This book started off strong but then it got really weird and boring. Plus, a dog dies.

Thanks, Netgalley, for my arc.

This is one of the most unique and twisted thrillers of the year! This one was dark and kept me on my toes from the jump.

Genre: thriller
Pub date: 1/25/22
In one sentence: Lyla and Graham like to play games, and when you're as rich as they are, the games are very dangerous...

I had no idea where this book was going, and boy did it get dark. All the characters were super unlikeable, but I really wanted to know what would happen to them. There were a few good twists, and I did not see the ending coming. The reason it's a 3 star read for me is that I didn't feel totally sucked into the story like I hope to with a thriller. But I think readers who like dark satire and lifestyles of the rich and famous may like this one!

Thank you to Berkley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Review posted to Goodreads 1/16/22, to be posted to Instagram closer to pub date.

I read this book in one sitting. It was fast-paced with twist and turns from start to finish. You'll never guess the ending!

Thank you NetGalley for providing a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Published: January 25, 2022
Berkeley
Pages: 329
Genre: Psychological Thriller
KKECReads Rating: 4/5
I received a copy of this book for free, and I leave my review voluntarily.

Eliza Jane Brazier is an author, screenwriter, and journalist. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she is developing If I Disappear for television.

“When you’re rich, you can control everything.”

Lyla married into an extremely wealthy family, and she had adapted to their thinking. Mostly. Demi has struggled and gone without her entire life, so when she has an opportunity to see his other half lives- she takes it. Graham is entitled in all the ways you’d expect of someone who grew up disgustingly wealthy. And he and his mother, Margo, have a unique relationship. And now, they plan to include Lyla. Welcome to the game.

This was a well-written book, and the storyline was well thought out. The balance of rich vs. poor was played very well, and the characters reflected that.

There isn’t much to like regarding the characters. They are all extreme victims of their circumstances. Whether they are rich or poor, the likability is low. But that is the point.

I loved that a huge theme throughout this novel was redemption. The precarious balance between good and evil, wanting to be good, and being good. It was very well represented and well portrayed.

This was a hard book to put down. The story is told engagingly, and even when you hate the characters- you have to know what happens next.

I enjoyed this story a lot. Very fresh, unique, and a beautiful game of cat and mouse. The twists and turns were well done, and the game is more than entertaining.

I"m still not completely sure how I feel about this book. This story was so unique and I didn’t love it at first but once it picked up, I couldn’t put it down. I loved the back and forth of the story. The book was the perfect length and perfectly paced.

My only complaint is that Lyla and her husband, Graham were so unlikable. Like almost too unlikeable. Lyla was so boring and awful, Grant is an absurd jerk. I don't really get why they're together other than money? For being so rich, they're lives seem incredibly dull. Nevertheless, their awfulness makes you want to keep reading to find out what happens to them.

Would recommend if you want a quick, unique thriller.

This is one of the smartest and most unique books I’ve read in a long time! Completely over-the-top, the satire was turned up to eleven and I LOVED it! For example, in the first chapter, Lyla goes to the grocery store, but can’t figure out which pasta sauce to buy, because none of them are expensive enough. She ends up buying ingredients to make sauce from scratch, because it costs more than buying a jarred sauce. The writing was so clever and page-turning, with dual POVs that gave us different perspectives of the same scenes. I read this in a day, because I just couldn’t put it down. As long as you know going in that this is in no way realistic, you’ll have a blast reading it like I did!

Thank you NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for providing me an e-book copy of GOOD RICH PEOPLE. This book is … WEIRD. In a GOOD way.

This is a story about rich versus poor. Or is it poor versus rich?

Lyla and Graham are very rich. They get bored easily. As does Graham's mother, aka Lyla's mother-in-law. They like to play games. The object is to destroy their latest tenant - always somebody who needs help and is specifically chosen by Lyla's mother-in-law.

