Jackie: A Novel by Dawn Tripp on June 26, 2024
Genres: Fiction / Biographical, Fiction / General, Fiction / Historical / General
Pages: 464
Format: ARC
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This is the book I didn’t know that I wanted to read. I didn’t know much about Jackie Kennedy Onassis and I ended up going down the google rabbit hole with this book. This is a fiction but based on true events.
This book was divided into parts and I found them all very interesting. The first part was about how Jackie meet Jack (JFK) and her feelings about him and his lifestyle. This told a story about her ambitions and what happened to put her in the path to make the choices she made. When she first meet Jack, she wasn’t at first drawn to him but as she kept coming across him, she was drawn to his intellect and his charming personality. Once he won her over, their “Camelot” life that was pasted over all the media wasn’t what we thought it was. I really felt her need to be happy with herself and her life. I felt like she was a lonely person and that kept me reading to see if things ever changed for her. Tripp did a tasteful job of describing how Jackie navigated a life with JFK even through the infidelities and flirtations he had with other women. Tripp made her feel and look strong even if she might have felt less than that.
Then 11/22/63 happened and her life was turned upside down. The author speculates what Jackie would have thought about the events and I really felt like I was reading Jackie’s take on the events. Tripp had such a detailed description of events, that I had to google it and get the bird’s eye view.
Then Bobby was killed and he was a support person for her and that broke her a little more. Bobby was the one person who helped Jackie after JFK’s assassination. He was always there guiding her and helping with the kids. I personally wondered what his wife thought of all this, but Tripp didn’t speculate about that.
When Jackie married Onassis, I was a bit surprised as he was over 10 years her senior. He gave her an escape when she needed one but their relationship didn’t last. They spent more time apart than together. Then when he passed away, Jackie decided she needed a new purpose in life.
Thus she began her career in book editing in New York. She didn’t really have formal schooling for this, but she was a long time book lover, reader, and writer (of Jack’s speeches) so she did have some qualifications to start at the bottom.
I was very impressed with Jackie’s grit. She got through A LOT of tough circumstances and did it with grace. Her life was about enduring tough things and she never seemed to feel bitter toward JFK. She embraced her life as a Kennedy and was a woman who tried her best. This is a love story about resilience, love, power, loss, and reinvention.
Thank you to NetGalley & Random House for the opportunity to review this ARC.