This book was immersive and really took me into 1980’s summer in NYC. As a New Yorker it was fun to read about the City back then, all the ways it has changed but stayed the same. The narrator was somewhat naive and a little irritating at times, her focus was typical of a teenage girl, but her back story and family issues gave her some depth. Overall a good little mystery and a good read.

This book was a fun romp through NY in the 80s, through the eyes of Nina during her last summer in the city before going off to college. Nina makes a fun new friend who introduces her to the "gorgeous excitement" of cocaine, and chases after a guy she likes, desperate to lose her virginity before she leaves for college, while also dealing with her mom having some mental health issues. Nina was a good narrator, I liked being inside her head through this story. She felt very naive at the start and definitely evolved through the book. The ending felt a little abrupt and not very satisfying, I was expecting some bigger reveal or conclusion. I love the cover art! I think this would be a really good audiobook, too.

I had high hopes for "A Gorgeous Excitement". I love a good nostalgic coming of age story and for the most part, this book did offer that. However, I did not enjoy the writing nor did I really fall in love with any of the characters. Maybe I'm just not the target audience but I found the whole thing very lackluster. At some point, I may try again with the audiobook as I think I could get past the poor writing via listening to to a narrator tackle it.

It’s 1986 in Manhattan and Nina Jacobs has just graduated from high school. Before she sets off to Vanderbilt in the fall, Nina plans to have the best summer of her life. She chases a crush, hoping to lose her virginity. She makes a new friend who introduces her to cocaine. Her deeply depressed mother starts on a new medication and becomes increasingly manic. And then a girl is found dead in Central Park.

This book gave me some "Bright Lights, Big City" vibes between its use of New York City as a character/backdrop and the copious amounts of casual drug use. The other book it reminded me of was "The Guest" by Emma Cline — young main character making bad, dangerous choices while the reader sits on her hands with anxiety. But I didn’t think this book was as engaging as "The Guest" for a few reasons: 1) this book was way too long which doesn’t give the reader the (to me, necessary) feeling of chaos and anxiety and 2) the reader goes into the book knowing that is ends with a death at the hands of the protagonist’s love interest, which removes a lot of the suspense.

As mentioned above, I thought this book was way too long. I didn’t really find most of it interesting (Nina meets Stephanie, Stephanie introduces Nina to cocaine, Nina does a lot of cocaine and chases a boy, repeat) and I didn’t feel like we got to know enough about the peripheral characters to care about them. I didn’t think Gardner, Nina’s crush, was fleshed out enough — he seemed awful and, though we were told over and over again that he was charismatic, popular, and handsome, every glimpse of him that the reader was shown was negative.

In short, I wanted more backstory of the side characters and I wanted more time at the end of the book and less in the middle.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and Crown Publishing for sharing a copy of this book with me in exchange for my honest review.

4.5 stars, I loved this! I’ve been getting more into the lit fic genre and this is added to the books I’d recommend in this genre.

This book felt like a slice of life, following our main character the summer before she goes off to Vanderbilt for college. I started looking forward to seeing what would go down on the next Friday at their local bar! Our main character has family issues, goes through a crush that couldve gone so wrong, her friends going through things in the background and complex relationships with multiple characters. This was another book that felt so real, when i wasnt actively reading, I was wondering what the characters were up to.

I’d recommend this book to anyone that loves character driven books!

I think this book had an interesting premise and it did somewhat keep me engaged. However it was a bit repetitive with Nina's thoughts and her actions never really evolved.

This overall has the recipe of books I’m typically into. There is even a blurb that it resembles Bret Easton Ellis. Well….that’s not entirely true. This book is a literary fiction coming of age story following Nina in 1986 and her cocaine-fueled summer before going away to college. She’s obsessed with a boy so this paired with cocaine you know I was all in for if you know me.
Unfortunately, this fell flat because the entire book is just the internal ramblings of a teenager and her drama involving a boy and her mother’s mental illness. There was some sort of murder mystery promised as this was written based on a true crime case in the 80s but we knew the entire book what was going to happen there. Overall, I wish this had a little more depth or a little more plot so I could be more invested.

🏙️ Coming-of-Age LitFic
🏙️ Mother/Daughter Relationships
🏙️ Mental Illness & Addiction

I love the way this is written, it made it so easy to devour. I loved the 80s vibe and the character development. Nina’s friendships and obsession with Gardner, paired with the rollercoaster of her relationship with her mother, made for an exhilarating read. An extraordinary look into what living with a parent suffering from mental illness is like and the messiness of growing up in the city. This book reminded me so much of the movie Thirteen, and I’m obsessed with it. My first five star read of the year.

