A wonderful read!
This novel drew me in from the very first page and kept me hooked until the end. The characters were vibrant and relatable, the writing was engaging, and the story had just the right balance of heart and humor. Highly recommend!
Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

If you are looking for a summer/beach read, Mansion Beach by Meg Mitchell Moore may be just the thing for you. It focuses on three women who are living on Block Island, Rhode Island one summer. Juliana, a former foster child, is an entrepreneur who has risen above a difficult childhood to become CEO of her own fashion app company, and she doesn't want anything to prevent her taking it public. Nicola feels like she's the oldest intern ever at age 29, but she loves her job working for a nature conservancy and has shocked her parents by discarding her expensive law degree. Taylor works night and day to please her demanding, wealthy real estate developer father and is desperate to hang on to her much less ambitious husband.

But there are conflicting relationships in play and secrets that can ruin everything. The story has its moments, but it is not my favorite of Moore's books. I would have liked a bit more nuance, and I was put off by sentences and even an entire chapter where the author speaks directly to the reader (e.g., "can you imagine . . ." and "you need to know this about [this character]." But the plot kept me reading with occasional excerpts from a podcast in which local residents comment on a death which does not happen until close to the end of the book. That's when we learn who died, how, and why. The story does have its moments, but for the most part, I found it difficult to relate to one or more of the three protagonists.

My thanks to William Morrow and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and provide an honest review of this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC for review.

This is loosely a modern-day version of The Great Gatsby. Set on Block Island, Nicola is a down-on-her luck cousin of a wealthy man, married to a woman but thinking of another one. When the object of his affection moves into town, lies and drama ensue. This is a great summer read that I didn't want to put down. I enjoyed getting backstories of each character just at the point where you were really hating on their entire persona.

Unhappy with her life, Nicola quits her job and takes an internship on Block Island. Quite quickly, she realized that things did not work the same way on Block Island as they did in Minnesota. She quickly falls for the trappings of the its wealthy residents, and just as quickly, it all loses its shine.

Because this is a Meg Mitchell Moore book, I did NOT read the synopsis. I went in blind and was just excited to be back on Block Island. As soon as they mentioned that "green light", I realized this story was some sort of take on The Great Gatsby.

There was a lot of gender swaps, but it was easy to see who was who and what was what. I commend Moore for the way she embraced the themes of the original work but that also could have been what kept this from being a hit for me. I found Gatsby to be a rather sad story, so I felt sad for these people. I was very drawn to the Gatsby character. Reading about her past made her even more sympathetic to her even if her plan to be reunited with David was not totally on the up and up.

I am big on how I feel about the characters in a story, and I mostly felt sad for these people which lines up perfectly with how I felt about those in The Great Gatsby. I was left with some hope for them though, as Moore made some choices for these character, setting them on paths towards better things.

Book set on an island off the coast of NY. Lots of interconnected characters with backstories that follow them one summer. Small town vs development. Love triangles, Betrayals. Lies. Loved it.

I'm pretty much obsessed with Meg Mitchell Moore's books, and especially her ones that are set on Block Island. I really enjoyed her latest book, which explores the stories of two women who are spending the summer on the island- Julianna, a fashion tech startup founder and Nicola, a woman undergoing a career-change. This book wasn't quite as fun and enticing as Summer Stage, but that could have just been that I liked the content of acting/influencers in that book more. Regardless, I will buy every book Meg Mitchell Moore publishes the minute they are available for pre-order.

This is a great summer read with several mysteries along the way. It's a Contemporary Gatsby retelling set on Block Island with several twists with each page. Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

My sister travels to Block Island every summer and as soon as I saw the setting for this book I knew I had to read it. Nicola arrives for her first Summer on Block, she just broke up with her bf and left her job to be an intern and live in a cottage of her cousin Dave's new wife. The cottage is next door to Juliana George (the founder of a fashion-tech company) and one who hosts parties many nights of the week. Throw in a summer romance, affairs and so much more. I really loved this book; I have to be honest I did not give it 5 stars because the last few chapters felt like it came out of nowhere and just ends. I cannot wait to read more by this author!

