James Frey’s newest title is fine, but it was genre defying, and not in a good way. The characters, mostly affluent white members of an elite Connecticut community, were fine. The behind the scenes nature of the gossip was fine. The murder mystery element was fine. Nothing was extraordinary or particularly gripping. This novel lacked compelling elements to either pull readers into the thriller aspect, or to the interpersonal drama, but like I said, it was fine.

Next to Heaven is a wild, fast-paced look at the dark side of wealth and privilege in a seemingly perfect Connecticut town. It follows Devon and Belle—two glamorous, restless friends who throw a high-end swingers party that quickly spirals into betrayal, chaos, and murder. Think The White Lotus meets The Great Gatsby, but with more scandal.

Frey’s sharp writing and multi-POV style can feel a bit disjointed at first, but it pays off as the story unfolds. The characters aren’t exactly likable, but their flaws feel intentional, offering commentary on wealth, identity, and the emptiness of excess.

I appreciated the social critique and edgy tone, but the chaotic plot and morally murky cast didn’t fully click for me. It’s entertaining and thought-provoking, but not a favorite.

Still, if you're into messy characters, dark satire, and stories that pull back the curtain on the ultra-wealthy, this one's worth a look.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Authors Equity for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Authors Equity for the eARC.

Despite all of the controversy surrounding A Million Little Pieces, Frey's novel remains in my all time favorites. Perhaps it was the prose or the rawness of the emotions in the novel, but it has always stuck with me. I was so pleased to receive an advanced copy of Next to Heaven.

I liked the fact that I could sense Frey's style through the sentence and chapter structure. I could sense it was him immediately. The story itself was interesting and kept my attention, but did not end up being a super stand out for me. It wasn't bad, but it just fell flat in certain aspects for me.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARc of Next To Heaven. Although I Tried very hard to like this book, I just could not get into it. It took entirely too long to set up the whole story and it left a lot to be desired. As a matter of fact, it took more than. 70% of the book for there to be a murder. Every time I thought something suspenseful was going to happen...it didn't. I was very disappointed to say the least.

When I requested to receive Next to Heaven, the description and the cover caught my attention, but I hadn't bothered to research the author until later, when it had already been approved.

It was strange to discover that the author admitted to having used artificial intelligence in the writing process. Even though AI is present in our daily lives, is it right to have it present in everything? Especially when it comes to works like this?
James stated that in Next to Heaven he didn't use AI, but at certain moments (where the writing changed style a little) I found myself wondering if that was really true.
Despite having my opinions on the controversies, I didn't let that affect my review and I'll be completely honest.

Before I started reading, I thought, based on the synopsis, that the story would have a "miniseries feel", which ended up being confirmed and throughout the reading I kept wondering if it wouldn't have been better used for TV than as a book. The whole scenario contributed to this, the countless character introductions, the “shocking” scenes and the choice of how the story would unfold. To be more specific, the delay in the story unfolding.

The beginning was very interesting and I liked the humorous tone that was chosen, the first few seconds made me laugh a lot, it had a lot of potential, but I thought it got lost at certain points. In short, it wasn’t a read that I enjoyed 100%… I ended up being more entertained reading the articles about the author than with the book and that already says something, but I don’t regret the experience and I might even watch it if they ever adapt it.

I read it while listening to the audiobook and Gina Gershon deserves congratulations!
I wonder if the book got an extra star just for the wonderful narration work. I hope to hear her again in other works.

Finally, it was a pleasure to receive the advance copy of the audiobook and the ebook. I would like to thank Netgalley, Simon & Schuster (responsible for the audiobook), Authors Equity, and Sarah Christensen Fu (from AE marketing operations).

Note: I was unable to submit my review on Goodreads because the following message appeared: "This book has temporary limitations on submitting ratings and reviews. This may be because we’ve detected unusual behavior that doesn’t follow our review guidelines."

This book felt kind of meh and formulaic. THEN I found out this author uses AI to write his books and has had previous scandals. If I'd known, I wouldn't have read this to begin with. Not a fan.

“CREE-AK!” That’s the sound of the can of worms 🪱 I feel like i’m about to open.

Okay, this book - if you know, you know. If you don’t… this author has openly admitted to using AI to write this book. And the book world has slammed him for it!

Does he deserve it? Maybe.
Are other authors using AI to assist with their writing? Who knows.
AI is a beast that will continue to push the boundaries of our ethics and morals, and we need to prepare for it.

Do what you may with this information - i’ve decided to put this fact aside and review this book, based on the book itself and the story, not letting it affect my review. That’s what we’re here for really, a book review.

I requested this book early in the year because it sounded fun & Desperate Housewives-esque circa 2004!

But it wasn’t. To me this book felt very flat, cold, disconnected, factual and frankly I felt no connection to any of the characters. And there were SO many characters!

