This is a story about bad people doing bad things.
I want to preface this by saying I read an Arc & it's possible some of the things that bothered me might be fixed in the final pub.... But I sort of doubt it bc they feel like stylistic choices?

There is not a likable person to be found here- infact I'm not sure there's a likable person in the entire town. You have multiple 3rd person perspectives, no quotation marks, and entire chapters that are written in repetitive sentences to really make the point the author apparently wanted to convey.Also weird rich people sex games galore!

All that being said- this was compulsively readable & if your favorite movie in the world is Eyes Wide Shut I think this is the book for you!
Thanks so much Netgalley & Authors Equity

Horrible people doing horrible things in the context of the world of the rich and privileged. James Frey makes this a humorous and engaging read, despite the subject matter, and I love his style of writing which captures event and emotion with such clarity, I always felt this author was hard done by, being so publicly criticised on an international scale for including fictionalised aspects in a semi-autobiographical book. This completely overshadowed his talent for writing and it is good to see he did not let this stop him.

Wild, sharp, and totally unfiltered, Next to Heaven is a fast-paced dive into the messy lives of the ultra-rich. It’s part satire, part thriller, and full of chaos. If you like scandal, secrets, and a touch of dark humor, this one’s a fun ride.

This was just incredibly boring! I've read Endgame by James Frey before and that one was just miles better. The characters were just descpicable. I mean there's unlikable and there's despicable.

Also I cannot support an author who openly admits to using AI to help with his works.

This book just didn’t work for me. The writing felt immature—like it was trying way too hard to be edgy and provocative, but without much substance. The first half was a repetitive blur of sex, drugs, swearing, and swinging: key parties, partner swaps, you name it. Honestly, it felt like it was written by a horny teenager with a thesaurus.

The story revolves around rich, miserable people who seem to stay married only because of prenups, but I couldn’t figure out the actual point of it all. No one dies until about 73% in, and even then, I didn’t care who did it. The characters felt flat, the plot unfocused, and the writing repetitive (same ideas phrased slightly differently over and over). I just wasn’t invested in the characters or their relationships. Overall, it was a boring, overindulgent read that tried to be provocative but forgot to be interesting.

How can this be called a "Murder Mystery" whenever the murder does not occur until after seventy percent? There was also so much information-dumping and punctuation issues that at some points I felt like I was having a stroke. I understand as an arc reader we are supposed to read past the grammatical errors, but unfortunately for this book they were hard to overlook.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review. Also, thank god I did not choose this for my BOTM because I would've been very disappointed if I spent money on this.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book.

New Bethlehem, Connecticut was created to be a sanctuary, a getaway town for busy wealthy men who worked in New York. And it still is that today. Most of the original founders are gone, replaced by "new money" people who make more money than those old timers could have imagined. Many of those original luxurious homes are now owned by people they would never have permitted in town, but now the town is the safest, wealthiest, has the best schools, the best EVERYTHING. And the uber rich live like kings, with nothing to control their excesses.

But two of the wealthiest wives are bored. So they decide that a "swingers" party would be just the thing to liven up their lives. Restricted to only four couples, the invitations are THE invitation of the year. With attendees including an ex-NFL player, THE local hockey coach, and a ruthless Wall Streeter who believes his wealth can buy him anything - and anyone- he wants, what could go wrong?

Amidst the betrayals, a few find real happiness, and others jealously attempt to destroy it. A murder ensues and finding out whodunit is the final third of the book. The outcome is a surprise, but it really shouldn't be.

The characters are familiar to anyone who has watched White Lotus or Our Friends and Neighbors, but there are twists and turns enough to keep you interested to the end. And you will be glad to stayed to the end.

“Promises are like glass, and they break just as easily.”

Living in Connecticut I can absolutely believe that these types of people exist and they probably exist here. The pompous, arrogant, and extremely wealthy are abundant here. But I digress.

