A Read With Jenna Book Club pick — a frothy novel of love, money, sex and friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street.
When Caroline Lash arrives in Greenhead, Massachusetts, she falls head over heels for Van Whittaker: a fleece-wearing, deeply local environmental conservationist who seems almost too good to be true. Van folds her into the close-knit group of friends he has had since high school — a circle that includes his on-again, off-again ex, Bailey.
Then Bailey discovers she is pregnant with Van's child, and the group's careful equilibrium collapses. Caroline is cast out of the circle, and what she does next — in a potent mix of fury and heartbreak — exposes long-held secrets and works the entire town of Greenhead into a lather.
Leaving behind the rarefied Brooklyn of her debut for the coast she grew up on, Jackson has written a story of late-night parties and early mornings with small children, of the dawn of midlife, and of a friend group discovering that growing up was never optional.
Praise
“The platonic ideal of a beach read: fun and fast-paced… In Pineapple Street, Jackson brought us into the storied world of Brooklyn Heights; here, she delivers us to the land of clam rolls with the same anthropological eye.” — The New York Times
“A frothy, exuberant book.” — People
“Delightfully satisfying.” — NPR
“Unexpected pregnancies, marital revelations, sibling rivalries… presented with great humour and profound wistfulness. I loved this novel. You will, too.” — Chris Bohjalian
About the author
Jenny Jackson is the New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street. She is Vice President and Editorial Director of Fiction at Alfred A. Knopf — a working editor as well as a novelist — and grew up on the Massachusetts coast that this book returns to.
Perfect for readers of
Pineapple Street, Elin Hilderbrand, Curtis Sittenfeld — a proper summer novel with more underneath it than the cover suggests.