📚 PUBLICATION MONTH BOOK REVIEW 📚

A Gorgeous Excitement By Cynthia Weiner
Publication Date: January 21, 2025
Publisher: Crown Publishing

📚MY RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for this #gifted e-ARC in exchange for my honest review!

📚MY REVIEW:

While A Gorgeous Excitement was fiction, this debut novel from Cynthia Weiner read like a nostalgic memoir beautifully capturing a snapshot of time in New York City in the summer of 1986. The detailed prose created a brilliantly evocative coming of age story, one in which the high energy excitement of Manhattan in the 1980s came to life.

This is the story of Nina, who has two goals for herself in the summer of 86: avoid her mother's major depressive rage and lose her virginity before she heads to college in the fall. She spends much of the summer socializing at a local bar, where she is crushing hard for Gardner, the guy all the girls lust after and all the guys want to be. She also spends much of her summer with her new friend Stephanie, who introduces her to the world of cocaine.

I really loved the first two thirds of the book, as the story seemed to drop me right into the middle of NYC in the 80s and I loved its immersive feel. I was reminded of the freedom and invincibility of being a teenager, imagining how gloriously wild life would have been as a teenager in the big city at that time in history.

The last third of the book, however, seemed to fall into a downward spiral that, overall, felt heartbreakingly depressing. The storyline took several turns I didn't necessarily expect and ended up in such a melancholy space.

Considering the way cocaine became such a driving force in the lives of some of these characters, and the way everyone was living as if they were invincible, the melancholy vibe seems intentional. I mean, the title seems to give the impression of a fun and carefree read, but the cover image shows a spinning and distorted view. The book's summary notes that Freud called cocaine "a gorgeous excitement," but a gorgeous excitement for the wrong guy can be lethal. Overall, this was an enjoyable wild ride - with some heavy topics - which really gave me a deep-cut peek behind the curtain into what it was like to be a teenager in Manhattan in the mid 80s.

#AGorgeousExcitement #CynthiaWeiner #CrownPublishing #NetGalley #NetGalleyReviews #ARC #booklover #bookaddict #fictionalreads #comingofagestory #bookreviews #bookrecs #bookrecommendations

Combines riveting thriller plot and pacing with a heartbreakingly considered coming of age (of a sort). Vividly evokes the Upper East Side of the 1980s and nightlife during the summer of the "preppy murders." Gorgeous writing and devastating storytelling.

We follow a young girl in NYC as she tries to loose her virginity before college while dealing with youthful antics and her mother's mental illness. I am not the write audience for this. The characters were not great either. Thank you, NetGalley.

I know it’s early in the year, but I’m pretty sure that A Gorgeous Excitement is going to end up having my favorite book title and cover of 2025. I can’t remember the last book I read where the title (a Freudian description of cocaine) and the cover so perfectly represented the story itself. And thankfully, the story lives up to its pretty packaging.

It’s 1986 in New York City, and Nina Jacobs has just graduated from high school. The whole summer spreads out before her, and she has two goals: Stay out of her parents’ apartment as much as possible so she can avoid her depressed mother, and lose her virginity before heading off to college. As a means of accomplishing both of these goals, she’s spending a lot of her nights at an Upper East Side bar called Flanagan’s with her friends, where she sets her sights on the handsome, preppy Gardner Reed. When a new friend introduces her to cocaine, Nina goes all-in on her pursuit of Gardner, falling head over heels in love with the drug and with him. She never would have expected that her gorgeous, exciting summer would end with a girl found dead in Central Park, strangled to death.

Drawing on her own experiences growing up in NYC during the 1980s, Cynthia Weiner has written a vivid, vibrant coming-of-age story about an 18-year-old woman rushing headlong into the world of adults. A Gorgeous Excitement thrums with atmosphere and completely immerses the reader in the Manhattan of the ‘80s, where magic and menace lurked around every corner. It perfectly captures the naiveté of young adulthood: how confusing yet liberating it can feel; desperately wanting to be treated like an adult when you still feel, emotionally, very much like a child. Nina is a sympathetic main character whose vulnerability practically screams from every page; she’s so endearingly insecure, so determined to be a grown-up.

