Thank you to Netgalley for this arc and audio. I read along while listen to the audio. I really enjoyed this YA thriller. It was narrated very well and the story line was really good. I had no idea it was going where it went.

After a tragedy leaves her chronically ill mother without a job and unable to afford the necessary medication to deal with her pain, Haitian-American Brielle takes matters into her own hands. An aspiring chef, she opens a supper club for the wealthy of Miami and uses some secret ingredients to gain control of the minds of those who eat her food.

This audiobook book was disturbing, funny and so entertaining. The narrator was amazing. I binged this in one day. I enjoyed myself throughly!

3.75⭐️ Well this book was much different than I expected from the description. Where all those aspects present? Sure. It just had much more to it and those aspects sort of overshadowed the marketing.

If you’re looking for a gory horror story, this is not it. I personally wasn’t looking for that so I was pleased on that front. I enjoyed the connections to the Haitian culture and the fables that the story was based off of.

I am thankful to have gotten the audio ALC for free from Macmillan Audio through NetGalley to read which gave me the opportunity to voluntarily leave a review.

The multi cast narrators did a great job with the material. They each had unique voices for the various characters and handle the accents well. They also had a great natural pacing to the recitation where you could listen to it easily at 1x speed.

I think this is a great introduction for teens into the horror genre. It gets them used to atypical concepts without getting too gory. What I enjoyed the most was the representation and social impact without sounding like the authors were preaching.

The book comes out April 22, 2025z

My rating system since GoodReads doesn’t have partial stars

⭐️ Hated it
⭐️⭐️ Had a lot of trouble, prose issues, really not my cup of tea (potentially DNF’d or thought about it)
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Meh, it was an ok read but nothing special
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Really enjoyed it! Would recommend to others
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Outstanding! Will circle back and read again

3.5 stars

I enjoy these two, so I couldn't wait to sink my teeth into this newest effort. The zombie lore is a real treat, though there are other elements that did not come together as nicely for me as in previous reads by the same duo.

Brielle is all the way over it. She has hopes and dreams but lacks the means through which to achieve them, and there are some particularly unusual aspects of her identity that make her upward mobility seem even less likely. She also has a mother who is overwhelmed by medical situations and constant, related reminders, and she has a healthy level of spite for those, well, who mostly deserve it. When she comes up with a payback plan, it's a good one.

The zombie aspect of this is as fun as I'd hoped. Less fun? For me, there are challenges with the pacing, the character growth, and the unusual plot points (and I'm actually not including the zombie part here - that, to me, seemed totally reasonable. Some of the relationships and outcomes, though? Hmmm). This is still a fascinating concept and a read I'll recommend based on how successful that part is.

I'm looking forward to more from these authors.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite for allowing me early access to the audiobook version of this novel.
The Summer I Ate the Rich by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite was certainly not what I was expecting it to be. I never knew exactly what was going to happen next, which I would list as a pro and a con in this case. I went into the novel expecting this zombie novel to be a typical Americanized zombie, where the character only cared about feeding and carnage. What I got though was a history on the origin of the term zombie. I had no idea that the zombie story originated for Haiti and that it had to do with voodoo. I might have fallen down a few rabbit holes looking into it after finishing the book.
The plot focuses on Brielle Petitfour a 17-year-old zombie who has a love and talent for cooking. She is the daughter of a widowed Haitian immigrant who is battling with a health condition that causes her to need medical assistance in the form of an extremely expensive medicine pump. This is the driving force that really propels Brielle’s motives through the novel. Brielle is torn between taking care of her family and following her heart. Luckily a chance to do both occurs when she witnesses the hit and run of her mother’s employers’ father, and sees Brielle thrust into the world of the privileged while still trying to make her own dreams come true.
I would recommend the audiobook for this as the actors did a fantastic job. I loved it when the muses would cut in as observers to the story and even provide background information that hadn’t been provided by the main characters. You might notice that I haven’t mentioned the zombie aspect of the novel a lot, and that is because it almost felt like an afterthought. I feel like the story would have worked well without it. It felt like its only purpose was to get us horror lovers intrigued in the book, which I mean I guess it did because I read/listened to it.
I would rate this as 3 out of 4 since that is the percentage of the novel I enjoyed. By the end it kind of goes off the rails a bit and gave me a bit of whiplash. I will say though the story did make me extremely hungry.