Malibu Rising

Same author, same DNA: a glamorous California celebrity dynasty, dual timelines, and secrets that reshape everything you thought you knew about a family.

If you loved Malibu Rising and are asking what to read after it, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is the natural next stop. Like Malibu Rising, it centers on a larger-than-life figure whose fame was built partly on myth — and on the children and lovers left in the wake of that myth. Reid uses the same dual-timeline structure here, peeling back the glittering surface of Old Hollywood to expose the sacrifices underneath. Readers who were drawn to Nina Riva's burden of holding her family together will find a similar emotional core in Evelyn Hugo's reckoning with what she gave up for stardom. It's a slightly different sub-genre — more biographical fiction than ensemble family drama — but the propulsive pacing, the Californian glamour, and the gut-punch revelations are unmistakably Reid.

Dual timelines, a legendary woman whose choices echo through generations, and the same ache of watching someone burn brilliantly at enormous personal cost.

If you liked Malibu Rising because of its sweeping generational scope and its portrait of a parent whose legend overshadows the children left behind, Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead delivers that on an even grander scale. The novel alternates between an aviator's life in the early twentieth century and a modern actress tracing her story, mirroring Malibu Rising's technique of layering past and present until both timelines collide in revelation. Shipstead shares Reid's gift for atmosphere — where Reid conjures the heat and salt of 1980s Malibu, Shipstead conjures the vast, indifferent sky above the Pacific. Readers who want the same emotional magnitude and the same question — what does a parent's obsession cost their children? — will find Great Circle a rich and rewarding next read. It's longer and more novelistic in scope, but the emotional payoff matches.

Nested timelines and a family whose glamorous public face hides devastating private truths — a darker, more literary companion to Malibu Rising's generational drama.

For readers who want to follow up Malibu Rising with something that pushes the generational-family-secrets formula into darker, more complex territory, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood is an ideal choice. Like Malibu Rising, it is built on the premise that the official story of a prominent family is a carefully constructed lie, and that the truth only emerges when someone finally speaks it. Atwood uses nested narratives — a memoir within a novel within a pulp science-fiction story — to achieve the same slow-burn revelation effect that Reid achieves through her dual timelines. The Canadian upper-class setting is a world away from Malibu's surf culture, but the emotional architecture is strikingly similar: sisters, secrets, and the weight of a legacy that was never asked for. A great pick if you're searching for 'literary fiction like Malibu Rising' with more ambiguity and edge.