Cover, great.

Title, great but misleading.

Characters, compelling and fun.

Horror, not really.

There are aspects of this book that I really like, such as the descriptions of food. I enjoyed the characters and their interactions. Marcel is so funny. I think I enjoyed every time he showed up. The audiobook was done really well. The Hattian Chorus were entertaining. I enjoyed the twist on a Greek Chorus. However, the book falls flat in a lot of areas. The story is very jumbled and lacking in horror. There is a brief part in the beginning that describes tricking people into eating human remains. Other than that, there are brief mentions of a powder. The story is lacking in horror. Lastly, why are two high schoolers getting married? Their romance felt unnecessary but the nail in the coffin was the wedding. It made no sense.

I think this book needed more editing before release.

This has been one of my most anticipated books since I heard they were writing again. So when I saw Netgalley was dropping the audio, I had to read it immediately. I have to say, this is one of the best covers I’ve ever seen.

Ok so although I loved the zombie bits, I wanted more? And like more scary? I guess I wanted more gore and more “scary” since it was a horror book. Alas, the horror is because it has a zombie in it. Because the amount of times she actually unhinged her jaw to eat someone was 0. The amount of times she unhinged her jaw to ALMOST eat someone was 2. It was a bit disappointing for sure. Especially with the way it opened. I JUST KNEW we were about to get all the weirdness lol And then there’s the fact that she doesn’t actually eat the rich? She does something else which is equally weird, but like, if this is what we’re going to call it? Idk it was too much of a gray area for me. However, I did learn something about the zombie lore that I thought was cool. I had never heard that in Haitian folklore, zombies, or “zombi” in Haitian Creole, are reanimated corpses controlled by a bokor, a Voodoo sorcerer, often used as forced labor or to carry out nefarious tasks, stemming from anxieties about slavery and the loss of personal autonomy. But with that being said, we don’t actually get any idea of her abilities or anything. We get glimpses when she has to run or eat, but nothing concrete. She does have a part when she meets the final boss and but that’s to find out the controller. And well, yeah that’s a whole other ball game lol

I LOVED the way they did “eat the rich” in this tho. It was I’m sorry to say I was appalled that they didn’t show any aftermath? What happened to them? She just controlled them? They didn’t get sick? I would have thought they would have with all the chemicals in those things. Idk it didn’t add up. There should have been some kind of something? Even if she had to go back and do some quick mind control. But girl, whatever got you through it lol

I did like the class issues were portrayed. Since this is a YA novel I know it might have been hard to find a balance in explaining it. And with this coming right after Luigi Mangione, I thought this was crazy timing. But it begs the question, what would you do in this situation? ESPECIALLY with the terrible character that is involved.

But the way the plot twists all lined up was what made me gasp throughout the entire book. Idk how they got everything all lined up like that, but Lordt! They HAD to have like planned and plotted this down to the very last bit. Because how in the world did they not mix up anything? I am hella impressed because what in the world. I read this like a week and a half ago, and here I am STILL thinking about it.

So basically, even if you’re not impressed with the horror or the zombie parts. I’m hoping you still get swept away by the plot like I was. And if not, you still have this bad a$$ cover to look at lol

3.5⭐️

The authors really said, “Let’s shed light on the immigrant experience, but make it zombies!” HA! I love it.😝 What’s even more interesting is that it’s not the typical zombies we’re used to. oh no no no. it leans more into the original concept rooted in Haitian culture… the more you know, right?

Unfortunately, that’s kind of where my excitement ends. This is one of those stories where you think, “I appreciate the message or messages,” but I still found myself wondering what kind of story it was supposed to be by the time I finished.

Now, going into this, I wasn’t expecting to take it too seriously. The blurb gave me “fun ride” energy, and I was totally down to just go with the flow. But even with that mindset, I still wanted something more from the story.

The portrayal of the immigrant child experience was done well. Definitely relatable, not just for me but for many others too. But beyond that? The other parts of the stories….I kind of got the point… kind of didn’t?

I did enjoy the main character, though! She’s definitely a quirky one, and her unpredictable actions kept me intrigued. Her dreams and aspirations were beautiful, and the relationships she builds throughout the story were genuinely heartwarming. And of course, her dynamic with her mom was the emotional thread that kept me invested enough to stick with it.

Big thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ALC in exchange for my honest review!

I was so curious to see how this book would blend zombism (?) with Haitian folklore while tackling racial and socioeconomic inequality. I enjoyed that this story addressed serious themes in a way that was witty and had just the right amount of Gen Z self-righteousness that it didn't come across as cringe.

There’s a lot to unpack with the if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em vibe of the ending but a part of me is happy Brielle gets her way.

Would def reccommend if you're into family drama, dark humor and revenge.

