Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid | BOOK REVIEW [CC]
Hey everyone and welcome or welcome
back to my channel. So in today’s
video I’m going to be doing a book review
of Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
For anyone who doesn’t know,
Taylor Jenkins Reid is the same author who
wrote The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
and Daisy Jones and the Six which are two very
very popular books on booktube and bookstagram.
She also wrote a few contemporary romances which
– I have read one of them. I actually own them
all on my Kindle. I’ve read One True Loves
haven’t got around to the others yet but it
will happen eventually. I just, I have a habit
of buying books on my Kindle and then forget
about them because I can’t physically see them
but yeah I will get around to them eventually.
This is going to be a spoiler-free review so
I think the way that I’m going to structure it
is I’ll start by doing a brief overview and a
quick summary of what the book is actually about
and then I’ll move on to talk
about what I enjoyed and what I
didn’t enjoy and whether I would recommend it.
The book doesn’t actually come out until I think
it’s the end of May. I’ll put
on the screen here just to double check but
I actually received an advanced copy through
NetGalley and I was so excited when I got the
email saying that I’d been approved for the ARC
because this was one of my most
anticipated books of the year
and I think that’s why I want to do this
dedicated book review. I don’t think I’ve done
many dedicated book reviews on my YouTube
channel but I know that a lot of people will
probably be interested in this book and will
want to know whether it is worth reading and
how it compares to Daisy Jones and Evelyn
Hugo because those books were so popular.
Malibu Rising mostly follows four siblings who
live in Malibu, surprisingly, and they’re kind
of famous. They’re most well known for being
the children of Mick Riva who is a very popular
singer and if you’ve read Evelyn Hugo then you
might recognise the name Mick Riva because he
is a character in that book. Although if you
haven’t read Evelyn Hugo then I don’t think it
would make any difference, I mean, I know that
it wouldn’t make any difference because they
are completely separate stories but they’re set in
the same world and so if you have read Evelyn Hugo
then you might notice a few little easter
eggs which I thought was pretty cool.
There’s two timelines within the book
and the present day timeline I guess
you would call it. The present day timeline
– that is set in the 1980s, the early 1980s,
and you learn that every year these siblings throw
this huge party to celebrate the end of the summer
and it’s the kind of party where you get
a lot of celebrities that go like models,
famous singers, actors, people within
the entertainment industry. And in the
first chapter you learn that this year the
party gets out of control and the mansion
ends up burning down but you don’t know
the circumstances around how it happens.
There’s also a separate timeline
that begins I think it’s in the 1950s
where you follow this same family and it
gives you an insight into their backstory.
The way the book is structured is that it’s told
over 24 hours – kind of. Obviously you do have
the timeline in the past. But the present
day timeline that’s set in the 1980s,
you start at 7 o’clock in the
morning on the morning of the party
and then it ends at 7 o’clock the next day.
So each chapter is an hour within that day.
Whenever I talk about Taylor Jenkins
Reid’s books I always talk about
the way that she writes characters and how she
writes these characters that feel like real people
and when I finished Evelyn Hugo I couldn’t believe
that I couldn’t go out and google Evelyn Hugo and
that she wasn’t a real person. It felt very
biographical and the same with Daisy Jones.
I couldn’t believe that I couldn’t go out and
listen to the music that was created in that book.
I felt like I was reading about a real rock band.
With the characters in Malibu Rising, I did
think that they were very well written which is
important I think in a book like this because it
is so character-driven and I did like that each of
the siblings had very distinctive personalities.
I would say that in comparison to
Taylor Jenkins Reids other books…
I did love the characters in this book – not quite
in the same way though as I loved Evelyn Hugo.
I wouldn’t say that this is a criticism
but I don’t know whether the characters
in Malibu Rising were as memorable to
me as in Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones.
There were quite a lot of side
characters and I did struggle
a little bit to remember who was
who especially in the second half.
