Fun, quick read about a modern dysfunctional family of grifters told through 3 generations: Gen X, Millenials, and Gen Z. I could have stayed with these characters for another 100 pages!! Sure to be a great book club choice.

What an interesting and intriguing story! The cover and description caught my attention, and what I found within the pages was true art. I found the characters unlike any others I had been curious about before. Vitello crafted a modern-day grifter novel, and I was here for it! Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy.

“Fame is fleeting. Stupidity is forever.”

Honestly? This might be my favourite book I’ve read so far this year. Griftopia has a bit of everything (satire, social commentary, family drama, generational trauma, dark humour) and while that’s usually the kind of thing I’d side-eye, it somehow pulls it all off perfectly. It’s wildly engaging and I couldn’t put it down.

"Pearl’s personal mythos took on antivaxxer-esque certainty."

The writing's sharp and full of dry, self-deprecating humour. The social commentary's on point, skewering modern culture. It's funny, uncomfortable, and observant in equal measure. One small caveat - it's very much a product of its time, and while the dark humour and cultural critique land perfectly now, I’m curious how it’ll age.

“…before she knew it, she’d become her mother."

The characters feel so real, warts and all, they have so much depth and are every shade of grey. Sometimes you want to hug them and tell them everything will be okay; other times you want to grab them by the shoulders and give them a shake. Everyone's a human car crash, someone you'd never want to be friends with, but can't stop watching.

I love books that follow multiple generations (I could have probably done without Declan, he had none of the charm of the other characters and really just bored me), and Griftopia delivers on that front, weaving its characters’ pasts and presents together in a way that feels natural. There are a few minor typos (missing words here and there or slight misspellings), but that's easy to forgive when the story's this good.

What a fantastic story!

Griftopia is sharp, funny, thrill of a novel that looks at a family in free fall and asks what happens when grifting turns into a business model. Suzy Vitello drops us into the Freischin sisters’ messy middle age with a lot of compassion and a very good eye for the small humiliations that come with financial precariousness and professional collapse.

What I loved most is how Vitello refuses to caricature the Freischins even as she skewers the worlds they move through, from tradwife influencers to pickleball side hustles to child stardom built on borrowed aesthetics, because beneath the satire is a deeply human story about people who are scared, tired, and trying to hold on to one another when the floor drops out from under them. Pearl, Scarlett, Declan, and Helena feel like real people making compromised choices for reasons that make painful sense, and the novel keeps its focus on relationships rather than punchlines, which is why the humor lands and the emotional stakes feel real.

Griftopia is not about grifting because it is trendy, it is about grifting because the safety net has holes and the cost of falling is too high, and Vitello understands that the line between exploitation and survival can become dangerously thin when you are desperate. By the end, I found myself less interested in who would get away with what than in whether this family could find a way back to one another. You will be surprised who you root for!

#Griftopia #SuzyVitello #SibyllinePress #NetGalley #BookReview

If you enjoy your social commentary with a side of "everything is terrible but at least it’s funny," Griftopia should be next on your TBR list. It’s a masterclass in imperfect characters—with a sprawling family tree where every branch is on fire. It’s the kind of book that skewers modern culture so accurately it makes you want to delete your social media and change your name.

The prose is dry, self-deprecating, and dangerously sharp. Managing a cast this large usually results in a messy sprawl, but the author handles it with surgical precision. The author weaves past and present together so seamlessly that the generational trauma feels less like a plot point and more like a hereditary curse. It’s rare to find a book that balances this many characters and perspectives without losing the thread. It’s uncomfortable, observant, and stays with you long after the final disaster.

I particularly enjoyed the social media commentary and how easy it is to fake content for likes—and how easy it is to be canceled.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who loves a family-oriented, character-driven plot.