30+% in and we’re still just being introduced to character after character, and not just their history since childhood, but parents and sometimes great great great grandparents from the 1700's. It must have detailed at least 15 characters by this point.

I was lost, bored & craving the story to start. When it finally did, it was anticlimactic & based around a Swingers party. Unfortunately this plot-line does not interest me at all.

It was basically all the characters just sleeping with and talking about sleeping with other people in town, other than their spouses.

The 3rd Person POV was incredibly cold & mechanical, I felt like I was reading a documentary about horny rich people. But David Attenborough would have done it better.

I didn’t enjoy the writing or the story and I had to really push through this.

I really wanted to like this book but it just wasn’t for me, perhaps for the right reader it would be more enjoyable.

Thank you @authorsequity for this Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for my honest review. 🙏🏽

In this incredibly NSFW book, James Frey carves out the dark and twisted underbelly of a far-too-perfect and far-too-wealthy fictionalized version of Bethlehem, Connecticut.

He creates a complex cast of characters. With lurid detail, he exposes everyone’s secrets. Frey didn’t exactly write a murder mystery. For the vast majority of the book, he leaves us in the dark about which person is our murder victim.

While it’s certainly not the literary feat of the year, Next to Heaven is a compulsively readable page-turner. And at the very least, it’s like nothing else you’ll read this year.

*Thank you to Authors Equity and NetGalley for the advance copy. All opinions are my own.*

Devon and Belle are best friends. They are rich, snobby and stupid. There is a whole bunch of boring back story. There is a whole bunch of weird religious stuff put into a book about an affair and an orgy. They had the party. Somebody died. The media swarmed and tried to figure out why. The killer was found. The end.

I saw this book and it sounded good - I didn’t even notice who the author was, or remember that he was the guy who faked a book on Oprah’s Book Club. It was as I was adding it as “currently reading” on Goodreads, I saw it had a horrible star rating. So I read the reviews, saw people angry at the author, but I decided to give it a try anyway. l shouldn’t have wasted my time.

To start, there is no true dialogue in this book. You will not see quotation marks, just sentences that could be in person, in text, or in the narrator’s mind. The third-person writing is awful, and I almost never say that. I’ve also never seen a writing style quite like that, and I definitely didn’t care for the book jumping all over the place. The paragraphs either took up a whole page, or were one line. There was no in between!

There were too many characters, and we had to read all about them before the story even starts. Every time you think the story is finally beginning, no, you first need to read a chapter about some random character’s grandfather or brother. What? Then there will be a chapter about people being intimate, and the next chapter is about prayer and religion. I couldn’t make anything about this book work for me, so this book gets a VERY rare one star from me. It shouldn’t have been (self?) published.

(Thank you to Authors Equity, James Frey and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review. I guess.)

Next to Heaven
When I saw this ARC come up, I wondered if the author, James Frey, was the same James Frey who wrote “Million Little Pieces” and “My Friend Leonard”. While I read those books at an age where I am sure some of the subject matter escaped me, I did recall enjoying them despite the controversy.
Courting controversy again, in a recent interview Frey spoke about his use of AI when writing. While I see many problems with it, including the lack of fact checking, Next to Heaven allegedly doesn’t use AI.
That being said, if you told me that Frey used AI to structure the chapters in this novel or fill in details about the characters, I would believe you. The beginning of the book was heavy on character development, jumping from person to person to set the stage. The middle became an odd ode to this fictional town, containing an insane amount of unnecessary detail that bored the reader. We get it - it’s an upper class suburb. The murder finally takes place three quarters of the way into the novel, and is solved rather quickly. While the murder - including the cast of suspects, the setting, the method, the process of the killer getting away from the scene, and the investigation behind it - is absolutely worthy of its own thriller novel, over half of the book didn’t end up getting us to the ultimate resolution.
I want more of some of these characters. I want to see what Billy does next, what Grace and Teddy do, what Ana and Devon and Belle do, but I want to read a novel with forward plot movement. All in all, I’d suggest as a salacious beach read for the murder mystery buried under the sex, drugs, and obscene wealth. Thank you @netgalley for the ARC! #nexttoheaven #jamesfrey #authorsequity #arc #netgalley

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance copy of Next to Heaven by James Frey in exchange for my honest review and feedback. Loved the description and cover but unfortunately found this to be a bit of a bore and very repetitive. I think I was expecting more from this than was given.

Stories about rich people behaving badly are like candy to me, and I loved being introduced to this dysfunctional cast of characters. The premise is fun – rich couples throw a not-so-innocent party, and chaos ensues – and I was instantly drawn in by the way James Fey immerses us in the small world of privilege these characters inhabit, via many voices that are each distinct and entertaining. The story turned darker than I was expecting (the SA thread was tough to read, and put paid to my assumption that the overall experience of the book would be a White Lotus-esque caper). Overall a cleverly wrought thriller.

