rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: buddy-or-group-read, reviewed, 2-star, put-on-site, library-polk

2.5 stars

Malibu Rising is a soap-opera lite drama that shifts between two time periods in the first half of the book, and multiple points of view throughout. Genre is Drama/General Fiction - I usually dig drama, but this one has a simple and semi-shallow story considering the page length.

I don’t have much more to say about the book as there really isn’t too much there other than some basic themes we see a lot - putting others before yourself where you need to look out for yourself, pining for s 2.5 stars

Malibu Rising is a soap-opera lite drama that shifts between two time periods in the first half of the book, and multiple points of view throughout. Genre is Drama/General Fiction - I usually dig drama, but this one has a simple and semi-shallow story considering the page length.

I don’t have much more to say about the book as there really isn’t too much there other than some basic themes we see a lot - putting others before yourself where you need to look out for yourself, pining for someone not worthy, addicting and abandonment.

My main issue was the tumbling tower of construction - flipping time periods the first half, then randomly flipping points of view in contemporary times in the second - we really don’t need a couple of pages per pointless characters just to see they pee on paintings - flipping wildly for a quarter of the book. That weakened it heavily. The author did this when the characters are having their big wrap-up pivotal moments of the book, too, so to keep going to these cheesy and pointless scenes drowned some of the main impact.

IIf we kept with a few points of view where the characters were better built, they could have learned about these instances and had the events still stay on page without losing the plot string. To me this writing technique was heavily flawed and made the story too choppy.

While character growth is semi-strong with Nora, and supposably with a few others (according to some reviews), I didn’t feel like I got to know all the siblings equally. These characters are not complex. Sure, there’s a misunderstanding between two brothers who started close and remain close, and there’s a snarky sibling who spouts certain lines and likes to be seen as unique, and there’s a new one that pops out of nowhere and isn’t needed other than to point fingers at the father as being a horrible man (Hollywood types are typically like these with women and wild partying, especially the rock stars, but that’s not enough to carry this one), but none of them feel fully fleshed out or much other than a caricature.

There isn’t character growth with Mick, but that is the point of the character in the first place - some people don’t grow or change, which can be a story in itself. There's an early tragedy with one of the points of view, and I felt the middle of the book was definitely the strongest due to the writing and focus being the strongest during this tag. The book did the best with the parents and their character and timeline.

One long and truly crazy party started switching points of view like crazy to where it started dragging and really upped the soap opera, almost cheesy type vibe. It ends on a strong note for this kind of book.

Pacing stays the same throughout, which is mainly introspective ponderings and some dialogue about the same - sometimes I was intrigued as the writing style is fine, but when you dig in deeper the story is, as I said before, a little shallow and not much is there.
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