Malibu Rising

This is a book about inherited damage and the moment you stop carrying it. Reid compresses decades of family history into a single party night, so every secret lands at once and every choice costs something. Read it if you love family sagas with real momentum, celebrity-culture settings, or stories about siblings raising each other. It's also a masterclass in structure: the flashbacks make the party's explosions feel inevitable rather than random.

1. 1

   Act 1

   The Party Nobody Knows Will End in Ashes

   The prologue tells you up front: Malibu burns, and it has burned before. The 1983 fire starts on August 27—the day of Nina Riva's annual summer party—and the person who lit it stays a mystery for now. That's the frame. Then we wake with Nina at 7 a.m., alone, on the worst morning to be alone. Her husband Brandon left her after an affair, and she spends the day dreading every guest who'll ask about him tonight. She isn't alone in her mess. Her brother Jay is a professional surfer; her brother Hud is a surf photographer who sometimes works with Jay; her sister Kit is heading into her junior year of college. Then the book rewinds to 1956, when June and Mick Riva meet in Malibu just as Mick's singing career is taking off. They have Nina and Jay. While Mick is on tour, a woman shows up at June's door holding an infant—Hud, Mick's son from an affair—and leaves him there. June forgives Mick. It doesn't hold. He leaves her to marry another woman, comes back when that marriage ends, remarries June, has Kit, then leaves again. June drinks more and more while the kids basically raise themselves, and eventually she drowns. Nina becomes her siblings' guardian. She's discovered surfing, becomes a professional model, and uses the money to hold the family together. In 1982, she marries professional tennis player Brandon Randall. That marriage is the thing currently in pieces on the floor.

2. 2

   Act 2

   Four Siblings, Four Secrets

   Before the party, each sibling is carrying something they can't say out loud. Jay has a newly diagnosed heart condition, and the only person he's told is Lara—a woman he recently slept with—because her belief that he'll be okay is the only comfort he has. He needs her at the party. Kit wants one specific thing from tonight: to kiss a boy for the first time. Hud is quietly falling apart over how to tell Jay that he's in a relationship with Ashley—Jay's ex-girlfriend. Nina meets her siblings at a restaurant for lunch, and they surf together before the night begins. Then, just before seven, Brandon shows up at Nina's house. He begs her to take him back, professes his love publicly, and forces her to say 'yes' in front of other people. She's trapped by an audience. At the party, the secrets start leaking. Nina learns that Ashley and Hud have been sleeping together when Ashley tells Hud she's pregnant. Nina also meets Casey, a young woman wandering the party who turns out to be Mick Riva's daughter—another half-sibling nobody knew about. Kit kisses Ricky Esposito and realizes instantly she isn't interested in kissing men; she comes out to Ricky right there. In Hud's truck, Jay tells Lara he's in love with her. They start to have sex, and then Jay finds nude photos of Ashley in the glove compartment. He tells Lara he loves her anyway; she doesn't feel the same. Furious, he goes looking for Hud.

3. 3

   Act 3

   Mick Walks In

   Hud decides to tell Jay the truth: he's going to be a father with Ashley. Before that conversation can fully land, Mick Riva arrives and finds his sons fighting. He breaks them apart. Then he does the thing he's never done: he talks to his children and says he wants to be part of their lives again. Nobody buys it. Nina, who has spent her whole life cleaning up after this man, finally says it to his face: 'You haven't really changed.' Her siblings are shocked by how blunt she is. She tells him his love doesn't mean much to her. Mick admits he doesn't remember whether he slept with Casey's mother. He tries to explain himself—says he wasn't capable of being a parent—and that enrages Nina, because she never got to decide whether she was capable. When June died, she just did what needed doing for her family, even though she'd rather have been surfing in Portugal. Meanwhile, Brandon's mistress Carrie Soto arrives at the party, and Nina realizes she doesn't have to blandly accept everything that happens to her. She tells Brandon to leave. Mick, finally understanding what he's done, decides to leave his children alone. He goes back to the house and handles the cops who've been called because the party got out of hand.

