We didn’t survive a pandemic for a summer of dud releases.

This is a first - I was excited for someone to die just so the plot would actually move. Did it move that much? No. 

I normally enjoy character driven books, but for some reason this family of characters just couldn’t grab my attention and keep it. While I can see why people are giving it five stars, I just can’t do that. 
 
Some thoughts:

I was set on giving this 3 stars before maybe the last 40 pages and now I’m giving it 3.5.

The only thing that helped me want to pick this book back up was that I was having a bad day at work and I need to do something besides glare at Microsoft Teams.

We get it - Mick Riva is a bad dad. That was repetitive.

How many filler chapters do we need about characters that don’t matter?

Nina deserved better. Sure the ending was kind of a good ending for her, but for what she did, she deserved just a little bit more.

I didn’t hate it. It’s a good book to pick up for the summer, but with the way late sprint releases are going for me, I’m worried that this summer may be a summer of overhyped releases. 

Recommendations:
Pick up for a vacation or an atmospheric read.
For the atmosphere, I recommend listening to The Beach Boys while reading this. 

Will I still pick up the next book Taylor Jenkins Reid writes? Absolutely!