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Jackpot Summer by Elyssa Friedland

Contemporary fiction

Jackpot Summer

by Elyssa Friedland

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Quick take

Turns out sometimes winning the lottery isn’t so lucky, especially if you’re part of an acrimonious Jersey Shore clan.

Good to know

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    Family drama

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Synopsis

After the Jacobson siblings win a life-changing fortune in the lottery, they assume their messy lives will transform into sleek, storybook perfection—but they couldn’t be more wrong.

The four Jacobson children were raised to respect the value of a dollar. Their mother reused tea bags and refused to pay retail; their father taught them to budget before he taught them to ride a bike. And yet, now that they’re adults, their financial lives are in disarray.

The siblings reunite when their newly widowed father puts their Jersey Shore beach house on the market. Packing up childhood memories isn’t easy, especially when there’s other drama brewing. Matthew is miserable at his corporate law job and wishes he had more time with his son; Laura’s marriage is imploding in spectacular fashion; Sophie’s art career is stalled while her boyfriend’s is on the rise; and Noah’s total failure to launch has him doing tech repair for pennies.

When Noah sees an ad for a Powerball drawing, he and his sisters go in on tickets while their brother Matthew passes. All hell breaks loose when one of the tickets is a winner and three of the four Jacobsons become overnight millionaires. Without their mother’s guidance, and with their father busy playing pickleball in a Florida retirement village, the once close-knit siblings search for comfort in shiny new toys instead of each other.

It’s not long before the Jacobsons start to realize that they’ll never feel rich unless they can pull their family back together.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Jackpot Summer.

Jackpot Summer

Los Angeles Times

CALIFORNIA MAN WINS $2B JACKPOT: HOMELESS THREE YEARS LATER

By Macy Roko

Billy Rockwell knows better than anyone what it feels like to go from rags to riches overnight. He’s the winner of the largest jackpot in the country’s history, a whopping $2.3 billion. And for a period of eighteen months, Rockwell was living large. But by the third anniversary of the historic win, the country’s biggest winner was living in a homeless encampment ten miles from his foreclosed Beverly Hills mansion.

“Booze, drugs and women,” Rockwell said, speaking from inside his tent, which he shares with three other homeless individuals. “They will get you every time.” His only remaining possession of value is a rhino horn from Tanzania that he purchased on eBay for $2 million. “It was supposed to bring me luck,” Rockwell said. The horn turned out to be a replica.

Rockwell isn’t alone in falling on hard times after hitting it big. According to the National Endowment for Financial Education, a staggering seventy percent of lottery winners go bankrupt within five years.

“Most winners go hog-wild,” Everett McPherson, an accountant with nationally recognized firm Ernst & Young, said. “And they don’t realize just how large a slice of the pie Uncle Sam is going to take.” McPherson explained that taxes can eat up nearly half the advertised value of the jackpot.

“Billy was no good with money from day one,” his ex‑­wife, Jeannie Rockwell, said. “The Elvis who married us in Vegas swindled him out of three hundred bucks on our wedding night.”

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Why I love it

I can’t think of anything more escapist and delightful than the fantasy of a lotto-win. Instantly all of your problems are solved—smooth sailing ahead. Elyssa Friedland takes a deep dive into that misguided fantasy in her funny and wise summer novel Jackpot Summer.

The four adult Jacobson children were raised to be careful with money, but at the novel’s opening, they are all in various degrees of financial distress. Their recently widowed father announces that he sold their Long Beach Island house, and they need to gather to pack it up over the July 4th weekend. It is while gathered at the beach house that the youngest sibling, Noah, runs out to 7-Eleven and buys a Powerball ticket. Sisters Laura and Sophie throw in, but oldest brother Matthew and his wife think the lotto is for idiots and abstain. But the ticket is a winner and all chaos ensues.

I was sucked into this story from the very beginning. This is the rare novel that hooks you with a fun premise but then keeps you turning pages because the characters feel so real and expertly developed. Jackpot Summer mines every nuance of familial relationships. It left me with a renewed reverence for what matters and put a huge smile on my face.

Member ratings (1,299)

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Contemporary fiction
View all
The Last Love Note
What Does It Feel Like?
Anita de Monte Laughs Last
The Wedding People
Honey
The Leftover Woman
The Same Bright Stars
Bye, Baby
Definitely Better Now
Swan Song
The Days I Loved You Most
The Connellys of County Down
Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life
Jackpot Summer
Adelaide
I Might Be in Trouble
The Collected Regrets of Clover
Again and Again
Evil Eye
Black Cake
Maame
Romantic Comedy
Someone Else’s Shoes
Once There Were Wolves
We Are the Brennans
The Bad Muslim Discount
What Comes After
Olga Dies Dreaming
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
Monster in the Middle
Nine Perfect Strangers
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes
Honey Girl
In Every Mirror She's Black
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?
Sankofa
The Unsinkable Greta James
The Love of My Life
The Five-Star Weekend
A Home for the Holidays
The Wishing Game
Behold the Dreamers
The Mothers
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Little Fires Everywhere
The Music Shop
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
The Reckless Oath We Made
When We Were Vikings
The Girl with the Louding Voice
A Good Neighborhood
Big Summer
All Adults Here
Happy & You Know It
Friends and Strangers
The Comeback
True Story
The Last Story of Mina Lee
Troubles in Paradise
White Ivy
This Close to Okay
The Chicken Sisters
The Prophets
In a Book Club Far Away
The Other Black Girl
Apples Never Fall
A Quiet Life
We Are the Light
The Most Likely Club
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
When We Were Bright and Beautiful
The Hotel Nantucket