By Coral Gables Gazette staff
Most book launches involve an author, a podium and a line of readers waiting to have a title page signed. The Coral Gables launch of Asha Elias’ The Namaste Club is built differently.
Books & Books will mark the paperback release Tuesday, June 23, with a vintage night market, book-inspired flash tattoos, themed trivia and an author talk — an evening designed to feel less like a standard reading than a night out in the Miami the novel skewers.
A local satirist’s second act
Elias’ Miami roots are central to the satire. She is a University of Miami graduate with a degree in print journalism, a former Ocean Drive staffer and now the sex and dating columnist for Miami New Times.
The Namaste Club is her second novel, following the 2024 social satire Pink Glass Houses, which took on the cutthroat PTA politics of an elite Miami Beach elementary school. That debut earned a starred Booklist review and praise from Dave Barry for its tour through the “seamy underbelly of Miami Beach” and the sometimes deadly world of elementary-school fundraising.
The new book turns Elias’ satirical eye toward the luxury wellness industry. Early descriptions have reached for a familiar shorthand: The White Lotus meets Nine Perfect Strangers, transplanted to Florida. The result is a beach read built around sharp social satire, South Florida status anxiety and the uneasy promise of self-improvement sold at resort prices.
Transcendence Week goes sideways
The setup begins just inland from Florida’s Treasure Coast, at the Namaste Club, an exclusive yoga retreat run by a serenely blond Instagram influencer named Shakti. Well-heeled Miami women arrive for what the brochure promises will be release, renewal and redemption.
The guests are a gallery of South Florida types: a newly and fabulously divorced socialite, an heiress who has taken a vow of silence she cannot quite keep, a tradwife from Vero Beach lying low after doing something inadvisable back home, and a man-bunned apprentice instructor several of the women find difficult to ignore.
Presiding over the property is Bubba, a 12-foot American alligator who, before the week is over, gets his moment when one of the guests ends up in his jaws.
From there, the novel becomes a comic mystery wrapped in a wellness retreat: who is actually healing, who is performing enlightenment, and who is getting exactly what was coming.
Elias has described the book as a send-up of the wellness industrial complex and “all things fabulous and Florida.” The launch event leans into that same spirit.
A launch party
What sets the June 23 event apart is its scale. The evening runs as a series of overlapping happenings rather than a single talk.
A Vintage Night Market opens at 6 p.m., with local vendors offering curated clothing, jewelry and assorted finds, and continues until 10. Flash tattoos, with book-inspired designs from the artist behind Tatu Panda, will be available through the evening for readers looking for a more permanent souvenir.
The author talk runs from 8 to 9 p.m., when Elias will discuss the inspiration behind the novel and its cast of characters. The night closes with a special edition of Superfly Trivia from 9 to 10:30, themed around the novel’s universe of wellness, secrets and pop culture.
The format is a fitting match for the book: communal, a little chaotic and unmistakably Miami. For an author whose work examines the performance of South Florida glamour, a launch that turns the bookstore into a market, a tattoo stop and a trivia hall feels less like a gimmick than an extension of the material.
If you go
The event is free and open to the public, with books available for purchase on site. An RSVP grants general entry, though seating is not guaranteed, so early arrival is advised.
The Namaste Club: An Evening with Asha Elias. Tuesday, June 23, beginning at 6 p.m.; author talk at 8 p.m. Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables. Free and open to the public; RSVP recommended. The paperback edition of The Namaste Club is published by William Morrow Paperbacks and priced at $18.99.
