The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: Reid, Taylor Jenkins. Malibu Rising. Ballantine Books, June 1, 2021. Kindle.

The novel Malibu Rising, by Taylor Jenkins Reid, explores the meaning of family and the impact that members of the family, even absent ones, have on the others. Nina Riva saw the past repeating itself when her husband left her for his mistress, just like her father left her mother twice. Nina’s mother, June, became an alcoholic, leaving Nina to care for her younger siblings when June passed out and drowned in the tub. When Nina’s husband and her father both came to her home the night of her annual party, Nina decided she had no room in her life for either of them.

June Costas wanted something else for her life other than taking over her parents’ restaurant, Pacific Fish, as they expected her to do. When Michael “Mick” Riva told June he was going to be a rock star, she fell in love with him. She agreed when he asked her to marry him. June was pregnant with their daughter before they were even married. Mick took his wife and new baby home from the hospital to a house he had bought, one that had two sinks in the master bathroom, like June requested.

About two years later, Carol Hudson, a young actress, showed up on June’s doorstep with a baby she claimed was Mick’s. The baby boy named Hud was only about a month younger than June and Mick’s son, Jay. It was proof that Mick had been sleeping with other women while he was touring for his albums. Mick convinced June to let him back in the house by reminding her that she could not keep Hud, whom she already loved as her own child, if she did not keep Mick as well. Less than a year later, Mick left June and all of the children for another woman.

Years later, Mick returned to June and asked her to marry him again. He worked hard to regain the trust of Nina, his oldest daughter, but then left again just after his second daughter was born. Because Mick did not pay child support this time, June was forced to get a job at the restaurant, a future she had hoped to avoid. She also began drinking. At fourteen, Nina began driving because she feared her mother would crash the car. When Nina was 17, June was alone in the house when she learned that Mick had married again, his fifth marriage. She drank so much that she passed out in the bathtub and drowned.

Nina was left to raise her younger siblings and keep the family out of foster care. Mick never responded to his ex-wife’s death in any way. Nina took a job at the restaurant. Eventually, she quit school to pay the bills. One day while Nina was surfing, a photographer told her she should looked so good surfing that she should get paid for it. Nina began posing for photographs to be used for commercials and with surfing articles. The money from these photographs gave her and her siblings financial security for the first time in their lives. When Nina finally had their bills paid, she suggested they throw a party.

Since that time, Nina and her siblings have hosted a party every year. These parties have become more and more extravagant as the years go by. In the present, 1983, hordes of movie stars, athletes, models, and Hollywood officials are expected to attend. Because Nina has just been left by her husband, Brandon, for another woman she wished she could cancel the party, but knew the people would come anyway.

The night of the party, Brandon arrived early to beg Nina to take him back. Nina agreed only because it seemed easier than telling him she did not want him. Later, however, when Brandon’s mistress came to the party, Nina asked them both to leave. A friend had told Nina she needed to do something for herself, a comment that made Nina reconsider her life. That same night, Mick came to the party hoping to reconcile with his children. Nina laughed at him, telling him that he did not deserve room in her life. He tried to make the excuse that he was not capable of being a father, but Nina told him she had not felt capable of being a parent when she was 17. She had stayed with her siblings and taken care of them.

The novel ends with Nina and the other siblings embracing Casey, a girl who has come looking for them because she believes she is the daughter of Mick. Mick has been rejected by his children. As he walked away from Nina’s house, he unintentionally started a fire when he flicked a cigarette butt into the bushes. The fire burns Nina’s house as well as a good portion of the coast. The narrator notes that the land will be renewed after the fire, just as Mick’s children’s lives were renewed after their experience with him.