It took me... a shockingly long time to get through this.

I hate to say it, because Evelyn Hugo means so, so much to me, but I kind of feel like these books from TJR are getting a little...stale? Malibu was still well-written, it was still filled with characters I cared about and plots that were interesting. But I feel like, ultimately, TJR has been telling the same story over and over again in Evelyn, Daisy, and Malibu, and it's starting to lose its intrigue for me. I've read TJR's version of "celebrity is corrupted by fame and power and treats people around them badly" three times now and while I don't think any of the books are bad, I'm just a little bit over it. And I think that's why it took me over a month to finally finish this book.

You might like this book more if you aren't as familiar with the other two as I am -- I feel like it would operate as a pretty good introduction to TJR's stuff. I cared a lot about the kids themselves, the tragedies still hit me pretty hard. At the same time though, the dual timelines and the four main characters and the myriad side characters also muddied this book a bit, and I don't feel like I understood any of them in the way I usually do with TJR's characters. She's a master at writing people who feel real and who you, as a read, can't help but empathize with. But with this one, she had so much less time with each of them that it would be almost impossible to accomplish.

I feel like I've been complaining a lot and I want to emphasize that I did enjoy this book - TJR is an excellent writer and Malibu was engaging and fun and emotional in all the ways I was expecting. I think it's frankly just hard to measure up against Evelyn Hugo given that it's genuinely my favorite book of all time.

ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair review.