DNF. I just couldn’t get into the book. I gave it a couple tries.
The opening was quite jarring as well. Well narrated though!

3.5 stars (maybe 4 if I don’t think too hard about certain parts)

The Summer I Ate the Rich was not what I expected—and I think that worked both for and against it. I went in hoping for horror and gore, and while there was one scene that made me squirm, it was overall pretty tame. That said, I was totally entertained. The story is super different, and it kept me engaged from beginning to end.

The concept is wild: a Haitian American girl with hidden zombie powers cooking for the rich and… well, let’s just say they really don’t know what they’re in for. However, I was expecting some gross cannibal shit, but it didn’t quite get there. For all its originality, I felt like it missed some opportunities.

I didn’t fully understand the zombie powers or the curse, and the character development felt flat. Still, the ride was fun. And sometimes, that’s enough.

Thank you, as always, @macmillan.audio for a free arc in exchange for an honest review!

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into this book. The narration was good but I found myself struggling to want to finish it at about 50%. Something about the writing style just wasn't for me and I guess I expected there to be more action.

Sharp, darkly funny, and utterly original, The Summer I Ate the Rich serves up biting social commentary with a side of horror. The Moulite sisters blend Haitian zombie folklore with a razor-sharp critique of wealth and privilege, telling the story of Brielle Petitfour—a gifted young chef who uses her secret zombie powers to settle scores with the elite. Through rich narration and layered storytelling, this novel delivers a feast of themes: justice, identity, and the cost of survival. It’s read that will leave you equal parts disturbed and delighted.

Thank you Maika Moulite, Maritza Moulite, Macmillan Audio, and Netgalley for the advanced copy!

I feel like we're all feeing a lot of the "eat the rich" sentiment right now, so it's prime time for this book to come out, and boy is this chock full of class inequalities and access inequalities that will make you rage. I loved the reflection of the zonbi/zombie split alongside Brielle's Haitian-American status in the context of this, not being quite one or the other, but having the expectations of both and having to figure out how to use what she's able to do..

I do wish it had actually had more of the eating of the rich and involvement of Brielle's zonbi powers (or even her zombie ones) than we got. What we get is amazing and excellent - the opening chapter is such a banger and gave me such high hopes, but the cooking piece becomes much more straightforward and the method of access for her revenge rather than a tool of her revenge itself.

That said, this is an engrossing, fast-paced read; partly due to the short chapters, the plot seems to happen fast and furious, whirling towards the conclusion. I would absolutely read more of Brielle and seeing what she does next, especially with how things are left.

There are a few things that gave me a lot of pause - everything with the initial cell phone mixup, for example - but between this being YA and those things being ultimately minor in the large plot, they do get swept away under everything else going on. I also really enjoyed having Brielle's sisters tell the backstory, though in the audio, since we didn't get the description of which sister was which muse each time they spoke, it got harder to keep the pattern of who was telling which part of the story as straight as reading the text.

Otherwise as audio, this was so fun, perfectly capturing Brielle's snarky narration and all of the various characters' voices.

I rounded up from a 3.5 because this is a propulsive read. I wanted to go back and figure out what Brielle was going to do next. However, that was partially because there were constantly too many things happening. "The Muses" attempted to step in and make all of the plot points work together, but even with a Haitian Chorus, things didn't always gel. This was attempting to be a commentary on immigrant culture, poverty culture, pharmaceutical culture, ultra-rich culture, culinary culture, intern culture, intimate violence culture, boarding school culture, multigenerational relationships, with some concepts of zombie/voodoo rituals sprinkled in. The only thing that gets a dive that feels deep enough to me is the mother/daughter(s) relationship, and everything else gets a gloss-pass because it's just too many elements.

I still enjoyed this, but I was hopeful for so much more, especially because the opening was as visceral as a Stephen Graham Jones book.

Audiobook supplied by Netgalley.

I have decided to not finish The Summer I Ate the Rich as I am having a hard time getting into the story and feel like I might not be the right audience for this one.

I really enjoyed the narration and the character development. Other than that, I thought the story was a bit slow, and I was ready for some action that just wasn't coming. I do think there area a lot of readers who would really enjoy this one!

Thank you for the opportunity to listen to this one!

I really enjoyed the Hatian-American representation here. I felt like the authors did a good job showing the experience of someone who is proud of their heritage and family culture but growing up in America, feel a sort of loss of not knowing the place it all comes from. The supernatural elements in the story seemed to emphasize that theme.

Thriller isn't my go-to genre but this one was pretty good. I was pretty immersed in the first 2/3s of the book and while I felt the authors did a good job with pacing out the ending, the ending itself felt kind of disappointing to me. Though the one storyline wrap up I felt satisfied with was the conclusion to the history of Brielle's mother and in turn Brielle and how she came to be so to speak.