We find out about the past tenants and their newest tenant, Demi, who has her own treasure trove of secrets. Demi is the Draw Four card to their UNO game. She is the Go Straight to Jail card in their Monopoly game.

While I don't think people with loads of money to burn have fun trying to destroy other's lives, I do think they get bored quite easily. I have no money, you see, so I'm never bored. le sigh.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this story, but I ended up enjoying it. It will make you mad, sad and glad you aren't Lyla.

GOOD RICH PEOPLE, with the perfect cover, publishes on January 25!

I rate GOOD RICH PEOPLE four out of five stars.

I struggle with how to rate this one.

I appreciated the premise and I certainly didn't dislike it as much as I did Brazier's previous book. There are a couple of decent twists and a plethora of unlikable characters.
Are there plot holes and things that are just unbelievable? Yes for sure.
There's really not a huge amount of plot overall if I'm honest.
But in the end, I thought it was a kind of tongue-very-far-in-cheek snarky tale about how the rich think they are so far above everyone else to the point they will do bizarre and shocking things to avoid being bored. And what might happen if someone outside of that crowd entered their world.

Reminded me a lot of the movie Ready or Not. Dark and subversive, yet it doesn't go quite far enough in that direction to make me really love it. Still it will have fans for those who can get where the author was going with this.

Warning that a dog dies in the story. I didn't get to know the dog much ahead of time so it didn't bother me as much as it probably could have.

This was definitely a different type of story. One that you could actually see becoming a reality with how depraved some people are....especially if they have the money and influence to hide their indiscretions.

Lyla and Demi are very relatable characters. You have one woman who has had some struggles in life, but has ended up with the elite. The other is about as rock bottom as you can get and has literally nothing left to lose.

One who is playing to preserve her way of life and the other that is playing for her survival. Nothing good can possibly come from this particular game, but as long as the proper people are entertained it doesn't really matter.

A story that takes you through both sides of the tracks. Showing you the upper elite that has no regard for a human life and the life of a woman who has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Especially when everyone counts her as the underdog.

A great way to spend your weekend.

A wealthy family devises a bizarre game to alleviate their boredom. They invite a self-made person to live on their family compound for the sole purpose of destroying them. Their next target is Demi. Have they finally met their match?

Demi stood out amongst a book full of obnoxious characters for me. In addition to being complex and full of secrets, Demi is a fighter who does whatever it takes to survive. Even though Demi isn't innocent, she has the misfortune of being caught up in this family's web of mind games. They've underestimated Demi, and she makes their lives anything but dull!

Good Rich People was on my 2022 most anticipated list. Unfortunately, I didn't love it as much as I thought. I struggled with the confusing and frequent retelling of events from different points of view. That said, there's a lot to like in Good Rich People.

If you enjoy cunning, unlikeable characters, a disturbing story with unexpected twists, and satirical humor, you should give this dark thriller a try.

Thank you to Berkley Publishing and NetGalley for a digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

#GoodRichPeople:

“Our house is built on the edge of a cliff. And underneath it, between those concrete plinths, is a hidden guesthouse. It was built to hold up the house above. Margo once used it to store her exotic shoe collection, but now we use it to store a person.”

Well hot damn. 👀 I didn’t really know what I was reading going in blind and the I saw the above line and had to read the synopsis. (Not a spoiler) and I was so pumped.

This book is so good. It has this.. dark.. Pulp Fiction vibes that I can get down with. It gives me The Most Dangerous Game or Ready or Not feels. It’s so twisted with this cat and mouse game between the elite and those that started from nothing and became wealthy. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it and here I am, loving every page.

Not everyone is going to like this book. This was wild and weird and dark and I am a fan. The people are so out of touch with reality in their own rich world, they don’t understand. “How rude. I hate when people don’t want to know everything about me, especially things I can’t tell them.” It had a bit of dark humor, which had me laughing at lines like this.

Thank you so much Penguin for the gifted copy! Good Rich People is out January 25th!

