FICTION

Palm Beach

HarperCollins. Aug. 2021. 304p. ISBN 9780063011373. $26.99. F
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Are the rich different? Adkins (Privilege) attempts to answer that in this entertaining read. Mickey, a Broadway actor, loses his voice and his career. He’s always hustled side jobs; now he lucks into a full-time job in Palm Beach for one of his clients and moves with his wife and eight-month-old baby to Florida. Mickey quickly finds an even better job as butler to a billionaire couple, the Stones, for twice the money. His journalist wife Rebecca is horrified that Mickey will consider working for Mr. Stone, the “vulture capitalist” who destroys every company he buys, but the money is too good to pass up—plus it leads to an opportunity for Rebecca to ghostwrite Mrs. Stone’s memoirs. When Rebecca and Mickey’s baby is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, the Stones come to the rescue, causing the young couple to reexamine their feelings about the Stones and the power of money.
VERDICT Adkins offers great fodder for book club discussions; her novel should appeal to readers who enjoyed Cristina Alger’s The Darlings, Julian Fellowes’s Snobs, or Sophie McManus’s The Unfortunates.
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