This was such a unique and entertaining story, although it definitely isn’t horror. Brielle was such an interesting character and was at times both startlingly naive and deeply cynical. She’s navigating the duality of coming from one culture and being forced to assimilate to another to survive financially, while feeling not quite a part of either, and trying her best to fit in and not draw attention to herself and her “otherness.” This was a fun read and weaves in Haitian culture and mythology juxtaposed with American extreme wealth and privilege.

This wasn't horror in the way I expected. Which was a bit of a let dow,n. Despite that, its still really good.

What a year for Haitian folklore in YA literature. This time it is a Zombie story, and it is absolutely delicious! Check out my full review: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjfdaNuG/

This book is engaging and draws the reader in . This book is excellent for readers to get them on board to read. I love how it will draw the young readers in just like it drew me in to continue reading. Its an interesting title snd subject for all readers. It engages which is so refreshing! I hope to find more engaging books like this one for students.

I really wanted to love this book. I had very high hopes. I loved the concept, just not the execution.

What I did love:

I enjoyed reading about the immigrant experience and the story about why Brielle and her mother came to America and left her sisters behind. I thought that was a fascinating story, and I wish it had been more fleshed out. (ha - get it - fleshed out)

I loved reading about Brielle's passion for cooking and everything related to it. I love stories that involve food and cooking, and I thought the stuff about her supper club and the foods she cooked were great.

What I didn't love:

I was promised a story about zombies and cannibalism and vengeance, and there really wasn't much of any of that. While I did like learning about Haitian Zombies, and what that means in their culture, it wasn't enough of the plot to consider this a zombie book. That should have been the bulk of the plot, but I felt it meandered too much into the romance, which was confusing. I wanted a story about vengeance and eating the rich, but instead, I got a weird romance between Brielle and a billionaire's son. And that romance did NOT work for me. And the ending left me feeling very confused - I still don't understand the decision there, and it really felt out of left field.

While the premise was fascinating, and it started strong, with a compelling and queasy scene in which Brielle is cooking scrambled eggs with brain (not human, unfortunately, but definitely setting the tone right for more oddness later), the narrative quickly devolved into a typical story about a poor outcast girl struggling to resist being ground under the heels of the oblivious rich white folk that she and her kind work for. The concept of Brielle being--so she believes--a Haitian "zonbi" was mostly telling and little showing. It didn't feel like the Moulite sisters had committed, Gillian Flynn-style, to putting us into the minds of a protagonist who so firmly believes in her unusualness that she convinces readers as well.

A book about class disparity mixed with Haitian culture and also a female chef main character? Don't mind if I do.

This book was so much fun to read. Brielle and Marcello were so much fun to follow as the main characters. Their friendship was a refreshing and welcome respite from some of the more serious elements of the novel.

Brielle's mother is a home healthcare provider for the eldest member of a family dynasty of rich assholes. She has worked for them for twenty years and yet her boss still doesn't know how to pronounce her name correctly and won't acknowledge her chronic back pain despite being the CEO of the pharmaceutical company that makes the medicine pump attached to her spine.

When a mysterious text gives Brielle the chance to make a huge difference in the lives of others, she takes the plunge and lands herself in a whirlwind of opportunities to show off her cooking skills and maybe throw a little magic in there, too.

I really loved the conversations about privilege and wealth disparity as well as the diasporic duty of the children whose parents sacrificed so much for their kids to have everything. Brielle refusing to be ashamed of her economic status or culture was handled so beautifully. Other books would have the main character making excuses and skirting around the truth, but Brielle leaves a fancy party and then goes to the bus stop. Small details like that ground the story and, despite its fantastical elements, make some of the strongest moments of the novel.

I don't want to give too much away, but this is a fun read. The backstory of Brielle's family back in Haiti is heartbreaking and the scenes with Brielle throwing her supper clubs are so delightful. It's a roller coaster that I highly recommend everyone hop on.

Thank you so much to the publishers and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book is marketed as a horror novel, but I’d describe it more like the Disney movie Zombies—it includes zombie lore and horror-adjacent elements, but overall feels more like a YA contemporary fiction. That said, it didn’t take away from the enjoyment of the story. While I do love true horror and was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t actually scary, the book still delivered in other ways.

It draws on fable-inspired themes and uses them to highlight real socioeconomic and racial inequalities that are deeply rooted in our society. The storytelling is uniquely done through alternating perspectives—the FMC and her “muses,” her Haitian sisters, which added depth and richness to the narrative.

I really loved the writing style and the plot, especially the FMC’s mission to take revenge on the ultra-wealthy 1%. It’s a compelling and entertaining read, and I’d definitely recommend it to fans of YA. Honestly, I’d love to see this adapted into a movie—I think it could be a really fun and impactful watch!