OMG how great. This Author can do no wrong. This book is beyond incredible and totally unputdownable! Just go in blind and you will read for hours. It's that great.
Thanks to Netgalley.

Good Rich People knows its a crazy and absurd book and owns it. And while that can be pretty frustrating at times you sort of just learn you're along for the ride and just have to enjoy it.

<i>When you're rich, you can control anything. Except the richer.</i>

it must be so boring being rich, i mean being SO rich that the possibilities are literally limitless, where being able to just...<i>have</i> anything you could ever possibly <i>think</i> to want removes all of life's challenges.

but if you're rich AND a sociopath, you can make your own challenges, like the challenge of ruining the lives of others.

<img src="https://data.whicdn.com/images/304107636/original.gif"/>

graham herschel and his mother margo are two such sociopaths, taking extreme measures to avoid becoming weighed down by the ennui of their extreme wealth. margo lives with her beloved dog bean in a massive castle-like edifice towering imposingly on the edge of a cliff overlooking the hollywood hills. graham and his wife lyla also live on her sprawling property, in a slightly-more-modest home plopped on top of a subterranean guesthouse that they oh-so-charitably rent out to self-made, new-money tenants.

however, these unfortunate tenants will become unwitting participants in the winner-take-all game graham and margo have been perfecting for years. the roots of this game began with margo devising new and exciting ways to crush the spirits of overfamiliar staff for her own amusement, but when graham was old enough, she looped him in and it evolved into a competition between the two, taking turns in an ever-escalating display of power and inventive cruelty.

<blockquote>The game is simple, in theory, but in practice it always gets messy. The tenant is the pawn. The landlord is the player. The family is the audience. We observe from a distance, talk it over at private dinners.</blockquote>

<img src="https://thumbs.gfycat.com/HelplessFittingBeagle-size_restricted.gif"/>

the game is won by destroying the tenant's reputation, career, relationships, health—whatever they have that <i>can</i> be destroyed, <i>will</i> be destroyed.

<blockquote>Everyone is playing a game all the time. It only matters when you're losing.</blockquote>

<img src="https://static.tumblr.com/e5277b7f95d78fa9192c2532f77c8046/ce5cvgn/cu5nve3rp/tumblr_static_4g3lgx5xqruos88s0kogkwgwo_2048_v2.gif"/>

graham's wife lyla has always been a passive spectator to these games, never a participant:

<blockquote>I don't want to play. It's different when it's them, when it's something I see at a distance. Something I am aware of, but can easily ignore.</blockquote>

however, she inadvertently ruined the last game by getting too close to the tenant; by having the audacity to befriend the prey.

<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_jpg,fl_progressive,q_auto,w_1024/lqelqrswwmv9jebnieoq.jpg"/>

<blockquote>The most important rule was no interference—not because anyone was afraid of losing but because rich people can't deal with any conflict they didn't create. In fact, it's almost impossible to "lose" the game because the players have all the advantages, and the tenants have no idea they are being played with. It's very much like hunting. You don't walk into the forest and punch a deer in the face. You have a gun, a deer stand and a bloated sense of your own virility.</blockquote>

lyla's genuine affection for the last tenant caused her to break this rule, and her interference—warning her friend of the danger she was in—undermined graham’s plans. although the goal was technically achieved and things certainly ended horribly for the tenant,

<img src="https://64.media.tumblr.com/c869da2f2549e24ea04bf29027b14add/3bf05ed082019fac-7f/s500x750/60f03b5e5e0f2c8632f06d34ed36acbbc218d9df.gifv"/>

her inevitable destruction occurred outside of the game's parameters, resulting in a hollow, unsatisfying victory. boooo.

