In her last summer before college, a young woman in 1980s New York City desperately wants a summer to remember, and it will be, but for all the wrong reasons. There are three things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer: avoid her mother’s depression-fueled rages, lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall, and break out of the New York City Manhattanite private school teen social bubble. Never quite the most popular one, Nina is yearning for a world where she can be a blank slate. She sees the possibility in her new friend Steph, who encourages her to live big and take life by the reins. And one night, at Flanagan’s—the place to be on the Upper East Side for the young elite—she realizes she might be able to achieve all three of these things. She has possibly caught the eye of Gardner Reed, the enigmatic it-boy that every girl above 59th street yearns for. But Gardner can be brooding, dark, and a bit rash. While Nina comes to grips with her mother’s deteriorating mental health, and how fast she must run in order to keep up with the crowd she’s surrounding herself with, she soon discovers that New York City can be a dangerous place.