I remember this style of writing from A Million Little Pieces, which I loved. It’s quick, abrupt, and choppy. The story itself is not the most earth shattering thriller I’ve read. In fact, it’s almost more of a character study…and then a murder was thrown in towards the end for good measure. But it is entertaining, dirty, vulgar, and yet compulsively readable.

The audiobook was AWESOME! The narrator just kills the voices and the sarcasm of these characters. A fantastic listen.

Thank you to Netgalley and Authors Equity for the ARC in exchange for my honest thoughts. And thank you thank you to @libro.fm and Simon & Schuster Audio for the free audiobook!

This is a novel about bad men and devious women living in a small, wealthy Connecticut village. The characters are swingers, drug addicts, gamblers, and drinkers--and there is a hockey coach. An underlying theme is social media and security cameras and how people are tracked every day. There is also a sisterhood theme. The book is recommended as a beach read and it is guaranteed to generate discussion.

This book had the potential of being good. If we take some of the basic elements, move the murder plot to earlier in the book, maybe, just maybe, we’d have something there.
It really gave me the same feeling of when I’d have a writing assignment in my science class back in middle school, where it was rumored that my teacher would only care about how many pages long out essay was, but not read it at all. My sister once put an entire cake recipe within the assignment and the teacher never noticed. I guess the author thought we wouldn’t notice either. I know James Frey said we wouldn’t notice what was written by him or AI, since it was all reviewed by him, but to that I’d say he’s either underestimating our intelligence or I really, really dislike his writing style. This book was SO REPETITIVE. One of the chapters even has an entire paragraph written the same way! A lot of their actions were written as if they were lists. There’s a chapter that it’s like a random Ode to Connecticut (a cake recipe would have been better). There’s another chapter where he lists who the secret is spreading to and is just a list of random names saying they wouldn’t spread the secret anyway but did it. It could have been summarized to something like “no one was supposed to know, and yet, everyone knew”. Matter of fact, if this book could have been rewritten, without the repetitiveness and the unnecessary info, it would have been a short story.
As much as I love a good dumpster fire of a story, this was not it. Use your time reading something else, go tackle that TBR.

On a technical side, the audiobook was skipping about 5 chapters towards the end and there was either some bonus chapter in the end, of a chapter fell out of order as well. Also, the interview with the author and narrator wouldn’t play entirely. Hopefully they fixed it before the release. The narrator was great though.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a copy of the ebook and audiobook in exchange of my honest opinion.

Originally grabbed this one just for the author. I was curious as I’ve only read A Million Little Pieces by him, and despite the controversy, I loved it and was extremely moved by it …For Next to Heaven I went in blind, and I really should have done a little more research prior to requesting. The plot just wasn’t for me. Thank you NetGalley, James Frey and Authors Equity for the ARC

All the best things in a book: Sex, Scandal, and Murder. Great character development, an absolute page turner, and a major plot twist. You think you know what’s going to happen, and then Bam! I couldn’t put this book down! Highly recommend

I really wanted to love this book but it just didn't land for me

The writing is great and the blurb was so promising however if I am being honest if could be been shorter and less drawn out. For me it was rather repetitive and just didn't capture my attention the way I'd have hoped

Many thanks to NetGalley and Authors Equity for gifting me a digital ARC of the latest book by James Frey. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 4 stars!

New Bethlehem, Connecticut is a picture perfect town where only the one percenters can live. From the outside, they have it all. But look a little closer, and everything is a mess. It takes a key party - a swing party - carefully curated for a small group of couples to really stir things up. And then there's a murder.

I'm going to get the controversy out of the way first - yes, James Frey has said he has used AI for research and maybe some of his writing. While I'm not a proponent, I can't google something without AI giving me an answer, so I'm not sure how anyone can say they research without it. And yes, James Frey's books are controversial but I've still enjoyed them all. This one drew me in from the beginning. There are not many likable characters and their behaviors are crude and atrocious, but it's written in a style that completely pulled me in to the story. He gives us little bits and pieces about each of the characters' lives and actions, all barreling down to a conclusion that I loved.