A perfect summer read set on Block Island, Mansion Beach follows a young woman and her new neighbors' lives of opulence, scandal and secrets.

Evoking similarities to The Great Gatsby, the author layers in three female characters all on a journey of self discovery. Nicola has come to Block Island looking for a fresh start as a summer intern at the marine conservancy. Her life will collide with her next door neighbor Juliana a successful CEO of a tech start up and her cousin’s wife Taylor’s resulting in a complicated love triangle. As the summer wanes, all their secrets will unfold.

The multi-faceted characters combined with the descriptions of the island make Block Island another character itself. With a mixture of found family, class differences and mystery, Mansion Beach is a great escape.

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC in return for my review.

Well, call me a snob, but I hate The Great Gatsby. It's all terrible people doing terrible things.

So, because I wasn't paying attention, it took me a little while to realize this was a 'modern' retelling of the classic story about economics and bad people.

That's about it. Yes, genders are reversed and blah blah. It's still the story of people with too much money looking to prove they have changed.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I love Meg Mitchell Moore books. I was thrilled to receive the ARC from netgalley in exchange for an honest review. And I'm disappointed I could not find much to like about Mansion Beach.

Contrary to the author note saying this was inspired by The Great Gatsby and not a retelling, it's a retelling. Maybe the parts with the podcast gives her the right to say that, but it's fooling no one. I had high hopes for the podcast portions because I thought we'd get more of a mystery out of the story via the town council, but no. Will some readers be surprised to learn year round residents in places where rich people vacation really hate said rich people? Maybe, but probably not.

Because this is The Great Gatsby with gender roles swaps the characters felt flat and not what I'm used to from Mitchell Moore. I didn't care about any of them. So much happens off the page that the reader is then told about from a conversation between two characters. It didn't feel like this author's previous work. I wasn't invested in their lives enough to care about the outcomes. If you love The Great Gatsby this is worth a read.

Thanks for the review copy. The cover is nice. I liked the parallels to The Great Gatsby. This is a fun beach read. People will love reading by the pool or on the beach.

I loved this book! Anything by Meg Mitchell Moore is always a hit! Love the location, the characters, everything! I will always read anything she writes!

I have read Meg Mitchell Moore’s novels before and this is one of her best. After leaving her boyfriend and her legal career, Nicola retreats to Block Island where she becomes a marine biology intern for the summer. Her cousin has married a rich developer’s daughter and Nicola is living in a cottage his in-laws own. Her nextdoor neighbor is a wealthy app developer who throws nightly parties to gain traction for her brand. Though multiple POVs and timelines, Moore develops both the characters and the story. It is a mashup of found family, rich people behaving badly, and a murder mystery. It evokes memories of The Great Gatsby. It will be a great summer beach read. I thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.

This book took me longer than normal to read. At times I found the characters hard to follow. But I was determined to finish it. As other said there are many similarities to the great gatsby and how to different sides of society live. I do love beach reads set in New England and I’m always down for a thriller

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the advanced reader copy.

Nicola Carr arrives on Block Island ready to restart her life--she's broken up with her boyfriend, quit her burgeoning law career, and is now an intern for a marine conservancy. Her plan is to stay in her (aka her cousin's wife's) cottage, do good work, and figure out her next steps for this life pivot. What she doesn't plan for is to be living next to Juliana George, the secretive CEO of a fast-tech company, or that living next door to Juliana will get her pulled into a love triangle that includes her cousin and his wife (Taylor), and her own strange summer relationship. As the summer unfolds, all three women will have secrets revealed and their lives changed.

As a sort-of remake of THE GREAT GATSBY, this was a fun summer read. Mitchell Moore does a great job of keeping the essence of the story while layering in new ways of colliding the characters' lives. I found Juliana a much more intriguing and empathetic character than Gatsby, and the setting of Block Island, instead of Long Island, brings a fresh spin to the tale.

MANSION BEACH is out May 27, 2025

I loved this book and its well-developed and muti-faceted characters. Being invited into the upper echelon of the rich on the East Coast Block Island and New York was delightful, and I would say the island is a main character, too. Incidentally, one of the things I enjoyed most about author Elin Hilderbrand's books was the descriptions of Nantucket and its establishment, and this book gave me shades of that for Block Island. Having read The Great Gatsby several times and knowing before hand this is a parallel retelling from Meg Mitchell Moore made the book more interesting to me. I read it in a day, and I didn't want it to end. I also LOVED the ending. Well done! Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

Beach read inspired by THE GREAT GATSBY, set on Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island. Lots of rich people with poor relations, wealth on display, and class secrets. Juliana is young, accomplished and rich, but lonely and doesn't know how to spend her newly found wealth. So she throws lavish parties in her new beach house, while neighbor Nicola watches from her tiny rented cottage. They eventually become friends and their lives become intertwined with Nicola's cousin and his rich wife, who are also summering on the island. Lots of character development and backstory. Only negative was the podcast device - I didn't think it was necessary and any narrative value it added could have been worked in elsewhere in the story. This will be a popular beach read this summer once it publishes in May 2025.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher William Morrow for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this modern retelling of Great Gatsby. It’s kind of a quiet story, not unlike its inspiration, so don’t expect wild dramatics or a quick moving plot. But enjoyable picture of one Block Island summer and the dynamics between between rich/poor, friends & family.

Before I get into the review, a quick thank you to both NetGalley and the publishers over at William Morrow for allowing me access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Mansion Beach follows outsider Nicola Carr as she spends the summer on Block Island as the oldest intern ever at the local conservatory. Her neighbor, Juliana George, disrupts Nicola's sleeping pattern nearly every night with outrageous parties. Juliana George was only ever hoping to catch the attention of her neighbor across the water (and Nicola's cousin) David Carr who is married to the heiress of a real-estate empire, Taylor Buchanan. Over the summer, the rich become careless with their wealth, with their bodies, with others' feelings. When the end of the summer comes barreling at them, they'll make some grave mistakes they can never hope to undo. Mansion Beach comes out on May 27th and is available for preorder now.

Because I just finished this book and read the acknowledgement pages I want to address something. The author writes in those pages that this is "not a retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby." GIRL. I need you to be so real right now. This is a joke, right? Having read the entirety of this book I have to tell you that you're wrong. This is a straight The Great Gatsby retelling. You hit every single beat. Come on now. For some reason, I went into this expecting more of a murder mystery element, but that's not what happens here. I think the author tried to create that feeling by adding a podcast element to the story, but the podcast doesn't add anything at all and is just some locals bitching about rich people doing rich people thing. I get it. But it didn't add any tension or mystery to the story. I also spent a ton of time waiting for the plot to kick off. I was constantly thinking that it's all about to start. On the next page. Or the next page. But it was the same drudgery throughout. Even at the end of the novel, we don't SEE the life changing action of the story. Everything gets told second or third hand. The writing style also drove me up the wall a few times. For some reason, the author inserts emojis in the story at random moments to describe a character's facial expressions. She doesn't even just describe the emoji it's just a straight insert into the novel. It felt pretty jarring at times. There was also a moment when the author felt the need to explain to the reader what the word "diluted" means. Could someone please send this girl an editor?

The characters were all as awful as you expect them to be in a retelling of The Great Gatsby. So, they are pretty true to the originals. I also found the setting to be really well described and set up for the reader. Block Island is a place where the author has obviously been quite a few times so it was always fun to see the characters running around all over the island and getting up to rich people non-sense. For the most part, I liked Nicola, but as the outsider she was always expected to be the reader's favorite. She's more realistic and down to earth as she watches the summer of drama unfold.

Overall, I realize that this was never going to be for me. It's more General Fiction than Mystery/Thriller. That genre never does well with me. I think this is a good read for those who like the genre or just someone who enjoys a good The Great Gatsby retelling.