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/55/29/32/552932732117aa7a9535ac80f806ca62.gif"/>

now, part punishment/part test, graham and margo have decided it's lyla's turn to play, and she's determined to Do a Good Job in order to prove her loyalty and rekindle graham's flagging interest in her through the aphrodisiac of cruelty.

but she didn't count on demi golding.

after a long slow decline in her life's prospects, demi finds herself homeless and desperate, so when an opportunity to improve her situation presents itself, she has no qualms about grabbing it with both hands—putting the “con” in “economic disparity” by assuming someone else's identity and moving into the curs'ed guesthouse, unaware of what the herschels—what <i>lyla</i>—has planned for her.

but if there's one thing she's learned from her hardships, it's how to survive.

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/18/16/9c/18169c7caf338288221b654edb3b92e8.gif"/>

demi doesn't need to be warned of the danger—her whole life has trained her to expect that someone will try to knock her down.

<blockquote>The trouble with living a hard life is that you start to see the world differently. Your mind and your instincts and your outlook are forever altered by negative experiences. You expect bad things to happen. When you're crossing the street, you imagine every car veering to hit you. You plan escape routes in tight alleyways. You think, <i>What would you do if that man—that one, right there—suddenly punched you?</i> Would you hit back? What weapons are at your disposal? What are your emergency exits, safety nets?

Oddly, this leaves you <i>less</i> prepared to deal with bad things when they do happen. You have become accustomed to not trusting your instincts. You are so used to telling yourself that it is all in your head that you can't tell when it's not.</blockquote>

surrounded by new comforts and the opportunities that are suddenly unfolding before her, demi is braced for discovery; for everything to be taken away from her again, but she’s also prepared to fight to hold onto everything she’s managed to scrabble together.

<blockquote>I would rather be in a rich person's hell than a poor person's heaven.

And I am so fucking close.</blockquote>

<img src="https://c.tenor.com/JIfoNitDfQoAAAAM/dangerous-liaisons-liga%C3%A7%C3%B5es-perigosas.gif"/>

the novel alternates between lyla and demi's POVs, where both women are revealed to be complex and flawed and full of secrets.

lyla is so profoundly narcissistic that it’s tempting to wanna see her taken down a peg. although she's far more sympathetic than either margo or graham, she's still a nightmare person living in an unpoppable vanity-bubble:

<blockquote>I stop to check my reflection in the full-length mirror. Sometimes I am scared by how beautiful I am. Every inch of me is buffed and primed. My face hangs exactly right. My muscles are taut and organized. I am scared because I don't want to lose it: the shaped nails, the tip of my nose, the sapphire glow of my eyes. I am sad because I want everyone to see it, but I don't want to see them. I want them to know how lucky I am but I don't want them to have access to me. It's a real problem. </blockquote>

as deliciously vapid as she is, she has a clear-eyed view of what graham is and is not, and there’s more to her than meets the eye.

<blockquote>Everything is shallow with Graham: his looks, his thoughts, his actions. And there is something so attractive about that, the lack of depth. No hidden parts. No secret baggage.</blockquote>

this is a terrific cat-and-mouse thriller full of venom and deplorable characters,

<img src="https://64.media.tumblr.com/7c5a092edd30bd9651afdacfb0a10cc6/tumblr_plo9qeswkx1qj6sk2o1_540.gifv"/>

and for the most part it's highly enjoyable froth, but there's a sharp-toothed <i>fineness</i> in how the author handles demi's assimilation into the privileged life and how quickly she begins to take its comforts for granted.

<blockquote>...there is something about having things to lose that makes me afraid in a different way. I used to be numb, accepting everything that came, but now I feel almost <i>more</i> vulnerable.</blockquote>

in her life, she has learned that <i>Failure is just like success: It doesn't happen overnight,</i> but here, she <i>has</i> been transformed overnight, and if she hasn't technically <i>achieved</i> success, she has certainly achieved its trappings, discovering the transformative power of wealth; how it consumes, insulates, softens everything; how it makes problems disappear, and how quickly it makes the memories of struggle no matter how intense, fall away. and if her path to stability has been morally questionable, well, she’s not the only one.

