Ballantine Books Archives - The Litertarian

Lifestyles of the ungodly rich might seem aspirational, but they’re also highly secretive. You’re either behind the curtain, or you’re not, and they want as few people behind it as possible. Sometimes they even leave their own children unenlightened…until their hand is forced.

The Lingate’s traditional summer holiday is to the Italian island of Capri. It’s beautiful, but the coastline is almost completely hard, jagged cliff-facing. Dangerous – which they know better than most, since one of their own tumbled to her death there in the 90s. 30 years later they haven’t stopped their annual pilgrimage, and neither have the questions about Sarah’s untimely death. Money can buy a lot, but can it get away with murder?

This novel isn’t as quickly paced as a typical thriller, but it is suspenseful, mysterious, twisted, and tangled. There is generational drama and several potential suspects. It turns into a curiosity about one crime and turns into an investigation into another. And what a spectacular, picturesque setting!

The characters in this book aren’t exactly likeable, but they do inspire curiosity. What motivates people as powerful as these? Where are their weaknesses? Why have they made the decisions they’ve done, and what might compel them to reveal the truth of what happened 30 years ago?

I found myself very engaged with this story. I wasn’t sure where it was going, but there was enough intrigue from the first pages to keep me studying all the information presented, ready for anything. There are several characters with motivations to find out more about Sarah’s death, and just as many prepared to guard their secrets about her. It was really skillfully executed, and I wasn’t expecting quite as many twists as were revealed by the end.

Saltwater would make a great vacation read, an engrossing sick-day or weekend read, or it might just add some intrigue into your regular reading lineup. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Note:: I received an early copy of this book from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Details

Title:: Saltwater
Author:: Katy Hays
Genre:: Contemporary Suspense Thriller
Publisher:: Ballantine Books
Length:: 336 pages
Audio Length:: 11h
Audiobook Narrator:: TBA
Audiobook Publisher:: Random House Audio
Published:: March 25th, 2025
The Litertarian Rating:: 4-Stars

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Double Exposure | Elissa R. Sloan

Family is the most complex thing there is. The history. The responsibility. The everyday choices and the ones that come once in a lifetime. The mirrored features and gestures. The shared experience, or absence from them. All of these things cumulate into how we experience family. What are the expectations of being a parent, or a sibling, and what happens when those expectations aren’t met? Are blood ties enough to support relationships, no matter what? And what of marriage vows? Trust, betrayal, forgiveness? What do we owe those we’ve made promises to, and who created us?

I’m probably taking things too far here for an introduction, but Malibu Rising is a phenomenal work of literary fiction that had these very questions running through my head. It is an exploration of family in many forms, and an intriguing family saga that hooked me from page one and still hasn’t let go.

Malibu Rising Taylor Jenkins Reid Book Cover

The Riva family has been through a lot. Four siblings, bonded by love through hardship, are now on their way into adulthood. They have two things in common – their famous deadbeat father, and their deep love of surfing. Jay is a professional surfer, Hudson is the photographer who captures all his best shots, Nina is the older sister who got famous modeling on her surfboard, and Kit, the baby, might just be better than any of them at the sport. Every year they throw a party to close out the summer. Anyone who finds out about it can come. Celebrities of all shapes and flavors don’t dare miss it. It’s the talk of the town. But this year the party will leave the siblings changed forever.

Life is messy. In great novels, the mess happens all at the same time in a slow but relentless crescendo that keeps us riveted until the cacophonous finale. Each of the Riva siblings is at a crisis point in their lives, and we’re taken through their family origin story to help us understand how they got to this moment, and why they might be making the choices they make. One sibling is deeply in love with someone he’s not supposed to be, one is falling out of love, one thinks he’s found the one after a single night, and one is having doubts she has the capacity for romantic love at all. Their parents, Mick and June, had an explosive type of love that led to heartbreak when they were both unable to break the patterns of the families before them, leaving wounds and wreckage in a blazing trail behind them.

Taylor Jenkins Reid continues to astound me with her capacity for storytelling. I mean, the details she includes are just incredible. Her omniscient tendency allows her to showcase happenstance from all the interesting angles and explore human nature in all its nonsensical and sometimes beautiful inevitabilities.

I think I loved every single aspect of this story. The experience of reading was a pleasure in itself. Every sentence was interesting. Every facet of each character the author chose to showcase…so interesting. As in, it literally captured my interest. It kind of reminds me of the character of Vida Winter in The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, the disillusioned storyteller who isn’t interested in anything that doesn’t serve a story. Like the storyteller in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. Crafting story is simple. Just make it interesting. This is how I imagine Taylor Jenkins Reid as she’s sifting through ideas for her stories. She’s on a higher plane of storytelling. She’s a weaver. She’s a curator. She’s a master.

This is the kind of story that begs to be appreciated. It’s not one thing that makes it stand out. It’s all of it together as one thing. One awesome, specific, thing. I hope you read it. But if you don’t like it, don’t tell me. I don’t think I could take it.

Details

Title:: Malibu Rising
Author:: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Genre:: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher:: Ballantine Books
Length:: 369 pages
Audio Length:: 11h 5m
Audiobook Narrator:: Julia Whelan
Audiobook Publisher:: Random House Audio
Published:: June 1st, 2021
The Litertarian Rating:: 5-Stars