A Gorgeous Excitement deals with heavy themes like mental illness, complicated mother-daughter relationships, substance abuse, toxic (and intoxicating) female friendship, misogyny, and culture and class differences, so there’s a lot to ponder between Nina’s frenetic, shimmering cocaine binges. A Gorgeous Excitement is just as thoughtful as it is exhilarating, and I am BEGGING someone to turn it into a TV show because I’d watch the hell out of it. Thank you to Crown Publishing for the complimentary reading opportunity.

𝗔 𝗚𝗢𝗥𝗚𝗘𝗢𝗨𝗦 𝗘𝗫𝗖𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 is a coming-of-age story set in 1980s New York City following Nina during the summer before she leaves the Upper East Side for her freshman year at Vanderbilt.

Weiner does a wonderful job of capturing the carefree spirit and invincibility of being 18 and about to leave home, as well as the excess and grittiness of Manhattan at that time. She was inspired by the "Preppy Murder" that occurred in Central Park when she was a high schooler living in the city, and her firsthand experience comes through. I didn't move to New York until the 90s but I loved the references to things I remember like getting fake IDs in Times Square and the old peep shows, and that Flanagan's bar is a perfect stand-in for Dorian's. But this isn't just a look at unsupervised teens having sex and doing drugs. Nina's mom has mental health issues, she faces anti-semitism, and misogyny was the norm. While Nina is an insider who's rich and graduated from an elite school, she's also an outsider because she's Jewish and will never fit into the old money world she aspires to, and this duality makes her a compelling character to follow.

While the vibe is there with this one I wanted more there there. There's a lot going on - Nina's quest to lose her virginity, her best friend's possibly abusive boyfriend, her mother's mental health struggles, her grandfather's cognitive decline - but at the same time nothing seems to happen.

Even without fully delivering the depth I hoped for, I still found this to be an impressive debut and will be interested to see what Weiner writes next.

Thanks to Crown Publishing for the copy to review.

In the end, this just wasn't the book for me. While I typically love both a NYC setting and the era, I struggled with main character Nina and her summer-long quest to lose her virginity before starting college. I read the first half closely, but was skimming by the second half. For those reasons and because this is a debut novel, I'm opting to only share my thoughts here and on no other platforms.

3.5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
I love the visuals this book provides. It’s not quite a thriller but it has a few thriller moments. I wanted more from the ending but overall it was a good book.

admittedly, listening to this after literally just listening to the YWA episode about the preppy murder contributed to my feeling that this story had been told. i was most interested in the focal female friendship in the story, but i liked everything for thew most part. i'd definitely give this a reread with some more distance.

1986, Upper East Side, New York City: Nina Jacobs is counting down the days until she can escape her stifling family apartment and start college at Vanderbilt. Her mother’s crippling depression looms over everything, and Nina numbs herself with temp jobs by day and nights at Flanagan’s, the local bar where Manhattan’s preppy elite gathers. But with her dark hair and Jewish roots, Nina feels like an outsider among the blonde, blue-eyed crowd. She tolerates her discomfort -- and the company of her frenemies, Leigh and Meredith -- for one reason: Gardner Reed.

Gardner is the guy -- every girl’s dream and every guy’s idol. Nina is determined to catch his attention and lose her virginity to him before leaving for college. When she befriends the confident and carefree Stephanie, Nina gains something she thinks will make her irresistible: cocaine. At the same time, her mother’s new medication lifts the oppressive darkness at home, making Nina hopeful for the first time in years. With a coin purse full of cocaine and a chance to finally capture Gardner’s attention, Nina is convinced this summer will be truly memorable.

The author’s note reveals this novel is a fictionalized, semi-autobiographical account tied to the infamous “Preppy Killer” case. From the first chapter, a chilling tension permeates the story as the narrator reveals the conclusion of the summer before it even begins: a young woman is found dead in Central Park, and by nightfall, the handsome, golden-boy suspect is in custody. He’s charming, popular -- impossible to imagine as a killer. And the victim? She had been “relentlessly pursuing him.”

A the rest of the story then rewinds to replay the unfolding events of the summer of 1986, a sense of foreboding looms over Nina’s story, turning it into a slow-motion train wreck: Is she the body that will be found in Central Park?

At its heart, A Gorgeous Excitement is a novel about being seen for oneself and knowing when to tell and accept hard truths. Nina’s fraught relationship with her mother is heartbreaking, particularly as her own drug use blinds her to vital signs of her mom’s mental state. The novel could have thrived solely on this dynamic — its emotional weight is that compelling.

