Review: Palm Beach

Palm Beach by Mary Adkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was unexpected for me. When I first picked it up, I thought that this would be a long diatribe about politics, veganism, and the rich being horrible, terrible people who must share their money no matter how they earned it.

This book did end up being about showing how someone with such wonderful and pure ideals can sure change their opinion when their child's life is on the line! Suddenly the rich aren't all that bad-they have something 'I' need, so I'll somewhat ignore how they got their money.

Oh, don't get me wrong, idealism does sort of win out in the end, but the line is a lot blurrier than when we started this book.

I loved this novel, and it kept me riveted to the pages-a real beach blanket page-turner just perfect for an idle day!

*ARC supplied by the publisher, the author, and ATTL-Edelweiss.

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SYNOPSIS: "A thought-provoking page-turner from the author of When You Read This and Privilege that captures the painful divide between the haves and have-nots and the seductive lure of the American dream. 

Living in a tiny Queens apartment, Rebecca and her husband Mickey typify struggling, 30-something New Yorkers—he’s an actor, and she’s a freelance journalist. But after the arrival of their baby son, the couple decides to pack up and head for sunny, comfortable Palm Beach, where Mickey’s been offered a sweet deal managing the household of a multimillionaire Democratic donor. 

Once there, he quickly doubles his salary by going to work for a billionaire: venture capitalist Cecil Stone. Rebecca, a writer whose beat is economic inequality, is initially horrified: she pillories men like Stone, a ruthless businessman famous for crushing local newspapers. So no one is more surprised than her when she accepts a job working for Cecil’s wife as a ghostwriter, thinking of the excellent pay and the rare, inside look at this famous Forbes-list family. What she doesn’t expect is that she’ll grow close to the Stones, or become a regular at their high-powered dinners. And when a medical crisis hits, it’s the Stones who come to their rescue, using their power, influence, and wealth to avert catastrophe. 

As she and Mickey are both pulled deeper into this topsy-turvy household, they become increasingly dependent on their problematic benefactors. Then when she discovers a shocking secret about the Stones, Rebecca will have to decide: how many compromises can one couple make?"