SuitabookBeach Lane
Melissa De La Cruz
- Reading
- Consider reading alongside the young person, pausing after Eliza’s opening chapters to discuss status and embarrassment, then revisiting those ideas as Mara, Eliza and Jacqui’s choices and relationships develop.
- Themes
- Responsibility and growing up: The three girls work as au pairs while navigating friendships and romantic complications during the summer. The book presents competing or mixed signals about this.
- Wealth, class and identity: Eliza moves from extreme privilege to financial hardship and tries to conceal the change from people who know her former life. The excerpt exposes Eliza’s status-conscious contempt and anxiety; the later moral treatment of her attitudes is not fully established.
- Friendship and romantic choices: Mara, Eliza and Jacqui face romantic interest, former partners and social complications while relying on one another during their summer work. The book’s stance on this remains unclear.
- Worth knowing
- A parent may wish to notice how the book handles wealth, class, work and romantic attention. Eliza’s contemptuous observations about poorer circumstances and other people create an opportunity to discuss judgement and empathy.