I finished Good Rich People days ago and my pulse is still racing. I was gripped by Eliza Jane Brazier's prose from the very first page. The sentences are honed and propulsive, filled with startling insight and incident. I felt on edge reading and often found myself laughing--nervously--sometimes in surprise, sometimes in recognition. Many of Brazier's lines display aphoristic brilliance. The characters--rich and less rich competitors in a game rigged by the richest of them all--push into increasingly fraught and disturbing territory; the plot itself operates with an almost hallucinatory intensity. Incisive, satirical, vivid, disturbing, and wickedly funny, Good Rich People is a thriller flirting with the surreal, so as to shine a light on the murderous reality we might otherwise normalize. This is a novel you'll remember.

The description of this book sounded interesting, but I found it actually just a bit too weird. I'm sure it will appeal to other readers. A rich couple and the husband's mother play a game where they let someone live in their guest house for free and then make their life miserable. Couldn't get into it, it just seemed a bit absurd.

Eliza Jane Brazier is a profoundly talented writer. You almost miss her skill in the immediacy of the prose, so I urge you to take your time with this one and spend a moment or two in admiration. She layers breathtaking insight alongside tension and suspense with such intelligence. Her prose is spare and haunting and there are lessons to be learned in these pages. Highly recommend - you will remember her characters and her authorial voice for a long time afterward.

Oh my… This is fanfreakingtastic! The craziness levels of the characters and sarcastic tone of the story are even higher than my annual Chardonnay conception! Yes, they’re triple grandiose!

This book is extremely hilarious, absolutely disturbing and definitely smartest reads I’ve recently had and I one hundred percent recommend to the readers who are keen on trying something engaging, gripping, twisty, snarky, stimulating! It’s the best dark comedy meets twisty psychological thriller.

It’s psychological because most of the characters in this book suffers from mental illness: a narcissistic couple: a sociopath husband and emotionally unstable wife and a controlling, narcissistic, megalomaniac mother in law.

Let’s meet with not so lovely: mostly disgusting, irritating and easily hatable couple: Lyla and Graham and let’s not forget to mention Lyla’s monster in love Margot: You easily hate their guts! Not because they’re rich! They’re ultra callous, playing sociopathic games with ordinary people and enjoy to ruin their lives for fun. Everything is a game for them. They like manipulating, oppressing, gaslighting, threatening. When they finish with you: you want to be dead or you eventually died in their hands.

They live in Hollywood Hills: their house is built at 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. Margot decides to use it as storing people, caging them as her favorite pets by playing vicious , life destroying games!

Margot and Graham likes to play innocent tenants who never see what’s coming game and Lyla has to prove her worth to them by playing and winning at the end. Their last game ends with a person’s dead body is taken out from the fountain. And it’s all Lyla’s fault because she became so friendly with their prey.

Now Margot chose a new tenant and she insists Lyla should be the master of the game to intrigue her. New prey’s name is Demi and she’s workaholic tech prodigy, making annually more money than Graham. She’s risk taker and she can destroy any obstacles or people stand in her way.

Margot thinks at the end of game: only one of them will survive and she can manage to defeat Demi! Lyla thinks this is easy leash task. She can beat her in her own game.

But Lyla has no idea Demi is not the person who thinks she’s and she can play dirtier to win because she comes from nothing, she has to nothing to lose!

Let the heart pounding, high tension mind games begin!

I loved this book way too much than I expected! I want to see it adapted on big screen. Oh boy! This would be my dream job if I had a chance to adapt it! Eliza Jane Brazier knows how to play rock n roll and I’m telling you my friends this book is gonna be one of the huge hits of next year! You shouldn’t miss it!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.

“So much of what I feel lives beneath the surface of me. It only occasionally swells and rises, when under extreme duress...for example...when I have to wait in line.”

Just an introspective nugget from Lyla, a woman who married into money. She and her husband, Graham, live on his mother’s land. His mother, Margo, lives in the sprawling towers. Lyla and Graham live in the house in front of it. There is also a guest house below that they like to rent out to tenants.

Not just any old tenant. They focus on self-made rich folks who rose from nothing. It’s actually a game. They like to take the tenant in and then ruin her life just for the thrill of it.

Demi has had a rough life, and finds an incredibly rare opportunity to live in the guesthouse. Little does she know what she’s getting into...and neither does Lyla.

I was a huge fan of Eliza Jane Brazier’s debut novel, If I Disappear. It was so oddly different, but very compelling. This one is also oddly different, but unfortunately - it’s also not very good.

This book is all over the place in terms of POVs and hard-to-follow timelines. I found myself confused by most of it.

There were also plenty of moments where Point A jumped to Point C, completely obliterating Point B.


****MINOR SPOILER****


For example, Character 1 brings Character 2 to a private lake, leaves her there, and tries to get her arrested for trespassing. First of all, I highly doubt someone would get arrested for trespassing at a lake if they weren’t doing anything else wrong. Maybe a fine? But I digress. Next, Character 1 ends up getting arrested for the trespassing, and has to spend a whole night in jail. Um, what? There is absolutely nothing given to the reader to explain what happened when she called the cops, or how it came to be that she was arrested instead.


****END MINOR SPOILER****


The head-scratching moments only increased from there. Everything about this story is so convoluted and over the top. The characters were atrocious, and not in a fun way! I’m a fan of despicable characters when I can still root for some of them. I wasn’t rooting for anyone here. The final scenes take an inordinate amount of time to get through, and it just wasn’t very pleasant to read.

I try not to be mean-spirited in my reviews, but I am always honest. I think this one could have benefited from another round or two of editing...because there is a good story in there somewhere - it’s just bogged down by ridiculousness. Regardless, I hope the book finds its audience, and I still look forward to Brazier’s next book.

TW: Death of a dog that I feel was included just for shock value.

Thank you to Berkley for providing me with a widget of the ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Expected Publication Date: 1/25/22.


Review also posted at: https://bonkersforthebooks.wordpress.com

#GoodRichPeople #NetGalley
This book is some crazy s$$t. It is a twisted must read. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-arc copy of Good Rich People!!!

This book was an absolute delight to read. That probably seems like an odd thing to say about a dark psychological thriller, but from the very first page I found myself reveling in the excellence of the writing and the cleverness of the plot. I also found myself laughing quite often, because the narrative voices, Lyla in particular, were unexpectedly engaging and undercut constantly with a fabulous, subversive black humour. Eliza Jane Brazier displays here a mastery of language and storytelling which had me unable to put the book down, eager to see what conclusion she wrought for her fascinating characters. Highly recommended.

An interesting and disturbing read. Very thought-provoking and almost surreal. The writing is great and the characters...I was rooting for all of them even though they were trying to get one another. It was great, I loved how it pulled me in every direction at once!

You’ve always known rich people were different, and they are. In this book they are mean, twisted f%$$#s, but they’re about to meet their match from someone not in their social strata. Demi has never felt like she got dealt a fair hand, now she’s taking on someone else’s life and their home. What she doesn’t realize is that Lyla and Graham, the wealthy couple that own the property get their kicks from ruining the lives of the people who stay in their guest house. This time though, they may have met their match in Demi. The characters in this book are incredibly unlikeable, but then that’s the point