In terms of the pacing, I would say
that this is a slower paced book
however because I felt very attached to
the characters and I enjoyed reading about
them and in the second half there’s quite a
lot of drama that I enjoyed reading about,
so, okay. The way I would describe the structure
of this book is that the first half you have a
lot of build up but then because of that build up,
the intrigue and my investment in the characters
made me want to keep on reading
throughout the second half.
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned but I
buddy read this with Vish from Books With V
and I ended up reading quite far ahead because
I was just so invested in these characters
and I needed to know what was going to happen.
In terms of the general atmosphere, I really
loved that this book made me feel like I’d been
transported to Malibu in the 1980s. I mean, I’ve
never been to Malibu and I wasn’t even born in
the 1980s but the way that it was written I felt
like I could picture it quite clearly in my mind.
And surfing is a very big theme within the book
which, again, I don’t know how to surf but I just
loved the descriptions and the way that it was
built up and I think that if you like the idea
of a book that’s set by the sea and is set on the
beach then I think you would really enjoy this.
I’ve mentioned before on my channel that I use
something called CAWPILE to rate and review all
of the books that I read – all the fiction books
I should say – and the way that it works, so,
it’s essentially a spreadsheet that was created
by G at Book Roast and you rate a book for things
like characters, atmosphere, writing, intrigue,
and your general enjoyment and then it gives you
a score at 10 which translates to a 5-star rating.
So I ran this through CAWPILE and it came out as
a 4-star rating, like a solid 4-star though and
I would definitely agree with that because even
though I loved the experience of reading it and
there were certain parts of this book that I did
absolutely adore, there was just something about
it that wasn’t giving me that 5 star feeling.
The main reason that this book didn’t feel
like a 5 stars to me is because I was a
little underwhelmed by the ending and I found
that I felt very very similar about Daisy Jones
in that the way that the summary hooks you in by
talking about this fire and how this mansion ends
up burning down, that is what made me want to keep
on reading because I wanted to learn what happened
and I don’t want to go into spoilers
obviously but I would say that this book
is more about the build up and when it actually
gets to the conclusion… I wasn’t disappointed
I would say but I was underwhelmed is the word
I would use to describe how I felt. But I know
that that wouldn’t bother some people and so
it was something that I just wanted to mention
because I think it’s important to go into this
book knowing that it’s not a mystery and that it
is more of a character-driven character
study… does that make sense? I don’t know.
I think that if I had to rank Malibu
Rising in comparison to the other Taylor
Jenkins Reid books that I’ve read I
would say that Evelyn Hugo is still
top of the list, one of my all-time favorite
books. But then I would put Malibu Rising,
then followed by Daisy Jones, and
then One True Loves at the bottom.
I have noticed that when it comes to Evelyn Hugo
and Daisy Jones people seem to prefer one over
the other and so if you’ve read Malibu Rising then
please let me know in the comments where you would
rank it in comparison because I think it’s really
interesting. I do think that Taylor Jenkins Reid
has a very distinctive writing style and so
I think if you like one of her books then you
have a good chance of liking her other books
but obviously because the stories are so
different… I don’t know, I just
think it’s really interesting.
Ok so I think those are the main points that i
wanted to cover but just to summarise I think
that if you like slow-paced character-driven
books then I would definitely recommend Malibu
Rising and also Taylor Jenkins Reid’s other
books. I never know whether to call them
historical fiction because even though they are
quite often categorised as historical fiction
there’s I know a lot of discussion over whether
they actually count as being historical. I mean,
I personally tend to count historical
fiction as anything that was set before
the year I was born and I was born
in 1990 so because this was set in
the 1980s I would call it historical fiction
but maybe literary fiction is more accurate.
But yeah I think that does bring me to the
end of the video so thanks for watching if
you’ve made it this far. If you’ve read Malibu
Rising or if you’re planning to read it then
please let me know in the comments and don’t
forget to give this video a thumbs up if you
liked it and click subscribe if you haven’t
already and I will see you next time, byeee.
