In this coming of age novel, 17 year old Rachel is sent to Greenwich to spend the summer with her wealthy aunt and uncle while her sister recovers from cancer. The story starts slowly as Rachel spends her days lazily. Bored, she starts to hang out with the nanny, who is caring for the family's 2 year old. Rachel also spends time snooping around the house, finding her aunt's secret pill stash and her uncle's creepy computer history. Secrets abound in this book, including those that follow the terrible tragedy that is the climax of the story. As I read this, I couldn't imagine being so young and having all those secrets inside of me. The book starts slowly, way too slowly, but stick with it for the juicy parts to come.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance review copy in return for an honest review. I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. This story wast bad per se but I wish it had more to it. The end was a little weird for the angle it seemed to be going the whole book.

An intriguing examination of privilege, power, and accountability. I enjoyed the suspense, but Rachel's unreliability as a narrator made the ending hard to believe. I would have preferred more focus on the fallout from her decision to tell the truth rather than dwelling on her college years.

It’s not surprising that Rachel recognized the harm done to Claudia but chose self-preservation over justice. The way the novel explored her mental gymnastics in justifying that choice was interesting to read.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me with and advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Summer, 1999. Rachel Fiske is almost eighteen when she arrives at her aunt and uncle’s mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her glamorous aunt is struggling to heal from an injury, and Rachel wants to help—and escape her own troubles back home. But her aunt is oddly spacey and her uncle is consumed with business, and Rachel feels lonely and adrift, excluded from the world of adults and their secrets. The only bright spot is Claudia, a recent college graduate, aspiring artist, and the live-in babysitter for Rachel’s cousin. As summer deepens, Rachel eagerly hopes their friendship might grow into more.

But when a tragic accident occurs, Rachel must make a pivotal choice. Caught between her desire to do the right thing and to protect her future, she’s the only one who knows what really happened—and her decision has consequences far beyond what she could have predicted.

A riveting debut novel for readers of Celeste Ng and Liane Moriarty, Greenwich explores the nature of desire and complicity against the backdrop of immense wealth and privilege, the ways that whiteness and power protect their own, and the uneasy moral ambiguity of redemption.
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Although this book started off slow for me and took a while to grab my attention, once I got into the meat of it, it was hard to put down. Parts of it were almost painful to read, as it tackled some very heavy issues, but the story was fast-paced and compelling. The characters were, for the most part, unlikeable, yet I found myself unable to look away from the way their lives were unfolding. It was apparent from the style in which the author wrote the book (and this is not a spoiler because it's in the blurb above) that we are headed toward some sort of tragedy, and waiting for it felt almost excruciating. And that is why I spent several hours of my day today racing through this book. I was not able to put it down until I found out where exactly it was that the author was taking us. I haven't decided yet how I feel about the ending...I am still sitting with it. However, as a whole, this was a compelling debut from a very promising author, and it is definitely a book that will stick with me for a while.

I really wanted to love this book. I wanted to like it a lot even. But I didn't, to either of those things.

The book seemed much longer than it needed to be. There were minute details that were unnecessary to move the storyline along, and made parts quite tedious to read.

That's not to say the book wasn't good. It was. Good.

Thanks to Netgalley, and the publisher, for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

A riveting debut novel for readers of Celeste Ng, Greenwich explores the nature of desire and complicity against the backdrop of immense wealth and privilege, the ways that whiteness and power protect their own, and the uneasy moral ambiguity of redemption.

Unfortunately, this book wasn't for me, and I was happy to finish it after it had been out long enough to transition from an ARC to an official release in stores. 2.75 stars.

I found Rachel's character development (for the worst) to be interesting and well-written, which diverges from the compelling angle you might have expected the author to take. However, the book made me anxious and uneasy, and it was so long despite being like 300 pages. I know people would definitely enjoy this one, and more power to them, but I certainly did not, and will hopefully forget about these icky characters as soon as I hit 'submit review'

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC; I'm so sorry it took me so long.

I didn't love this one - it was a bit too slow for me, and the constant foreshadowing felt like a bit much. The story follows a teenage girl who is sent to her aunt's house in Greenwich for the summer. It is very well written, but I couldn't totally buy into the story line and couldn't get behind the protagonist.

This novel grabbed me from word one and took me on a incredible journey. It is very well-written, with fully fleshed out characters-the ending, however, is a little disappointing,

<i>Greenwich</i> is a perfect mix of seeing what it's like to live with the privileged for a summer and the actual cost that it has on the rest of your life. This story does not sugarcoat rich behaving badly. There is nothing nice said and only the dark side is shown.
Rachel spends the summer of 1999 with her aunt. She is essentially escaping the life at home with the friends who don't like her and the sister who is recovering from cancer to help with her little cousin while her aunt recovers from a horse accident. At 17, she is still very impressionable and is left on her own in a new world to her. So she befriends the nanny and starts to have the time of her life. While snooping through the house, she discovers secrets of her aunt and uncle and as the dutiful niece, decides to keep them close even after tragedy strikes.
There is not one character in this story that is likable. And I have to commend Broad on this. She kept it real and it kept me wanting to read on because of it. This is a beach read in the darkest of ways.

I find that a lot of "rich people doing bad things" books miss for me but I love the angle of a young person being raised in privilege and discovering family trauma. I think Greenwich does that remarkably well.

Teenage Rachel spends the summer with her aunt and uncle in Greenwich, Connecticut. She endures lonely days except for the company of her aunt and uncle's nanny. When a tragic accident upends everything, Rachel must contend with right and wrong and what it means to be a member of a family.