4. 4

   Act 4

   The Fire and the Rebuild

   The siblings accept Casey as one of them and turn their attention to Nina: go to Portugal, they tell her. She agrees, finally realizing they can take care of themselves. Jay forgives Hud, who proposes to Ashley. The brothers agree to help Kit become a professional surfer. Everything the family lost over decades gets, in one night, a plan for repair. Then Mick leaves—and flicks his cigarette into the dry grass. That's the fire from the prologue. It destroys Nina's house and ignites the coast. The book's last note isn't grief, though: just as each Riva child will rebuild their life, Malibu will be born anew. The house that held all of June's children together is gone, and what replaces it is a family that finally chose itself—Nina free to surf in Portugal, Hud about to be a father, Jay alive and forgiving, Kit out and headed toward pro surfing, Casey claimed as a Riva. The fire takes the structure but not the people. That's the whole argument of the book, delivered in smoke.

• NNina RivaThe eldest Riva, a professional model who became her siblings' guardian after June drowned. She's spent the night dreading questions about her estranged husband Brandon—and by dawn she's told her father off, kicked Brandon out, and booked a trip to Portugal.
• MMick RivaThe famous singer father who kept leaving—June, then the kids, then again. He shows up at the party wanting back in, admits he doesn't remember whether he slept with Casey's mother, and leaves a cigarette behind that burns Malibu.
• JJuneThe siblings' mother, who met Mick in 1956 and took in his son Hud without blinking. She drank more as Mick kept leaving, and she drowned, leaving Nina in charge.
• JJayA professional surfer with a newly diagnosed heart condition he's only told Lara about. He falls for Lara, finds Ashley's photos in Hud's truck, fights his brother, and forgives him by the end.
• HHudA surf photographer, Mick's son by another woman, raised by June. He's been sleeping with Ashley, Jay's ex, who's now pregnant—and he proposes to her after Jay forgives him.
• KKitThe youngest, headed into her junior year of college. She wants her first kiss at the party, gets it from Ricky Esposito, realizes she isn't interested in kissing men, and comes out to Ricky on the spot.
• CCaseyA young woman wandering the party who turns out to be Mick's daughter. The siblings fold her into the family by the end of the night.
• BBrandon RandallThe professional tennis player Nina married in 1982, who left her after an affair and then shows up begging to be taken back. Carrie Soto's arrival snaps Nina out of it, and she tells him to leave.
• LLaraThe woman Jay recently slept with and the only person who knows about his heart condition. He tells her he loves her in Hud's truck; she doesn't feel the same.
• AAshleyJay's ex-girlfriend, now secretly with Hud and pregnant by him. She's the reason the brothers nearly destroy each other and the reason they end the night as family again.
• CCarrie SotoBrandon's mistress, who arrives at the party and accidentally gives Nina the clarity to stop accepting whatever life hands her.

The fire

The cigarette

The house

The ocean

The ending works because it refuses to punish anyone cleanly. Mick lights the fire by accident—carelessness, not malice—and the house burns, but the book treats that as a beginning rather than a loss. The competing reading is whether the fire is justice or just damage: Mick finally faces consequences, but Nina is the one whose house is gone. The more generous reading is that the house was already a museum of other people's failures—June's, Mick's, Brandon's—and losing it frees Nina to want something for herself. The final line's parallel between the Riva children rebuilding and Malibu being born anew is the book's whole thesis: ruin and renewal aren't opposites here, they're the same event seen from different distances. What lands is that the family survives not because Mick came back but because the siblings finally stopped needing him to.

1. 1.Is Nina's refusal to forgive Mick a failure of grace or the healthiest act in the book? Compare her 'You haven't really changed' to Jay forgiving Hud the same night—what makes one forgiveness earned and the other withheld?

Readers who love family sagas where the past crashes into the present, and anyone who's ever been the responsible one in a broken family. Also ideal for book clubs—the party-night structure gives you a dozen moral questions to argue about.

FAQ