RIP TIDE

Sisters in their 30s return to their Jersey Shore hometown, where they revisit lingering demons from their adolescence.

Although it’s really about the ways young women struggle to overcome unhealthy teenage relationships, McKeegan’s novel has the trappings of a beach-read mystery. On the first page of the first chapter, labeled "Beach Week 2022: Day Six," a dead body shows up; then the book jumps back to “Day One” and alternates between Beach Week 2022 and events at least 15 years earlier. Kimmy, a "finance superstar," arrives in Rocky Cape after a long absence. Her younger sister, Erin, has been living at home since her difficult divorce at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. As the week wears on, each sister relives painful memories of secrets and betrayals. The depiction of their love-hate relationship as kids is funny if painful, and McKeegan’s depiction of the sex, drugs, and general hedonism of teens during the early 2000s rings painfully true. Kimmy got in over her head and ended her senior year in deep trauma and humiliation. Now she reconnects with old friends, including her high school passion, Justin, who slept with her regularly back then though his official girlfriend was Erin’s nasty friend Madison. Despite Kimmy’s memory of Justin’s part in her ultimate humiliation, she can’t resist their mutual attraction during Beach Week. Erin had a secret teenage passion, too: Peter, an older college boy with whom she carried on a confusing flirtation, her devotion fueled by his mixed signals. After moving home two years ago, she fell into an affair with the married Peter. Now Peter is that dead body. Eventually the book moves past Day Six to follow the detective—a former classmate of Kimmy’s—who’s investigating whether Peter’s death was suicide or murder. There’s a fun twist at the end but McKeegan’s strength is bringing to life the intricate family and small-town social dynamics on display.

A dark, witty beach read about beach-town shenanigans.