The book also vividly captures the sticky, stifling heat of 1980s NYC, when Times Square was still gritty and raw. It’s a visceral setting for a story about coming of age and coming undone.

Readers drawn to literary thrillers like Bright Young Women or those who appreciate a sharp, emotionally charged coming-of-age narrative will find A Gorgeous Excitement gripping and deeply resonant.

This wasn't bad. Maybe I would've enjoyed it more if I didn't read it so slowly, but the fact that it did also says something. The atmosphere and 80s setting was great, it felt appropriately grimy and I did enjoy (?) the messy relationship between Nina and Stephanie. I found the main character pretty annoying, but I enjoyed it enough to finish in any case.

Thanks to Crown Publishing and NetGalley for the digital ARC; all opinions are my own.

Cynthia Weiner’s “A Gorgeous Excitement,” with its look back at the excesses of the ’80s which now seem so distant as to have happened on a different planet, had me recalling the sentiment of a real-life young woman from those times who said of a much-acclaimed TV series, “My So-Called Life,” that she didn’t find anything in the series remotely relatable to her own life.
Others at the time obviously begged to differ, though – the show was all the rage for a while – and Weiner in a foreward to her book tells us that the characters’ actions in her novel, for all their seeming remoteness to us now, in fact came out of the actual experiences of her and some of her friends. Still, I couldn’t help thinking, as I read the novel, that for many young people today, reading it might well have them feeling as if they were reading about life on Mars.
Those were times, after all, as depicted in the novel, when girls barely out of high school displayed a personal familiarity with sexual practices that would have shocked their grandmothers and, with an “illusory sense of invulnerability,” “ran rampant through the city streets” and “traipsed through Central Park in the middle of the night” and did the entire gamut of drugs, with the one of especial choice being cocaine (a “glorious excitement,” Freud said of its effects – hence the novel's title).
Even the novel’s protagonist, Nina, does no small amount of the drug – she’s even let go from a temp position for doing it on the job – for all her being presented as more perceptive or socially conscious than the other girls (think Ally Sheedy in “Heart of Dixie,” whose conscience is awakened to the civil rights movement, though, interestingly, it’s not Nina in the novel but a less sympathetic figure who speaks out against antisemitism).
But more than just a depiction of a period that with its excesses made for a particularly dangerous time for young women – in real life, as in the novel, there was indeed a Preppy killer – Weiner’s novel is a sobering look at mental illness, both with whatever faulty brain circuitry might have made for the killer as well as, more personally upfront for Nina, what might have made for the afflicted state of her mother, Frances, whose welfare is the chief concern of her husband as he seeks to keep her from being subjected to the sort of invasive treatment that incapacitated Rosemary Kennedy and to that end is optimistic about a new medical drug.
And indeed for a time the new drug seems to be working its magic – Frances is in particularly fine form when she gives what's what to a store boss who’s giving a friend of Nina’s a bad time — but soon enough the drug’s efficacy wanes and her situation goes terribly south.
A mix, then, of a depiction of a different time and place and a contemplation of mental illness, Weiner’s novel, and an exemplar of gorgeous writing as well. Though, again, in these conservative times of ours, I couldn’t help thinking that young readers might well see the novel’s milieu of excess (think “Scarface,” which is in fact cited in the novel) as something out of an alternative universe.

In the summer of 1986, Nina Jacobs is preparing for her departure of college by endeavoring to lose her virginity and to avoid her mother, Frances. Frances is prone to depression and rarely leaves her bed; when she does, it's with disastrous results. Nina's father, Ira, is left to deal with his wife (who he genuinely loves), his ailing father-in-law, and his own hostile family, miles away in St. Louis. Nina temps by day, and in the evening, joins her wealthy friends at Flanagan's, a local bar that doesn't care if you're underage. Fueled by alcohol and a variety of pilfered prescription medicine, Nina lurks on the fringes. Like many of her contemporaries, she's obsessed with Gardner Reed, a handsome bad boy who occasionally deigns to notice her--more so when she starts using and sharing cocaine.

Nina becomes good friends with Stephanie--who introduced her to cocaine--and also has a pretty strong nonsense meter, except when it comes to her own boyfriend. At the same time, Frances starts on a new medication which helps with her depression but leads her into mania. But a tragedy at the end of August will forever change their lives. Although I would have been a contemporary of Nina, I somehow missed the Preppy Murder on which this is based. #AGorgeousExcitement #NetGalley