The accident acts as a jumping off point for Rachel's ruminations on her family and her life, not a shocking twist. Readers of Celeste Ng and Angie Kim will find a lot to enjoy in this quiet consideration of how trauma shapes us.

I read this one while on vacation, but it is not a beach read.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an ARC via NetGalley for an honest review.

Greenwich is rich with possibilities and a lot of threads to follow, but in my opinion, they were not woven into a rich tapestry. Rather, the book reads as a sad, unfinished carpet waiting for the rest. I wish that the elements had been realized, but as it stands, Greenwich read like a white, teenage girl in a sad summer and not much more depth than that.

I know what the author was going for but I really didn't love it. This one just made me so angry. The incident was so preventable and I just can't deal with how much I hated Rachel.

The ending was so abrupt and I just really wanted to see the carnage at the end.

So all in all I didn't love this.

📚: Greenwich by Kate Broad
⭐️: 2/5

I let the absolutely crazy amount of racial micro aggressions in the first half of the book slide because I thought it’d play a pivotal role into its ultimate denouement (and some character development for Rachel). And then it didn’t, and Rachel, the main character, is insufferable in every form of the word from start to finish.

Two stars because yes, I finished it and yes, I had hope when part 2 started that this would go somewhere and was captivated by it for a hot minute.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press via @netgalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Kate Broad's Greenwich was a masterclass in slow building domestic tension. The novel follows recent high-school grad Rachel, while she spends her summer break in Greenwich, CT, with her wealthy aunt and uncle, Ellen and Laurent, their young daughter Sabine, and their live-in au pair, Claudia. From the first page we know that disaster looms imminently on the horizon for the family depicted in Greenwich. Each long summer day feels as if it drags on, adding to the tension simmering just beneath the surface. As the narrative reaches its crescendo, (without spoiling anything) everything happens very quickly. The perfect bubble of domesticity that the family has been preserving has been temporarily burst, and they will stop at nothing to restore their family name.

I read Greenwich in one straight marathon session, from cover to cover over the course of a day. I was completely absorbed waiting for the shoe to drop. Though the pacing was uneven throughout the novel, I thought it lended itself to the events of the story very nicely. The characters stayed true to self until the end. I found the narrator, Rachel, to be unlikeable; she was self-sabotaging yet consistently depicted herself as a victim and I felt in the wrong in moments where I briefly sympathized with her. Overall, I thought this was a really impressive debut, and the book read like a movie so I'm crossing my fingers for a big-screen adaptation! I think fans of Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, While We Were Burning by Sara Koffi, and the movie Saltburn will also enjoy Greenwich. Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Kate Broad for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
"Greenwich A Novel" by Kate Broad was a strong debut. The writing was excellent & the characters were intriguing.
I look forward to more books from Ms. Broad.

Summer 1999. Rachel is in Greenwich, staying with her aunt and uncle while her aunt convalesces. At the beginning and throughout the chapters of the book, readers learn that SOMETHING has happened. As Rachel tells her story, clues fill in the missing information. The characters are set in their places as the backstory moves all the pieces around. While this didn't have the "feel" of a compelling story, it's definitely worth reading and sharing.

Woah! What an amazing debut!
A well written story that kept me hooked from the very beginning.
I can’t wait to see what Broad creates next!

A single decision can have devastating consequences

Seventeen year old Rachel Fiske is more than happy to leave her own troubles behind and head to Greenwich CT to stay with her wealthy aunt and uncle at their mansion there, helping out while her aunt struggles to recover from an injury. She finds it difficult to fit in to this foreign world of money and privilege, and with her aunt not really all there and her uncle hyper-focused on his work she finds herself connecting instead with Claudia, the live-in babysitter for Rachel's young cousin Sabine. What starts as friendship may be turning into something romantic between them, but tragedy strikes the household and changes the lives of its occupants forever. Rachel knows the truth of what happened the day of the incident, and finds herself having to choose between closing ranks with the family or challenging their view of what happened (which places blame solely on Claudia) and in doing so risking her own future. In a world where justice so often favors the wealthy, what is the right thing for her to do?
Greenwich is part literary fiction, part thriller and part family drama, with a dose of social critique threading through the story. The rarified setting of Greenwich is well described, with an unflinching look at the not-always-pleasant nature of extreme wealth. Rachel is a sympathetic character, flawed but relatable, a bit naive in her view of the world and at a stage in life where dealing with a murky situation like the one in which she finds herself is a formidable challenge. Issues of race and class are front and forward in the story, in a world where the white and wealthy aren't always held accountable for their sins but those of color and limited means remain vulnerable to suspicion and punishment. In real life there are no easy answers to the questions raised by these issues, and the book doesn't try to present them. Those particular issues may tip over into the heavy-handed category at times, and the pace of the story can be a bit uneven, but overall I found it a thought-provoking read, one likely to do well as a book club selection (a LOT to discuss here). Readers of Curtis Sittenfeld, Celeste Ng and Liane Moriarty should definitely add a copy of Greenwich to their TBR list. My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for allowing me access to a copy of this gripping debut in exchange for my honest review.

This book pulled me in with its moody summer setting and plot full of tension, emotion, and quiet drama. I found the writing to be really vivid, and I liked how the author captured the confusion of growing up and the thrill (and danger) of first love. The characters felt real, with secrets simmering just beneath the surface, and the stakes slowly building until everything came to a head! It was a gripping, emotional read about loyalty, truth, and the moment everything changes.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press via netgalley for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Review was posted (Instagram, Goodreads, bookishlytara blog, Storygraph) on July 26, 2025. An additional post (with a reposted review) will be/was posted on Instagram on the publication day as well as an Amazon Canada review (currently pending). (links below)