Listen, I LOVED this, especially as conversations on TikTok have picked up about the Haitian origins of zombies, originally zonbis. Freaking great YA horror that I'd put in the same zone as Bones and All. There is something so deeply satisfying about the rich being manipulated to further the goals of the people.

Overall I enjoyed this book, but I think my biggest qualm is that it felt like it tried to do too many things at once. There was so much potential for a compelling story - life as a teenage zombie, searching for identity as a Haitian American, complicated family ties, romance across socioeconomic barriers, a revenge plot against billionaires, the opioid crisis, and more. But with that many elements, it feels nearly impossible to dive into any one of those elements in a fully fledged way that feels complete. But perhaps this somewhat convoluted entanglement of various subplots is telling and intentional as a way of showing all the different facets of identity and relationships that a Haitian American teenager has to navigate all the time. You can't fit life into a neat storyline.

I also found many plot points to be a little too unbelievable to take seriously. I don't mean the magical realism parts like the zombie backstory, eating the rich, etc. - I mean the parts that moved the story along that just didn't make sense. I'm all for a little suspension of disbelief, but this book required so much that it felt like there were plot holes.

I absolutely LOVED this book. A new take on a Zombie book - Brielle Petitfour hides her Zombie abilities. Life is hard enough as a Haitian American teen with a chronically ill mother and a family home in Haiti who relies on your paychecks. But Brielle is a talented chef, and begins to garner attention when her supper clubs become popular among the uber wealthy in her town. Brielle is hiding many secrets, as she also has been giving away the wealth of her mother's employer to charity in a phone mishap.

I loved the critique of race and socio-economic inequalities, and the Haitian lore about Zombies.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me access to this title in exchange for my honest review.

I thought that this was fun book and a nice, quick read. I enjoyed it and the idea of taking down this giant company, but there was a fun twist adding in Haitian zombies.

This felt like four different stories that, if they’d been separated, would’ve been awesome. I loved the storytelling through the sisters, I was so intrigued by Valentine’s story, but then we got back to Brielle and… yeah, we just didn’t eat the rich, did we? The rich all lived except that one guy and I was kinda expecting a lot more violent cannibalism and bloodshed considering this is a zombie book?

After reading 𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘏𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘪, 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘈𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦 I was excited to read this one.. plus anything about Haitians or Haitian Americans I'm ready to devour. However, I don't know what to really make of this book.

The blurb makes it seem like this will be some type of horror book, in which the main character may stalk rich people, kill them and use them as ingredients. However, that was not the case & the title feels more figurative than literal (as I took it).

Main character Brielle is a teen living in Little Haiti (Miami) with her chronically ill mother. After an unfortunate incident that causes Brielle's mom to lose her job, Brielle must find a way to support them. A lucky chance involving a cellphone brings that opportunity about. From there, Brielle begins to live her dream.

So it's a bit hard to write a synopsis or review without giving away the whole book. The ending had me scratching my head because.. .huh?
Brielle is a zonbi, not zombie like in American culture, but a zonbi. She does have urges for raw meat but not human meat and in Haitian culture a zonbi is not someone undead but someone who is forced into labor by someone else by that other person's power (sorry if that is a bit confusing). Now with that context, this is not a horror book at all and I wouldn't classify it as such. It's more so young adult realistic romantasy; so if you are looking for a horror book this is not it.

However, I did enjoy the writing because there are interspersed narratives from Brielle's 5 sisters in Haiti that give context to Brielle's life and why her mother moved them to America.

In case you haven't noticed, there's a cabal of millionaires and billionaires trying to ruin the planet, and make everyone of its denizens as miserable a possible, so as far as I'm concerned, there aren't enough AWFUL THINGS in the universe that can befall these people. Eating them would be doing the world a favor, though I suspect Elon would taste worse than lutefisk left to rot three weeks in the trunk of a Cybertruck. Trump, however, roasted slowly on a rotating spit, might prove to be quite succulent. (And, yes, he WILL have a golden apple in his mouth.)

This is not, in my opinion, a horror novel. Our heroine Brielle is not out there slicing, dicing, and sauteing the one percent, though she does manage to get revenge on them that done 'er mother (and multitude of others) wrong. I was not a fan of the extremely implausible romance, nor of the Haitian muses. On the plus side, I liked all of the characters who actually had to work for a living, AND the food sounds AMAZING, though the recipe for Brielle's "special ingredient" is the only one included

I'll give this one four stars even though it was not the book I wanted it to be. The writing is strong, and the authors show promise of even better things to come. I can't wait to see what they cook up next.

