One young woman\u2019s summer of infinite possibility takes a turn she never saw coming in \u201cthis 1980s coming-of-age tale [that\u2019s] chillingly compelling. Get ready to be transported.\u201d\u2014<\/b>People\u00a0<\/i><\/b>(Best Books of the Month)<\/b><\/p>\n
AN\u00a0<\/b>OPRAH DAILY<\/i><\/b>\u00a0BEST NEW THRILLER \u2022 A\u00a0<\/b>TOWN & COUNTRY<\/i><\/b>\u00a0AND\u00a0<\/b>CRIMEREADS\u00a0<\/i><\/b>MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t felt this kind of excitement reading a story set in the \u201980s since I first discovered Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz, and Bret Easton Ellis.\u201d\u2014Margarita Montimore, bestselling author of\u00a0<\/b>Oona Out of Order<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her mother\u2019s depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossible\u2014<\/i>when her mother isn\u2019t lying in bed for days, she\u2019s lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a blowjob gone spectacularly wrong, Nina is the talk of Flanagan\u2019s, the Upper East Side bar where young Manhattan society congregates. It doesn\u2019t help that she\u2019s Jewish, an outsider among the blue-eyed blondes who populate this rarified world. She can fit in, kind of, with enough alcohol and prescription drugs stolen from her parents\u2019 medicine cabinet.<\/p>\n
Flanagan\u2019s is where she pines for the handsome, preppy, and charismatic Gardner Reed. Every girl wants to sleep with him and every guy wants to be him. After she\u2019s introduced to cocaine, Nina plunges headlong into her pursuit of Gardner, oblivious to the warning signs. When a new medication seemingly frees her mother from darkness, and Nina and Gardner grow closer, it seems like Nina might finally get what she wants. But at what cost?<\/p>\n
Freud called cocaine \u201ca gorgeous excitement,\u201d but a gorgeous excitement for the wrong guy can be lethal.<\/p>\n