Review of Good Rich People by Eliza Jane Brazier

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

So I DNFed Blue Ticket which is also by this author but I always give a second chance snd was excited to get this one from NetGalley. And this is why I give second chances because I really liked this one. Not close to five stars, but it was overall a good, solid read for me❤️. It gave me major Bret Easton Ellis vibes and I am a huge fan of his so it worked for me. Keep in mind every single one of the characters in this book are despicable but that’s the way it was meant to be. I enjoyed the ending quite a bit and the writing was fabulous. There is an animal death in it as well and drug abuse.

Quick synopsis:
Lyla and Graham are rich. They’re married and they’re bored. Graham and his mother are ruthless and have always played “games” with people where they manipulate them and try to effectively ruin their lives. Now they want Lyla to play. I will it short to avoid spoilers.

A big thank you to @netgalley and @berkleypub for a copy of this one. It’s out now! I am looking forward to our discussion with some of my faves with #theyearofnetgalley

Propulsive and almost diabolical in its plotting, this tense thriller about two women who are both trapped by their very different circumstances is memorable, smart, and deeply unsettling. Readers who like their domestic thrillers complex will find a lot to chew on here: there are no heroes, and there are no easy answers. The prose is bitingly smart and often darkly funny. This one gets under your skin and stays there.

This was a pretty standard thriller. The way the stories were woven together was interesting, but did make the timing of the sections a little hard to follow.

I also wanted a bigger twist. What happened was fine, but I really wanted more reveals and twists than we ultimately ended up having.

A very interesting novel that is part mystery, thriller, and social commentary. This is a must read! Highly recommend. Will be purchasing.

Book review: Good Rich People by Eliza Jane Brazier

Good Rich People is an adult suspense novel about a trio of the ultra wealthy and the games they play with other people’s lives for their own amusement.
Good Rich People is told in alternating POV’s between wealthy Lyla (wife of Graham and daughter-in-law to Margo) and Demi (their new tenant who stumbles into their lives by accident) against a glittering Los Angeles backdrop of wealth and privilege. Lyla is tasked with destroying the life of their latest unwitting tenant in a long standing game that her husband and mother-in-law invented. The game is that they rent part of their home to a self-made person on the cusp of success and then slowly unmake them. But Lyla can’t figure Demi out because she’s not who they were expecting to show up when the game began.
I would have enjoyed this book more if I approached it as a dark comedy instead of a straight thriller. The over-the-top descriptions of wealth, the lack of moral compasses among the characters and the weird descriptions of things as mundane as Graham’s scent made it an odd reading experience overall. It was written as if someone listened to Lorde’s “Royals” on repeat decided to write a book about rich people being awful. There was nothing remotely human or relatable about the interactions within the entire book and I quickly grew exhausted of their machinations (and Graham’s scent) and just wanted people to die or whatever.
I wanted to enjoy this one and be entertained by the scenario of Spoiled vs Scrappy but none of the characters were clever or interesting enough to make it work for me.

Imagine your life is just about as hard and bad (and awful and scary) as life can get.

You have no home, no belongings.

No friends.

Nothing.

Yet somehow, despite your complete and utter lack of anything, “the system” can’t seem to manage helping you get back on your feet, or to allow you to feel as though you actually belong, to… anything.

But then, on one otherwise ordinary (in other words, basically terrible) day, you find yourself in surroundings such as you’ve never seen, or even dreamt (for to dream, you first have to be able to comprehend, in order to envision)… the literal Lap of Luxury, where no desire—no matter how grandiose—will go unfulfilled (let alone any need, because in this particular rabbit hole, Alice, there is no such concept as “need”).

What would you do… especially if it became possible for you—sans any pesky repercussions—to step into such a fantasy life and live it, for your very own?

Eliza Jane Brazier poses that compelling question in her latest thriller, Good Rich People.
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From the outside, Lyla and Graham are the epitome of the golden couple, enjoying the ideal life. With an almost-impossibly cantilevered modern home clinging oh-so-precariously to the rocky hillside in the Hollywood Hills [which is saying something, in an area where anyone who’s anyone has a house that could be thus described], posh luxury cars, fabulous designer wardrobes and jewels, and enough money to afford all the pampering [plus any elective surgical treatments to tweak little things which Mother Nature may not have gotten quite perfect] their hearts could possibly desire, they are the Beautiful Power Couple to which everyone else in their set aspires.

The fact that golden couple Graham and Lyla aren’t remotely “nice” or “good” people [understatement of the year, that] matters not; no one else in their circle is particularly pleasant, either. As for their happiness, you might ask? Well, what is “happy”, really…?

Meanwhile—a mere mile or so away—another youngish woman lives a very different existence. Never having much, things have gotten progressively worse for her, to the point that she now finds herself experiencing homelessness, for the first time. Her current abode? A little shelter she’s erected in a tiny nook under a support in an underpass off the 101 Freeway.

Until one night, when fate intervenes. A chance meeting between this woman and a staggering-drunk (and very wealthy) stranger—who has lost her phone, effectively putting the kibosh on an Uber ride—results in the unhoused woman taking pity on the other, and walking her home… all the way from the grubby underpass, up the straight-out-of-a-storybook hairpin streets into the odd mixture of old-and-new glamor and trying-too-hard-to-act-rich-to-pull-it-off deshabille, in the nearby Hollywood Hills.

When morning comes, though, the fairy tale fractures… because the Good Samaritan—who’d fallen asleep after drinking a couple of glasses of wine she’d been offered as thanks for seeing the inebriated partier safely home—wakes up to find the other woman has OD’d overnight.