Boiled Bezos with a julienne of vegetables might hit the spot . . .

This was an intriguing story definitely a plot I could get behind! Brielle and her mother Valentin are Haitian immigrants struggling to make it. The American Dream is far from their reach as they struggle to make ends meet. Valentin struggles with chronic pain after an on the job injury at her affluent employers home causing her to have to navigate the complexities of the healthcare system. This novel shines a light on the immigrant experience, the role race, class, socioeconomic status shape our lives and experiences. Very much the haves vs the have nots. Valentin's backstory and the Muses were parts I looked forward to. I loved Brielle's character. She kept me on edge wondering what she would do next. She was such a wild card. I was deeply invested in the story of her being a zombie and her literal eat the rich supper clubs as a way to exercise her zombie power. I really enjoyed the Haitian zombie folklore. I had no idea zombies likely originated in Haiti during the colonial period, influenced by West African spiritual beliefs and the horrors of slavery.

"Brielle was a zombie but not just any zombie. A Haitian American zombie a combination of the duality of the immigrant experience manifest in the meeting of two cultures. A mixture of the American undead who crave brains and guts and the powerful zombie of Haitian myth rooted in the fear of eternal forced servitude even in death that sprouted from the nightmares of the enslaved."

Overall I thought this was a solid YA novel. It wasn't so much horror like I thought it would be. I wish they would have leaned more into the zombie backstory and Brielle's zombie abilities. A fantastic premise but it felt incomplete.

What an incredibly interesting story! I find myself thinking back to this book constantly. It's great for people who want a lit fic book that moves QUICKLY and has a really cool point of view.

I read this book while traveling and it was the perfect plane read.

In this story, our main character is a zombie- but she isn't a zombie in a "The Walking Dead" kind of way, but in a Haitian folklore kind of way. She and her mom work on this SUPER rich island off the coast of Miami, and one day Brielle's entire life changes when she has to stop working at a restaurant because she scored an internship with one of the richest families on the island...but not is all as bright and good as it seems. Brielle is also running a supper club for some of the "who's who" on the island and uses some of her "zombie powers" to mind control the rich...and "encourages" them to do the right thing....

This is a book all about morally gray characters but is lit fic through such an interesting lens....finding yourself, working through difficult or strained relationships, coming into one's own, coming of age, moving on from trauma, etc. This book really has everything.

So so good.

Brielle Petitfour loves to cook. With a chronically sick mother and bills to pay, becoming a chef isn’t exactly a realistic career path though. Brielle has created a secret supper club, hoping to make some money and further her attempts at a career. Her clients are super rich families, like the one her Mom works for. That family is particularly nasty. The supper club guests aren't any better which is why Brielle has no problem infusing her creations with a secret ingredient. Because Brielle is a zonbi, half human/half zombie and the ingredient is human flesh.

The premise for this sounded so good and after reading the authors' previous book I was super excited to read this one. The opening chapter is very dark and promising. Unfortunately everything after that is different. The story went in a completely different direction than I was expecting.

The zombie part of Brielle wasn't explained or utilized well. I think I can see what the authors had in mind but it never got there as there were too many ideas going on.

I also had a very hard time since the beginning incident that started Brielle on her path in this book. It was too unbelievable for me how things concerning Silas transpired. While it would be fun in theory if someone did what Brielle did with the phone it's completely implausible as shown. It just could never happen that way. It was therefore hard for me to get invested in what happened next.

I loved The Summer I Ate the Rich so much. It was a little gory, but also funny and with a lot of heart. Brielle was such a strong character. The glimpse into Haitian culture, food and folklore was both interesting and educational. The key themes: family, racism, food, grief, chronic illness, romance and money were all handled so well and added a lot of depth to the plot. I will highly recommend this to my older teens, especially to those who enjoy horror.

3.5 stars

This one was hard for me. It has a pretty gruesome opening with cow brains that seemed to promise the horror it was to deliver. I didn't really get that. It is more a social horror. There were a bunch of interesting elements to that, in creative ways, but some things just took me out of the story (and not the zombie parts!). The internship and how it came about, along with it somehow giving health insurance to her mother just wouldn't happen. I wish we got more of the physical horror later on. The sort of myth interludes took me out of the fast paced plot I was really enjoying. I wanted to see her EAT THE RICH. So I was disappointed a bit, especially as I think some of the execution struggle against the themes. The romance was so not needed. It is on a whole a really interesting book, but I was looking for this book to really GO THERE; it had all the ingredients.

Thank you to the authors, publisher, and NetGalley for an advanced copy to form opinions from.