Cover of Social Lives

Social Lives

Step into picture-perfect Wilshire, home to some of the most privileged people in the world, where one woman's desperate act could bring the precariously balanced social order crashing down...

Read more

Wilshire, Connecticut, the gilded enclave of Manhattan's prosperous elite, appears to be a vision of suburban tranquility: the mansions are tastefully designed, the lawns are expertly manicured, and the streets are as hushed as the complexities in the residents' lives. While Wilshire's husbands battle each other in the financial world, their wives manage their estates and raise the next elite generation. Some women are envied, some respected, and others simply tolerated. But regardless of where they stand, each woman is defined by the world she inhabits and bound by the unyielding social structure that surrounds her.

Rosalyn Barlow, the most envied woman in Wilshire, is waging a battle of social manipulation to silence the scandalous gossip that threatens her daughter's reputation while her self-made billionaire husband grows more and more distant in his young retirement. But for fourteen year-old Caitlin Barlow, navigating life as a teenager in a culture of wealth and sexual promiscuity has become far more perilous than either of her parents knows. Newcomer Sarah Livingston has nothing but disdain for everyone and everything around her and a growing terror at having another child in a world she's come to resent. As she is pulled into the Barlow family's storm, the walls begin to close in around her marriage and the life she once thought she wanted. And for Jacqueline Halstead, who's just discovered her husband is under investigation for fraud surrounding his hedge fund, saving her family from total ruin means doing the unthinkable - and shaking the Barlow family, Wilshire's insular community, and herself to the core.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 320 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Social Lives? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Social Lives. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Raising Hope Shares fiction, chick lit, women’s fiction
  2. Bought Shares chick lit, fiction
  3. Crossing Washington Square (Nal Accent Novels) Shares fiction, chick lit, women’s fiction
  4. Delicious Conversation

“People who read Social Lives tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Earth to Betsy
  2. The Recessionistas
  3. The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation
  4. Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen: Learning to Cook with 65 Great Chefs and Over 100 Delicious Recipes

“If you want more of the same (women’s fiction), start with these.”

  1. The Perfect Elizabeth: A Tale of Two Sisters
  2. Cover Girl Confidential
  3. Perfect Alibis
  4. Divided Loyalties

“If it was the chick lit that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Vegas Girls
  2. Time for a Change
  3. Shelter Us
  4. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Hedge Fund Wives
  2. The Ridge
  3. After the Fire
  4. Envy