A Gorgeous Excitement

A Novel

De: Cynthia Weiner

Narrado por: Rebecca Lowman

One young woman’s summer of infinite possibility takes a turn she never saw coming in “this 1980s coming-of-age tale [that’s] chillingly compelling. Get ready to be transported.”—People (Best Books of the Month)

AN OPRAH DAILY BEST NEW THRILLER • A TOWN & COUNTRY AND CRIMEREADS MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK

“I haven’t felt this kind of excitement reading a story set in the ’80s since I first discovered Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz, and Bret Easton Ellis.”—Margarita Montimore, bestselling author of Oona Out of Order

There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her mother’s depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossible—when her mother isn’t lying in bed for days, she’s lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a blowjob gone spectacularly wrong, Nina is the talk of Flanagan’s, the Upper East Side bar where young Manhattan society congregates. It doesn’t help that she’s Jewish, an outsider among the blue-eyed blondes who populate this rarified world. She can fit in, kind of, with enough alcohol and prescription drugs stolen from her parents’ medicine cabinet.

Flanagan’s is where she pines for the handsome, preppy, and charismatic Gardner Reed. Every girl wants to sleep with him and every guy wants to be him. After she’s introduced to cocaine, Nina plunges headlong into her pursuit of Gardner, oblivious to the warning signs. When a new medication seemingly frees her mother from darkness, and Nina and Gardner grow closer, it seems like Nina might finally get what she wants. But at what cost?

Freud called cocaine “a gorgeous excitement,” but a gorgeous excitement for the wrong guy can be lethal.

©2025 Cynthia Weiner (P)2025 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“The title of this assured début novel is taken from Freud’s description of cocaine’s effects. That drug, combined with prescription medications, sex, and alcohol, fuels the narrative, which is closely modelled on the real-life death of a Manhattan teen-ager in 1986—the so-called Preppy Murder case.”—The New Yorker

“A Gorgeous Excitement is a thrilling coming-of-age narrative set in 1980s Manhattan, featuring twists of humor, vulnerability and, of course, excitement . . . brimming with beautiful prose and suspense.”—Shelf Awareness

“Informed by the author’s real-life acquaintance with ‘Preppy Killer’ Robert Chambers, this 1980s coming-of-age tale is chillingly compelling.”—People

Night Club Scene

This book will transport you to the late 80s/early 90s nightclub scene and touches on class/society, family dysfunction, mental illness, and murder. While it’s inspired by the preppy murder, the story can stand on its own and doesn’t feel like a rip off. The character development is great—everyone is flawed/human. In addition to being well written, the dialogue is realistic, particularly for the time and place. I’m looking forward to the author’s next book!

Incredible in every way.

Read this book. The characters are human and likable, the story is brilliant. My only criticism is that the author’s note at the beginning gave too much away. Still, brilliant book.

Felt it needed more editing and maturity

It’s too bad cause I was excited to read a fiction story of that era in Manhattan. I found the narrator’s voice to be annoying and that distracted me from enjoying the book. It was all the same tone no dramatization.

Juicy, but wise, but touching too

Such an easy read, like a summer book, but at the same time a thoughtful account of a girl growing up with a mentally ill mother, and being ambitious and smart, and finding valuable comfort, and needed fortitude, in drugs.....also some hilarious insights into the do's and don't of upper east side prep school girls, "Dont ever wear pearls whiter than your teeth."
SOOO good.

It was long and drawn out, could have made it much shorter.

This book started off as orh potential, but it is q long drawn out plot-centered around only really a single event.

Slightly monotonous

It was easy to feel like you weren’t going anywhere because the entire story took place between a girl’s house and a bar. And back-and-forth they went… There’s something very immature about the way. It was written as well. Parts were well written, however the majority of the dialogue felt like it had been written for a teenager, not about a teenager. It was easy to think you would read the same passage over and over again as there was no distinction in scenes.