Rich and Pretty: A Novel

Named a Best Book of 2016 by Esquire, Refinery29, and Nylon

One of Bustle’s 17 Of 2016’s Most Anticipated Books To Put On Your Wishlist Immediately

One of the Wall Street Journal’s Ten Titles to Watch in Summer Fiction

An Amazon Editors’ Beach Reads pick

One of Newsday’s Best Summer Books 2016

One of PopSugar’s 31 Books You MUST Put in your Beach Bag

A Miami Herald summer reads pick

From the bestselling author of Leave the World Behind, an irresistible debut about the changing relationship between two best friends navigating early adulthood against a backdrop of privileged New York City

As close as sisters for twenty years, Sarah and Lauren have been together through high school and college, first jobs and first loves, the uncertainties of their twenties and the realities of their thirties.

Sarah, the only child of a prominent intellectual and a socialite, works at a charity and is methodically planning her wedding. Lauren—beautiful, independent, and unpredictable—is single and working in publishing, deflecting her parents’ worries and questions about her life and future by trying not to think about it herself. Each woman envies—and is horrified by—particular aspects of the other’s life, topics of conversation they avoid with masterful linguistic pirouettes.

Once, Sarah and Lauren were inseparable; for a long a time now, they’ve been apart. Can two women who rarely see one other, selectively share secrets, and lead different lives still call themselves best friends? Is it their abiding connection—or just force of habit—that keeps them together?

With impeccable style, biting humor, and a keen sense of detail, Rumaan Alam deftly explores how the attachments we form in childhood shift as we adapt to our adult lives—and how the bonds of friendship endure, even when our paths diverge.