Good Rich People
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3.4 • 62 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A Good Morning America 'January Book That Can Get Us Through Anything'
A Most Anticipated Novel of 2022 by The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Bazaar, Entertainment Weekly, New York Post, PopSugar, Shondaland, Yahoo!, and Crime Reads
A destitute woman deceives her way into the guesthouse of a Hollywood Hills mansion and inadvertently becomes a target in the twisted game of the wealthy family upstairs in the next intoxicating novel from Eliza Jane Brazier.
Lyla has always believed that life is a game she is destined to win, but her husband, Graham, takes the game to dangerous levels. The wealthy couple invites self-made success stories to live in their guesthouse and then conspires to ruin their lives. After all, there is nothing worse than a bootstrapper.
Demi has always felt like the odds were stacked against her. At the end of her rope, she seizes a risky opportunity to take over another person’s life and unwittingly becomes the subject of the upstairs couple’s wicked entertainment. But Demi has been struggling forever, and she’s not about to go down without a fight.
In a twist that neither woman sees coming, the game quickly devolves into chaos and rockets toward an explosive conclusion.
Because every good rich person knows: in money and in life, it’s winner takes all. Even if you have to leave a few bodies behind.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lyla Herschel, the principal narrator of this fiendish psychological thriller from Brazier (If I Disappear), suffers from boredom, as does her super wealthy husband, Graham, with whom she lives in a grand house perched on a cliff in the Hollywood Hills. To alleviate their mutual emotional ennui, the couple initiate a dangerous game with the well-to-do tenants they solicit for the guesthouse on their property. Meanwhile, Demi Golding, who's homeless, stumbles into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take on the identity of a well-paid director of a tech company. Lyla is happy to accept Demi when she applies to be their new tenant, and she soon becomes unwittingly engaged in Lyla and Graham's nefarious schemes. Brazier plays delicious homage to Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" and Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust as the action builds to a climactic out-of-control 30th birthday party that involves guests in a battle of "simunition" ("Real guns but fake ammunition"). Along the way, the two women—one trapped in a dead-end marriage, the other in an audacious attempt to improve her social status—bond. Readers with a taste for the idiosyncratic and the macabre will find much to relish.
Customer Reviews
Good rich people? No such thing
Do "Good Rich People" actually exist? According to the premise of Eliza Jane Brazier's new novel, absolutely not. From the outside, Lyla seems to have everything - her perfect, attractive husband, a beautiful home and wealth upon wealth; however, things are a bit more complicated than they appear. Lyla, Margo (her mother-in-law) and Graham (Lyla's husband) engage in twisted games of finding successful tenants to move in, all for the sport of tearing them down until they're reduced to a shell of their former selves.
I enjoyed the ingenuity of the plot, which made for a quick page-turner. The characters are not meant to be likeable..I don't think I liked any single character but somehow I still really wanted to see what happened to all the characters by the end. I did find the ending a bit anticlimactic based on the build-up but I was satisfied with a certain character getting what was coming to them. On a random note, I didn't enjoy how often Graham's "animal scent" was referenced .. it felt like a euphemism for really bad body odor - not something I enjoyed picturing every time it was mentioned.
Overall, it was a quick and entertaining read but I did want more from the ending. Thank you Berkley for my gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.
A solid novel.
Definitely had me turning the page. Ending felt a bit rushed and not all that shocking but overall enjoyed the novel.