Permanent Vacation

Palm Beach, 1987.

Alexis Delacorte has never known an ordinary summer.

At seventeen, her world is oceanfront estates and private beach clubs, hotel suites and midnight swims, tennis whites, champagne, fast cars, boats waiting at the dock, and parties that usually end somewhere other than where they started. The Delacortes own a luxury hotel empire, and Alexis has grown up alongside the children of Palm Beach developers, Hollywood royalty and Wall Street fortunes. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone knows everything.

This summer, Blaine is coming home.

Alexis's twin has spent four years at boarding school after a reckless streak, one enormous party and several spectacularly bad decisions finally pushed their father too far. Now he is back for good, and the twins have an entire adolescence apart to make up for.

Then Pierce Rockwell's cousin arrives from the Cape.

Dylan Barrett knows money, but he doesn't know Palm Beach. He has no history with Alexis, no idea who she is supposed to be, and none of the familiarity that comes with knowing someone since childhood. She likes that. She likes him even more.

Soon Dylan is everywhere, and what was supposed to be another summer becomes Alexis's first experience of being completely, stupidly in love.

But beautiful families are rarely as simple as they photograph.

Behind the gates are affairs, spectacularly bad marriages, neglected children, old resentments and secrets that aren't really secrets at all. In Palm Beach, everybody talks.

They just know when to lower their voices.

And money can make almost anything look beautiful.