Malibu Rising: A Novel

And Nina understood, maybe for the first time, that letting people love you and care for you is part of how you love and care for them.

Every day of your life feels like you’re climbing up the mountain. And then you get there and you stay for a bit. And it’s nice at the top. But then you start sliding down the other side. He hadn’t seen that part coming. And it had hit him hard.

Her job was to sort through the box. To decide what to keep, and to put the rest down. She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.

“You stay slim, you get rich,”

For so long, Nina had believed it was her greatest strength—that she could withstand, that she could endure, that she would accept it all and keep going. It was so foreign to her, the idea of declaring that something was unacceptable.