Bitsy's Bookshelf: Outer Banks

[Image via Barnes and Noble]

Okay, I know what you're thinking: Anne Rivers Siddons= supermarket checkout aisle. You're right, but in this instance, Siddons delivers a pitch-perfect tutorial on the blue-blooded lifestyle. Outer Banks is the story of four sorority sisters, Kate (the fauristocrat), Cecie (the grounded spitfire) , Ginger (the privileged wild child), and Fig (the clinging mess) in the 60's who meet again thirty years later at Ginger's family compound in South Carolina's outer banks. Why this book belongs on Bitsy's bookshelf is mostly due to Kate, and her social-climbing father, who grooms his daughter to enter where he cannot. Kate's teenage summers are spent waitressing in Nantucket, and her accoutrements are few but well-curated: cashmere and shetland sweaters, wool skirts, a London Fog raincoat, a strand of pearls, white cotton underwear, threadbare khaki shorts, and her boyfriend's college sweatshirts she keeps for the next thirty years. Kate also nails the personality and activities requirement: reserved, drinks a lot of white wine, obsessed with decorating and gardening. Plus, she and her architect husband build their dream house in the Hamptons. We're sure Bitsy would have the couple over for her weekly cocktails on the deck (until she uncovered Kate's erstaz pedigree).