I didn't love the romance though I applaud the authors for somehow managing to write what felt a bit like a dark romance that wasn't toxic. And the conclusion of the romance story arc was very confusing to me. Maybe I just missed the point of how the choices the characters made actually caused the results that the authors claimed but it seemed a little too convenient to me.

And lastly, I will say that I loved the audiobook production. The narration by the muses was fantastic. In general, I wish more books had multiple narrators. And the "main" narrator who voiced the chapters from Brielle's perspective was also wonderful. If you're going to read this book, I encourage you to try it in audio format.

2.5 stars rounded up

I was excited for this YA novel, but it just didn’t land for me. The Summer I Ate The Rich follows Brielle, a Haitian immigrant and zombie (not in the usual sense), as she navigates an internship with a billionaire and runs a secret supper club for the wealthy.

The horror elements are minimal, and while the premise is unique, the story felt unfocused. It tried to tackle big themes like class and immigration, but the execution came off muddled and contradictory.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ALC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you NetGalley & Macmillan Audio for the ARC!

She did not, in fact, eat the rich :( I was hoping for a Luigi type situation.

This book was a weird one, and it's not going to be for everyone. It was slightly longer than I felt it needed to be, and at times I was so lost and confused. It kind of fell flat - I was expecting a hardcore cannibal zombie story but that's not exactly what we got. The book was entertaining enough, I highly recommend listening to the audiobook of it instead of reading it.

While I did enjoy this book the title had me expecting more of a zombie centric thriller. Well written, but could have used a different title. Recommended as a secondary purchase for YA collections.

I received an early copy of this book for review through NetGalley for an honest review. Thanks guys!

Oh boy, so this book was a mess. Despite the slam-dunk premise this book managed to stumble and slam head first into the ground.

This book was so frustrating because I was so down for a teen Hannibal coming for the awful rich people in her life. But for a book whose main draw was cannibalism and revenge... There was a distinct lack of it, almost like the authors were afraid to dive into it. Maybe this was intention since it was YA and a lot of authors tend to play the age bracket safe, but it was certainly to the detriment of the story.

We are told immediately that Brielle is a zombi and treated to a scene of her craving cow brains. We are also told pretty clearly that she is not an American zombie, but that’s about the extent of the discussion on what she is. She craves brains, blood, and flesh but not in a mindless way. It’s stressed that she is a Haitian zombi, but that aspect is never really explained well. Haitian zombis are tied to the land and toiling away into eternity versus being the mindless undead chasing down their next victims.

Brielle is a Haitian American, the daughter of a Haitian woman and her US military lover. As a result she suffers from a common feeling of not fitting in. She’s too American for her Haitian sisters, but she doesn’t fit into her hometown of Miami either. This is supposedly exemplified by her zombi/zombie pull... But we just don’t see it. She isn’t mindlessly hunting for brains and trying to infect other people like an American zombie, nor is she mindlessly working to the bone line a Haitian zombi. She was not some confused amalgamation of these cultures, she was nothing in particular.

Brielle being a zombi was such a small plot point it could had been left out. There wasn’t much conflict that came from it outside of a couple of lines of her mother not liking her and a scene where she gets a little too excited over a bloody wound. These aspects seemed more like after thoughts when the authors remembered that they were supposed to have a zombie character.

Brielle is eventually freed from her curse of being a zombie. She does this by traveling to Haiti, confronting her mother’s first husband.... and thinking really, really, really hard until she pulls an uno reverse and makes her former captor her zombi. Yeah, the ending was clunky, uninspired, and frankly didn’t make much sense.

Well, how does The Summer I Ate The Rich work as a social commentary? It works okay.

Nothing said was especially poignant. If you already know and care about issues related to wealth and class differences then nothing here is going to blow your mind. The billionaire elites are cheap, out of touch, selfish, and generally bad people. The poor struggle to survive while they make pennies to serve the rich.

Brielle’s mother suffers from chronic pain and cannot afford the $10,000 refill she needs for pain relief. We are told this was a workplace injury while working for the wealthy Banks family, but we don’t get details on what happened. The Banks family is so stingy that in 16 years Brielle’s mother, Valentine, was only allowed one set of vacation days to mourn her dead husband with a subsequent request being denied years later. Despite that Valentine gets injured so badly she needed surgery to have a direct IV for pain medication installed and that was just.... Okay???? She didn’t need any time off for recovery from the accident or the surgery? Surely she didn’t have any or it would have been mentioned by her rich boss as another reason to deny her request.

