The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson — A Summer Fellowship, a New Friend Group and Some Stolen Stories

Caroline Lash is 28, the daughter of a famous bestselling author, and she has just sold a story to the New Yorker. Hoping to step out of her mother's shadow and write a serious literary novel, she leaves New York for an 18-month writing fellowship in Greenhead, a small coastal town in Massachusetts named after its biting flies. There she meets Van Whittaker, an environmental scientist and local, starts sleeping with him and is quickly welcomed into his tight-knit group of high school friends. Then Bailey, Van's ex-girlfriend, announces that she is pregnant with his baby. The group's balance shifts, and Caroline's novel-in-progress, which happens to be about her new friends, starts to look like a betrayal waiting to happen. How much of other people's lives does a writer have the right to use? That question sits at the heart of the book. The Shampoo Effect was published on 30 June 2026 by Pamela Dorman Books in the US and Hutchinson Heinemann in the UK. It comes from Jenny Jackson, the author of Pineapple Street, and it was a Read with Jenna book club pick. Small-town life, seen from inside and out The novel begins with Caroline's outsider view of Greenhead. She is a city snob who doesn't expect much from life outside New York, and the book gently pushes back against that. As the story goes on, it shifts to the perspectives of the other women in the group, including Bailey, Augusta, whose marriage to Colin is strained by family tension, and Fran, who is struggling with money worries and the stress of raising children with her husband RJ. Their secrets make the friend group far more complicated than Caroline first imagined. Dishy but deep Norah Piehl at Bookreporter called it "dishy but deep" and an ideal summer novel, praising its balance of substance and style and its "delightfully thoughtful details". She also noted the influence of John Updike's novels of small-town secrets and scandal. Publishers Weekly praised the strong local colour and well-developed characters, and summed it up as an "enjoyable tale of a writer who makes new friends and then steals their stories", with "plenty of heart". What to be ready for This is a social comedy more than a romance, and the happy ending is a qualified one. If you want a single love story at the centre, the shift to several women's points of view may feel like a detour. Caroline is also not always easy to like early on, since her snobbery is part of the point. Who will enjoy it If you enjoyed Pineapple Street, or you like witty novels about friend groups, money and small-town secrets, this is a natural fit. It is also a strong beach read for anyone who likes their summer books with a bit of bite. Our verdict The Shampoo Effect is a sharp, warm and sun-soaked novel about outsiders, friendship and the ethics of turning real people into fiction. It is full of gossip and scandal, but it also has real heart, and its shifting points of view reward readers who like to see every side of a story.