Get your first book for just $5.

Join today!

We’ll make this quick.

First, enter your email. Then choose your move.

By pressing "Pick a book now" or "Pick a book later", you agree to Book of the Month’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.

Get your first book for just $5.

Join today!
undefined

You did it!

Your account is now up to date.

get the appget the app

Our app is where it’s at.

Unlock our Reading Challenge, earn prizes, and get notified of new books on our app.

Our app is where it’s at.

Unlock our Reading Challenge, earn prizes, and get notified of new books on our app.

get the ios appget the android app

Already have the app? Explore here.

get the ios appget the android app
When We Were Bright and Beautiful by Jillian Medoff

Contemporary fiction

When We Were Bright and Beautiful

by Jillian Medoff

Excellent choice

Just enter your email to add this book to your box.

By pressing "Add to box", you agree to Book of the Month’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.

Quick take

In this gripping story set in the shadows of New York’s elite, one family begins to unravel in the wake of scandal.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Family_Drama

    Family drama

  • Illustrated icon, Legal_Thriller

    Legal thriller

  • Illustrated icon, Unsettling

    Unsettling

  • Illustrated icon, NYC

    NYC

Synopsis

You can have everything, and still not have enough.

Cassie Quinn may only be twenty-three, but she knows a few things. One: money can’t buy happiness, but it’s certainly better to have it. Two: family matters most. Three: her younger brother Billy is not a rapist.

When Billy, a junior at Princeton, is arrested for assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Cassie races home to Manhattan to join forces with her big brother Nate and their parents, Lawrence and Eleanor. The Quinns scramble to hire the best legal minds money can buy, but Billy fits the all-too-familiar sex-offender profile—white, athletic, and privileged—that makes headlines and sways juries.

Meanwhile, Cassie struggles to understand why Billy’s ex Diana would go this far, even if the breakup was painful. And she knows how the end of first love can destroy someone: Her own years-long affair with a powerful, charismatic man left her shattered, and she’s only recently regained her footing.

As reporters converge outside their Upper East Side landmark building, the Quinns gird themselves for a media-saturated trial, and Cassie vows she’ll do whatever it takes to save Billy. But what if that means exposing her own darkest secrets to the world?

Content warning

This book contains mentions of sexual assualt and child abuse.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of When We Were Bright and Beautiful.

When We Were Bright and Beautiful

1

This is Billy’s story. But if I were the one telling it, I would start with Nate’s call. For me, that’s the pivot point between before and after; the moment I was, for lack of a better expression, jolted awake.

“Cassie? You there?” Nate, my older brother, is shouting into the phone. He’s back in New York, and he’s frantic. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling for hours.”

“I’m sorry. I was in the library. I shut off my—”

“Cassie, listen, okay? Something awful happened to Billy.”

Nate is talking so fast his sentences bleed together. I make out the word rape, but that can’t be right. Then he says it again.

“Billy was raped?” This can’t be true. Our younger brother isn’t just strong; he’s also scrappy as hell. “Is this a joke? If so, it’s not funny.”

“Come on, Cassandra. Billy wasn’t raped, he was arrested for rape.” His voice is tinged with antipathy. “I wish I were joking. The girl is out for blood. She . . .” Trailing off, he leaves me to twist.

At twenty-five, Nate is a typical big brother, as bossy as he is protective. I’m twenty-three, and Billy is twenty-two. Billy and I are Irish twins; we’ve been inseparable our whole lives.

“Who’s the girl, Nate?” I ask, though I fear I already know.

“Diana Holly.”

Oh, shit. My body stiffens like I’m girding for battle. If Diana Holly is involved, something is very wrong.

“Yes,” Nate agrees, though I’ve said nothing. “You’re right.”

Our family is partial to silence, but like many siblings, my brothers and I communicate telepathically. At the moment, for instance, Nate and I are tallying up all the ways Diana has hurt Billy before, and the signs that she’d one day go too far.

Create a free account!

Sign up to see book details, our quick takes, and more.

By pressing "Sign up", you agree to Book of the Month’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.

Why I love it

One of a novelist’s most difficult—and rarest—achievements is to write a book so richly layered it spans multiple genres. When We Were Bright and Beautiful, the fifth novel by the uber-talented Jillian Medoff is just that.

Is it a family saga? A courtroom drama? A domestic thriller with a gasp-inducing twist that will make you question everything you just read? Yes, yes, and yes.