There’s a lot of time that I feel like I needed to suspend disbelief to roll with the story. Another example is when the Banks employer (who again is very stingy and cheap) suddenly decides to put Brielle and Valentine on his phone plan to stop Valentine from needing a new number every couple of months. I could maybe understand Banks paying for his actual employee’s phone plan, but for her child doesn’t make sense. It had to happen for the story even though it goes against the character’s nature.

After receiving new phones Brielle somehow gets messages meant for Silas Banks, the son of her mom’s boss and your factory default douche billionaire, Brielle decides to approve massive donations to charities via text... Because that’s something that can happen? And instead of facing any legal troubles she is offered a job working for Banks Corp. There she meets more rich people, because apparently everyone working at a big company in corporate America is also a rich asshole worthy of distain. It’s also heavily implied that Brielle led to an overdose death of one of her coworkers, but of course she’s not the problem and the people criticizing the deceased’s drug use were the callous ones.

For some reason, there was a romance between the youngest Banks heir, Preston, and Brielle. Preston takes a shine to her immediately for donating his father’s money... And that’s about it. Daddy issues. There’s a forced marriage for some grand “plan”, but what that is I still don’t know.

Okay – let’s tackle the cannibalism. The eating of the rich. Well, that didn’t happen. For ease of the plot, Brielle has access to a morgue of rich people. Before a dinner party she somehow manages to rip off fingers and toes and pop out an eye and some teeth. How is this not missing or noticed when preparing bodies? I don’t know. It doesn’t have to make sense as long as Brielle gets her “revenge”.

There are some off page intentions that happen where the toes and fingers become “special soup stock”, and a part where a tooth “reverts” back so her intentions to control the rich starts failing after she stops being a zombi.

Now, if this review sounds like a mess, imagining reading it. This isn’t even everything, but I am so tired of writing and I feel like I’m punching down on the book even after making my point.

This book didn’t work. It was boring, confusing, and underwhelming. I listened as an audiobook and enjoyed the voice actors and delivery, although it was not enough to save the book.

If I hadn't read the back cover and was therefore expecting some sort of teenage Luigi on a rampage with an added dose of cannibalism, I would have given this book five stars, but as it was, only one billionaire died, and just tiny bits were possibly eaten although that remained vague.

The great things this book does have going for it are Haitian zombie lore mixed with American zombie lore, a good starting point for discussions about wealth and the ruling class, and a teen protagonist with a healthy dose of pride and passion who wasn't lacking in self-awareness.

I listened to the audiobook of this story and thought it was well done. I liked how different the "muse" sections were so that they could easily be distinguished from the main storyline.

This was such an interesting book with underlying themes of Haitian culture, Haitian Zombie stories, and modern day America with billionaires controlling the outcomes of people's lives. Brielle is a Haitian American whose mom works for the family of billionaires who have made money off of the pharmaceutical industry. In a not rare twist her mother is in constant pain and needs medicine that her employer makes but she is unable to afford. Brielle's passion lies in cooking and she has dreams of becoming a chef much to her mother's dismay. She is also a Zombie - and she uses this to her advantage cooking for the ultra rich. I listened to this book on audio and thought it was SO well done. I loved the narration. I also loved the creole and French pronunciations and just appreciated how well the authors narrated it. I enjoyed the Haitian Zombie lore, but would say it was very light on "Zombie-ness" so if you are wary about that type of book I would say to dive in because it's really not about Zombies at all. I loved this story about revenge and also doing whatever you can to make your dreams come true. I highly recommend this audiobook! Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this audio ARC.

Thanks to Macmillan Audio and Netgally for this ARC. 3 stars.

I wanted to love this book but I barely liked it. It was an interesting story but it didn't feel completely flushes out, the bones were there but no flesh. The sister chapters sprinkled in kind of confused me. The title of the book seems to be an over reaction of the events that actually took place. I wanted more horror. Maybe the physical book reads better.

I'm not sure why this was labeled as horror...?
There are horror elements, but I felt it landed more on the side of magical realism.

The Summer I Ate The Rich is about a poor Haitian immigrant family, specifically Brielle and her ailing mother. Brielle is a zombie, but not in the American sense. Certain events lead to Brielle both getting an internship at a billionaire's company and running a supper club for the uber-wealthy. To go into any more detail than that may give away too much of the story.

This was an alright story, but I felt like it was trying to go in a few too many directions. It pushed very hard to show off the social injustice faced by poor immigrants, but also brought in elements that seemed to fight against the importance placed on the divide between rich and poor. While these things are definitely nuanced in real life, I don't feel like the nuance was reflected in the story, so it just came across as contradictory.

The narration was high quality, though I do not believe a full cast was necessary for this story. I'm not sure I even noticed the narrator changes most of the time.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with the ALC in exchange for an honest review.