A wild indulgent thriller packed with high stakes drama, excess, and betrayal. I found it hard to engage with the characters as they were not relatable. The plot is fast paced though, and it was a fun and flashy read.
Many thanks to Authors Equity and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to read this novel before release.

I enjoyed the exploration of themes such as gender, wealth, and the power dynamics involved. The characters were described incredibly in depth, innermost fears and desires included. At times, the characters themselves felt like satirical models for the uber rich social class out of reach to most of us. Parts of the novel were quite juicy, and suspenseful.

At times, it was difficult to follow along with the narrative. In particular, much of the book was populated by run-on sentence structures. I believe the average reader will struggle to follow along in some parts.

Next To Heaven by James Frey (book cover is in image) was a very challenging read. It felt as if it had a very YA/New Adult feel, though the characters and book content and themes are older than this age group.

I had access to both the audio and eBook and was able to easily switch between both, but did not find the characters compelling or engaging. I am a big fan, of the 1% of the 1% behaving badly and characters I love to hate, or hate to love, and while the concept of the book was intriguing, the execution in the writing and character development fell flat for me.

The narration by Gina Gershon was well done, but she could not save this poor writing and character development in this book.

Thank you AE Titles / S&S Audio | Simon & Schuster Audio, Author Equity, and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to the eARC and ALC. All opinions are my own.

Rating: 1 Star
Pub Date: Jun 17 2025

#SimonandSchusterAudio
#AuthorEquity
#NexttoHeaven
#JamesFrey
#Mystery
#yarisbooknook
#NetGalley

This book was not what I was expecting for it to be. The beginning read like short stories about each person. Once they started mingling it took a very long time to get to the alluded to murder. The messiness of the premise was enticing, but the execution was lacking. There was too much build up and not enough follow through. The characters were not likable and they were all over the place. If the author had continued the short story route I feel like it would have come together better.

I was excited to read Next to Heaven by James Frey, especially as an advanced reader copy (ARC) before its official release. However, my experience with this book was largely disappointing. For a writer of Frey’s stature, the writing style was surprisingly rough. The prose felt repetitive at times, with certain phrases or words being overused, which took me out of the story. It was almost as if the author was trying too hard to emphasize points, but the effect was jarring rather than impactful.

The plot itself had potential but was weighed down by unnecessary filler. There were several moments when the book seemed bogged down with excessive details that didn’t add much to the narrative, making parts of it feel unbearably slow. Additionally, the murder, which should’ve been a central, pivotal moment, happened too late in the book to have the emotional impact it could’ve had. The build-up was long, and when the event finally occurred, it felt like an afterthought.

The characters, unfortunately, didn’t help elevate the story. Most of them felt unlikable, and I found myself struggling to connect with any of them. The novel had a “train wreck” quality, where it was almost painful to read, but I kept going, if only to see how it would end. If you’re into drama-filled, chaotic stories about rich, beautiful, and unhappy people, this might be your thing. But for me, it came across as more of a guilty pleasure, similar to a reality TV show—entertaining at times, but ultimately shallow.

In short, Next to Heaven is a book that might appeal to fans of trashy, melodramatic stories, but for me, it didn’t land well.

Edit as it seems there has been misinformation shared regarding the use of AI.

I went into Next to Heaven hoping for an intense, character-driven thriller. I had genuinely enjoyed A Million Little Pieces (outside of the memoir controversy) because of its emotional depth and compelling characters, and I was hoping Frey would bring that same resonance to a murder mystery.

What I got instead was a meandering narrative that felt hollow. The prose lacks soul, the characters feel templated/stereotypical, and there’s a detachment that makes it hard to connect emotionally. To make matters worse, the murder — the entire reason I picked up the book, aside from the author — doesn’t even happen until the last quarter. By then, I was already skimming, just waiting for something (anything) to happen. Pacing is everything in a thriller, and this one drags.

I hope that clarity come regarding the use of AI/AI-assisted writing as it does impact how the overall book and writing is perceived and I fear that this controversy may have created a bias to my review. Thank you NetGalley, Authors Equity and James Frey for the ARC, I wish I could give this book a high rating as I have really enjoyed his past books A Million Little Pieces and The Final Testament of the Holy Bible as well found Bright Shiny Morning a good read.

I was intrigued by this book due to the cover and the description gave it the appeal of a gossip girl kind of rich folks mystery. Unfortunately, that's not really what I got. The story's plot was a bit lackluster in general and the point of the mystery happened very late in the book. Also the formatting of the book was really off.

Thanks to NetGalley and Authors Equity for an eARC of Next to Heaven by James Frey! This story was well written and the beginning hooked me in. Although I didn’t really like some of the characters, the ending of this book was great!!