Next to Heaven" is where I live in Connecticut. The exacting details of setting and people are spot on in James Frey's newest work of fiction and what I enjoyed thoroughly. Thankfully my own neighbors are not as obnoxious and egotistical, but deplorable characters have great big comeuppances in "Next to Heaven." What begins with a high class key party among three couples and a lacrosse coach and girlfriend, ends in a trip to hell, a long plotted murder and break ups. The key party is RACY stuff and definitely written by a male author. It's shock and awful at points but the consequences of the night are the main story. Mr. Frey's writing is repetitive at times and he has said he's experimented with AI - this would seem to be a result. All said, it's a good and quick summer book but one to listen to as Gina Gershon is the reader. She and Mr Frey have an excellent conversation following the book's conclusion and discuss his inspiration being "Hollywood Wives" by Jackie Collins. These details increased my post reading satisfaction. He's already working on the screenplay.

This is a very trashy summer read. Seems like James Frey wants to reinforce his self-described reputation as a “bad boy.” Readable and also forgettable. Seems destined to be the next Nicole Kidman limited series about the ultra-wealthy and ultra-despicable crowd…and of course a murder and betrayal.
Thank you to Net Galley for an advance copy.

Let’s chat about AI.

It’s not going anywhere, so how does it fit into society in an ethical (and more environmentally friendly) way? I’m sure it will serve society in many valuable ways in terms of technology, but does it have a place in the creative world?

James Frey (touted in the early aughts as “the man who conned Oprah” seems to revel in controversy. I was still curious about his new book, and learned of his usage of AI in his writing just a few weeks ago. In an interview from two years ago, the author is very blatant about how he not only uses AI for research purposes, but to copy his writing style. So the reader is left not knowing who (or what?) generated the words they are reading.

My first instinct is I am not interested in consuming art of any kind generated by AI, but I was curious to see what an AI generated book would look like and tried to read this one objectively. And being that I received an ARC, I’m comfortable with not supporting the author monetarily.

It’s ever evolving, but at the moment AI can still be pretty shitty. Like how it STILL can’t get hands to look like hands. Or how the AI blurb that comes up at the top of every google search is sometimes wrong. Well, the same goes for writing. AI or not, this book wasn’t that amazing. While Frey does have some decent writing chops (I truly enjoyed his first two novels), I wouldn’t classify his writing as any better using this tool.

What seemed like a sordid story with a number of rich people doing rich people things with a lot of infidelity happening, it sounded like a juicy enough read. I was invested enough, despite struggling to keep all of the characters and pairings straight, but it felt really whomp-whomp by the end. It also didn’t help that the audiobook arc was a true dumpster fire, missing chapters that I had to go back and read in the print version.

I will chalk this one up to being a little experiment, and have no intentions with consuming AI generated books in the future. Why would I, when there are so many incredible minds already writing wonderful books with just their imaginations?

2⭐️ (rounded down from a 3⭐️, because you know, cheating).

The cover is what drew me in. It was an interesting read and I look forward to reading more by this author.

A book about terrible people written by someone who has done terrible things.

A lot about this book felt very repetitive, which makes me wonder if the AI controversy surrounding it is accurate.

I wasn't sure what to think as I approached this book given all the controversy surrounding the author, but honestly this book was a fun wild ride! I had to get used to the writing style. Yes, there is a lot of repetitive wording, but it almost becomes meditative after a while. The chapters are short and many sentences are short as well keeping you turning pages. The characters are almost all just horrible overindulged people who get away with doing bad things (drugs, affairs, money crimes -- you name it) because they are rich and living in an enclave of other people like them. There is a murder in the book but you don't find out who until three quarters of the way through the book -- so the mystery is not the focus of the plot until the very end.

If you like books about rich people behaving badly this book checks all the boxes. It's a propulsive summer read that's hard to put down once you get to know the characters.