Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Malibu Rising

An amazing story showing that family it's doesn't have to share the same blood more like likely always been for each other and love each other unconditionally. How love can have many different faces, some of them are amazing like taking care of not your child like it was born from you, and becoming parent. Being bad perent wanting to fix that, falling love in with someone, but still cheating that person knowing it will destroy them. Not wanting to put yourself first because of being scared. Or just finding a family that you always want to have. Such an amazing story with so much depth in it. Very much enjoy it.

Content Warnings

jillkaarlela's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Something I did really like about this book is how centered it is in family, love, and acceptance. I loved some of the character arcs, especially of the Riva children. There was so much struggle and growth. I also loved how many dramatic twists and turns there were, which I can say I honestly didn’t expect any of them.

I don’t think this book was bad by any means, it was extremely well constructed. Taylor Jenkins Reid does a fantastic job of creating a whole new social world with celebrities and extensive casts of characters that connect her historical fiction books. However, my hate for Mick Riva tainted this book for me. It was extremely fast paced and interesting as it followed the lives of the Riva family and celebrities of that time. But, I can’t stand Mick Riva, and this book is full of extremely complex flawed characters that I did not like, but I think that was the point: to show these extremely flawed characters and their growth. I am also a huge mood reader, and I don’t think this is my favorite genre. If you like the dramatic historical fiction, you would love this.

I would be aware of the content warnings, because this does center around a celebrity party in Malibu in the 1980s, so there was lots of drinking, smoking, and drug use.

Age rating: 14+, closed door, but references to it.

A surprisingly deep quote I liked from this book is: “Too much self-sufficiency is sort of mean so the people who love you, Kit thought, you robbed them of how good it feels to give of their sense of value.”

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anne3344's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

perfect, simply perfect. the Rivas siblings are the easiest to love

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annoyedhumanoid's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

men are terrible lol.
i most enjoyed the plots concerning the core four siblings and, later, their plus-one. you'd think they be the majority of the plot, but there are a lot of subplots that have little-to-no bearing on the main storyline, and i understand wanting to make this gigantic party with all these interesting people feel more alive, but after a while i stopped caring and just wanted to skip to the Rivas. it was overall pretty good though
book cover discussion: the British one is so much better than that of the United States, like the pretty sunset/fire (👀) colors, the serif font. unfortunately it doesn't carry over perfectly to the square aspect ratio for the audiobook.

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