Nina Riva

Nina Riva is the eldest of the four Riva siblings in Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel Malibu Rising — a famous surfer and model whose annual end-of-summer party at her Malibu home in 1983 becomes the night that changes all four siblings' lives forever. As the eldest daughter of famous singer Mick Riva and his abandoned first wife June, Nina has spent her adult life being responsible for everyone around her while managing her own complicated feelings about her father's fame and absence.

Reid writes Nina with the specific weight that falls on eldest children in families where the parents cannot or will not carry it — she is capable, generous, and quietly running on empty, her celebrity status a surface that the novel slowly opens up to reveal the cost of maintaining it. Her marriage, her career, and her relationship with her siblings each receive genuine attention.

Malibu Rising tells its story across two timelines — the night of the party, and the history of the Riva family that produced that night — using the structure to reveal how the present moment is the accumulated consequence of everything that came before. Reid is one of contemporary fiction's most skillful architects of multi-timeline narratives.

A standalone novel. Read after Daisy Jones and the Six for thematic connection.