<img src="https://64.media.tumblr.com/565d26a3106d95c16472bc1b3a639479/b6aa83c9ed4ddf54-13/s540x810/0410c1aa1f3af7d293ff459ef32760ae1a138742.gifv"/>

<blockquote>I want to tell him I am just like him now. Except I earned it. I earned it the same way every rich person does: by stepping over a body.</blockquote>

this is a zippy thriller that escalates into an extravagant chaos-party that’ll leave you with plenty of moral ambiguity to chew on by the end.

i had a great time with this one, because rooting for terrible people is one of my weaknesses, and i'd apologize, but

<img src="https://64.media.tumblr.com/f25cdcd31447dd641c0f432baa8847d6/0792adde0bb1ac3a-94/s500x750/4b9a30bd8a3a57ea76787bc1e13eabd7aa1ceaf7.gifv"/>

********************************

i received a free ARC from macmillan in exchange for an honest review &yadda &etc.

I have to admit that I am often drawn to a book by its cover, and Good Rich People has an eye-catching one!

FIRST SENTENCE: "There is blood in the fountain turning the water an eerie rust color."

THE STORY: When Lyla married Graham she thought she was winning, but now he is bored with her and every other aspect of his life. His filthy rich domineering mother indulges and encourages the worst aspects of his need for amusement. They play games and there is always a loser.

For their entertainment, they lure successful people to their property by providing housing. Then they ruin them. When Demi moves in, the game takes an unexpected turn.

WHAT I THOUGHT: A dark, psychological comedy, Good Rich People is also a cautionary tale of wealthy people who will do anything for amusement contrasted with the destitute who will do anything to survive.

This is not a book for everyone. The characters are unpleasant. We hope they are not like us but we find them utterly fascinating. The twists and turns are unexpected and will keep the reader turning pages to discover the next outrageous move in the game.

When I got to the end, I asked myself, "What did I just read?" I'm still trying to reconcile and understand the meaning of the title and the ending.

There seemed to be lots of unanswered questions at the end. Perhaps the game just goes on.

BOTTOM LINE: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you like black comedy with lots of violence. This book is NOT for everyone.

DISCLAIMER: Thank you to NetGalley / Berkley Publishing Group and the author for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

What a dark, twisty domestic thriller! This is not for everyone, but fansof My Lovely Wife will love Good Rich People.

Twisted! Characters you love to hate, quick chapters, and a plot that kept me engaged…I really enjoyed this one! From page one you may (or may not be) shocked at the internal dialogue of these “good rich people”. It’s quite a wild ride living inside the heads of two women who will do whatever it takes to climb the social ladder and acquire/keep the kind of money that let’s you get away with nearly anything. The sentences themselves are short and almost frantic at times and a sense of dread hangs over this entire book. I was dying to see how it all played out and even though some of it was over the top, and there were a few loose ends when I finished, I had a blast with this one.

I appreciate the opportunity to view this galley, but unfortunately, I just couldn't get into this one.

Lyla and Graham are a beautiful and rich couple who live in a house on the property of Margo, Graham’s mother. There is an apartment below their home that they rent out to one lucky person. Unbeknown to this lucky tenant, Graham and Margo selected them for their twisted game - and with the newest tenant, the pair have forced Lyla to play the game as well. But in a twist of fate, the tenant Demi is used to playing games to survive, and only one woman can come out of this game the winner. With multiple twists, lots of suspense,
Good Rich People is a quick and enjoyable thriller.

The storyline with the housekeeper felt somewhat disconnected and didn’t really do much for the story - I think that was a missed opportunity to add another twist and add more suspense, but otherwise, this was a great book. The ending was unpredictable and gave just enough closure to feel satisfied.

Thank you to the author, Berkley Publishing Group, and NetGalley for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. #GoodRichPeople #NetGalley

Rating: 5/5