And who doesn’t know how that’s gonna look to the cops?

But The Fates aren’t done with her yet, for just when she’s bolting out the door, she runs right into… Lyla, the beautiful, wealthier-than-the-gods envy of the neighborhood… who just so happens to be renting out the lower-level guesthouse of her home to Demi. (That would be the oh-so-recently-deceased Demi.)

The kicker? Lyla has never actually met (nor even laid eyes on) her new tenant; the rental arrangements were all taken care of online. And, surprisingly, Lyla seems thrilled to finally be meeting the new renter (even if said occupant does seem oddly disheveled and as skittish as a baby bunny).

And just like that, the (soon-to-be-previously)-unhoused woman sees a crazypants way out of her present predicament: to be Demi.

Of course, there’s another kicker [you knew there would be, right?]: Lyla and Graham aren’t anything like your average landlords. They have a vicious little game—one to which only they know the rules (and the very existence of, in fact)—up their designer sleeves, which they play with their tenants. It’s one the bored, cruel couple have played numerous times before… and it’s one which they never lose.

Then again, they’ve never played their twisted game against someone like “Demi”—a phoenix rising from the ashes of poverty and desperation, as it were—before.

They might just have finally met their match.
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There are a couple of ways to read Good Rich People. The first—which is how most people probably will—is to view it as a devilishly-crafted thriller… made palatable by its very “unlikeliness”, if you will, as it calls for a suspension of disbelief. (It is a very, very good thriller, and a pretty fantastical tale, so that’s cool.)

The second way involves a somewhat more nuanced read—the sort made possible only by firsthand experience with the subject matter— wherein the story isn’t great merely because of its design, but because so much of it rings undeniably true… which is how I read this one. Having plenty of very good friends who live/have lived in those hills [so, yes, there are decent folks living there, too]… but even more acquaintances, who fall much nearer the Lyla-&-Graham end of the power-and-privilege spectrum (albeit not quite that gorgeous or loaded) of being “really-not-very-nice-at-all”, I had no trouble buying these characters, at all, because I’ve met them.

Good Rich People is a great read… heading, at times, where you think it might, before veering sharply off down a path you didn't even see coming [and don’t worry, I’m giving you no more spoilers than perusing the back of the book jacket would], as it leads you on a—by turns—shocking, funny, appalling, and bizarre trip from the lowest levels of existence in L.A. to some of the loftiest echelons… and all within the teeny-tiny space of just a couple of square miles.

If you’re craving a diabolically-twisted tale that hooks its elaborately-manicured claws into you (and refuses, point-blank, to let go, because where’s the fun in that?!), then Good Rich People demands its rightful place at the top of your list.
~GlamKitty

I love a good bad guy main character story but this one was just awful. Every single character was terrible but the story was so interesting I just kept reading. I feel like at least one character should be interesting or fun to read about but I pretty much despised every character 🤷🏼‍♀️. An interesting story with a cool plot but just the worst people I’ve ever read about 😂. Thank you @netgalley and @berkleypub sorry for the brutal review 🤷🏼‍♀️

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” His most well-regarded book, The Great Gatsby, went on to prove it. Published almost a hundred years ago, it’s hard to believe that the inequality he wrote about has gotten even worse.

And so have the people.

Author Eliza Jane Brazier, in her sophomore offering, doesn’t seem to think too highly of rich people; her title Good Rich People is sarcastic. Her rich married couple, Graham and Lyla, aren’t the carelessly indifferent type à la Tom and Daisy Buchanan; they actively seek to harm other people. In their contemporary home overlooking Los Angeles, on the grounds of Graham’s mother Margo’s extensive estate (which includes a nine-level garden based on Dante’s circles of hell), they invite tenants to live in their guest house, and then play a game to ruin their lives. When we first meet Lyla, she’s overseeing the handyman cleaning the blood out of their decorative fountain. The blood came from the previous tenant. Lyla is trapped in a sexless marriage; she loves Graham, who is a sociopathic, manipulative pretty boy completely in cahoots with his evil mother. Neither Graham nor Margo think Lyla really belongs in their family. They want her to destroy the life of their new tenant, Demi, to prove that she does. And Lyla says okay.

To read the rest of the review, click on the link below.

2 1/2 stars rounded up to 3

OK, I think this must just really not be the book for me because it seems like lots of people LOVED it and I did not. And it's not because all of the characters were insufferable... I don't necessarily have to like the characters in a book to love the book. I couldn't figure out if it was intended to be satire or not... If it was, I don't think it was done well enough or dug deep enough. And if it wasn't, there were just too many ridiculous things being said and done for it to be believable or enjoyable for me.

The book begins with us learning about the game Layla's ultra rich husband Graham and his mother Margo have sucked Layla into. They basically allow tenants to rent the guesthouse on their property and then play with their lives to ruin them. They're so wealthy that basically everything and everyone in life bores them and unless they're majorly causing destruction, they don't care about anything. Layla isn't totally into this mindset, but cares so much about money, she goes along with it. When the new tenant Demi moves in, Margo decides it's Layla's turn to lead the game. But Demi isn't quite who she says she is.

So many passages has me rolling my eyes and I just found myself having a tough time really getting into the book. I do understand how people enjoyed it and do think it's a unique story in some ways; just not the story for me. I'm not a big thriller reader to begin with and I suppose if I am, I like them to be a bit more realistic.

I didn't love the writing style of this book. It's a me problem, not the book's problem. The short, choppy sentences kept me really outside of the story and I just couldn't get into it.

"I put up with him for the reason everybody did. