by Jenny Jackson

“Oh, no! I left my Cartier bracelet in Lena’s BMW and she’s leaving soon for her grandmother’s house in Southampton!”

Sasha felt wrong-footed 90 percent of the time but also simultaneously felt she was Molly Ringwald in an eighties movie and everyone else was the preppy villain.

This book seems to be in the “love it or hate it” category with many readers. I loved it. It was funny and insightful, and I was invested in our three main character’s admittedly first-world problems and daily lives. This book is about rich people. Specifically, A family that lives in the Fruit Street area in Brooklyn Heights, an exclusive old-money enclave where many celebrities now live. When we are first introduced to the family, we are given the impression that this family is of the worst kind of rich people: Arrogant, snobby, shallow, insular, you name it. They do not make a good impression. They are all of that indeed, but, they also have some good and endearing qualities. That seems to rub some readers the wrong way. Some readers are suspicious that the author is a major force in the publishing world. Some even seem to think that they were drawn in against their will by the gorgeous cover and the evocative title. The other main criticism of this book is that “nothing happens.” Well, I’m used to reading books where nothing much happens. Some of my favorite authors write books in which nothing much happens other than living their daily lives. Well, I guess things do happen because they grow and change, have realizations and insights, go down unexpected paths, and achieve happiness and success. But it’s not because they do things like triumphing over evil, escaping death by inches, solving a mystery, weathering a tragedy, or doing anything that most would consider particularly exciting or adventurous.

The three main characters are Darby, Georgiana, and Sasha. Darby and Georgiana are trust fund babies and the daughters of Chip and Tilda. Despite their pampered existence, both are actually quite likable aside from the way they treat Sasha. Sasha is a middle-class, borderline blue-collar, girl from a raucous loving family who marries Cord, the scion of the Stockton family. Sasha and her attempts to navigate the social and family mores of his insular family are the heart of the book. Although treated politely on the surface, she is kept firmly on the outside of the family circle. But rudeness on their part is unconscious and unintentional, for the most part. And her husband Cord, who also has very likable qualities and is a good guy, doesn’t see it or want to see it.

“I’m not sure what I did wrong, but I just feel like your sisters don’t like me.” “What are you talking about? That’s not true.” Cord patted her back and tried to leave the room. He was a WASP through and through, deeply uncomfortable with conflict.

Oooh not good. But then we have this private moment between Cord and Sasha:

“Did you ever feel that way as a kid?” she asked. “So intense and confused?” “Yeah, totally. I was in love with Little Debbie,” he confessed. “Who’s that?” Sasha asked, running a finger along his bare chest. “A neighbor?” “No, the little girl with a hat on the box of snack cakes.”

How can you not like that guy?

Cord and Sasha love each other, but Cord does not have Sasha’s back while she wrestles with death by a thousand cuts and Sasha prefers a partner that loves her but does not need or depend on her for his happiness. She had that kind of love before and it almost derailed her life.

 She had seen what all-consuming passion looked like, how it felt to ride the currents of intense adoration and fury, and she didn’t want it. She wanted someone stable, someone easy, someone who loved her but not enough to lose himself entirely.

When Darby and Georgiana experience some havoc in their lives, it turns each of their worlds on its axis. Darby’s beloved husband is fired from his important and high-paying job. He is made the scapegoat for a screw-up that was not his fault because he is Korean and without influential family connections. Georgiana falls in love and betrays her personal code by continuing the affair even after she finds out that he is married. Then something tragic happens and she spirals.

Thanks to a nasty confrontation at a family party, Sasha finally reaches the end of her rope and opens a can of you know what on their you know whats. Finally, it comes to a head. All of the secrets and secret feelings come out. But things don’t change until Sasha’s Dad gets sick and she leaves to be with her family. One thing leads to another which leads to a family who finally finds harmony and understanding of themselves and each other. At least the kids do, anyway. Tilda and Chip don’t really change, but they change toward Sasha. And Sasha gets to leave the creepy shrine to the Stocktons and their ancestors on Pineapple Street.

I got a real kick out of this book. The writing was witty with a keen sense of the ridiculous. I liked reading about these strange rich people who live in a whole other universe and seen through the eyes of a normal girl. I also appreciated that even though few would approve of their attitudes or the way they led their lives they were not painted with a wide brush as human beings. The author wanted us to understand them and I found that they were worth understanding. I do wish we had seen more inner workings of why things progressed the way they did. For example, how did Sasha and Cord get over the Pre-Nup crisis? One minute Cord tells her he chooses his family over her, they are on the verge of a break-up, Cord is wrecked, and the next they are happily married. Why do the Stocktons accept Malcolm, Darby’s husband, so easily but not Sasha who is also successful and well-educated? And what made Cord finally see the light and show up in Sasha’s family’s kitchen? After the party disaster at the end, one minute Cord thinks Sasha overreacted and the next he finally has her back.

Interestingly, the author, Jenny Jackson’s, “Acknowledgments” set my teeth on edge a bit. “I wrote half this novel in my apartment on Pineapple Street….” they begin and continue for a paragraph which I found rather smug. Maybe it’s just me. It was strange and ironic given the theme of the book. Or is it possible she was having a laugh? I almost took my rating down but I didn’t because who does that?