The novel is structured around the criminal trial of Billy Quinn, a star athlete at Princeton accused of rape by an ex-girlfriend. But the story really belongs to Cassie, Billy’s older sister, who serves as narrator. Twenty-three years old and whip-smart, Cassie rushes to join her family in defending her brother. She controls this story, telling us only what she wants us to know, from the details of the investigation to the courtroom theatrics that grab the public’s attention, to the darker side of the Quinn’s glittering and glamorous life on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. But Cassie is hiding a secret of her own—for years she’s been involved with a married older man. The revelation not only increases the stakes, but it’s where the book’s cumulative power and purpose reside.

When We Were Bright and Beautiful is a masterful novel—it features the kind of propulsive storytelling that will rope you into reading it in one day. But more than that, it is also an important and daring book that will spark many lively and vital discussions about consent, wealth, power, privilege, and our preconceived ideas about how women’s stories should be told.

Member ratings (21,621)

Family drama
The Last One at the Wedding
The Night We Lost Him
Madwoman
Hum
Family Happiness
Husbands & Lovers
Same As It Ever Was
Jackpot Summer
The Lion Women of Tehran
Did I Ever Tell You?
Real Americans
The Reappearance of Rachel Price
Just for the Summer
All We Were Promised
Hard by a Great Forest
Family Family
Northwoods
Mercury
The Second Chance Year
A Winter in New York
Check & Mate
What We Kept to Ourselves
The Leftover Woman
While You Were Out
Evil Eye
Just Another Missing Person
Family Lore
Little Monsters
The Connellys of County Down
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
Paper Names
Divine Rivals
Hang the Moon
The Last Russian Doll
Maame
White Horse
The Family Game
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
When We Were Bright and Beautiful
You're Invited
Marrying the Ketchups
Part of Your World
The Good Left Undone
The Verifiers
The Unsinkable Greta James
Don't Cry for Me
Black Cake
Olga Dies Dreaming
The Family
The Book of Magic
Sankofa
Everything We Didn't Say
Apples Never Fall
The Sweetest Remedy
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
We Are the Brennans
Skye Falling
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
Things We Lost to the Water
Libertie
What's Mine and Yours
The Bad Muslim Discount
The Push
The Chicken Sisters
In a Holidaze
White Ivy
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
Practical Magic
Head Over Heels
The Vanishing Half
All Adults Here
The Kingdom of Back
I Have No Secrets
Saving Zoë
Color Me In
Past Perfect Life
Things You Save in a Fire
There's Something About Sweetie
All That You Leave Behind
The Other Woman
Small Fry
The Winter Sister
The Rules of Magic
& Sons
Family drama
View all
The Last One at the Wedding
The Night We Lost Him
Madwoman
Hum
Family Happiness
Husbands & Lovers
Same As It Ever Was
Jackpot Summer
The Lion Women of Tehran
Did I Ever Tell You?
Real Americans
The Reappearance of Rachel Price
Just for the Summer
All We Were Promised
Hard by a Great Forest
Family Family
Northwoods
Mercury
The Second Chance Year
A Winter in New York
Check & Mate
What We Kept to Ourselves
The Leftover Woman
While You Were Out
Evil Eye
Just Another Missing Person
Family Lore
Little Monsters
The Connellys of County Down
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
Paper Names
Divine Rivals
Hang the Moon
The Last Russian Doll
Maame
White Horse
The Family Game
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
When We Were Bright and Beautiful
You're Invited
Marrying the Ketchups
Part of Your World
The Good Left Undone
The Verifiers
The Unsinkable Greta James
Don't Cry for Me
Black Cake
Olga Dies Dreaming
The Family
The Book of Magic
Sankofa
Everything We Didn't Say
Apples Never Fall
The Sweetest Remedy
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
We Are the Brennans
Skye Falling
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
Things We Lost to the Water
Libertie
What's Mine and Yours
The Bad Muslim Discount
The Push
The Chicken Sisters
In a Holidaze
White Ivy
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
Practical Magic
Head Over Heels
The Vanishing Half
All Adults Here
The Kingdom of Back
I Have No Secrets
Saving Zoë
Color Me In
Past Perfect Life
Things You Save in a Fire
There's Something About Sweetie
All That You Leave Behind
The Other Woman
Small Fry
The Winter Sister
The Rules of Magic
& Sons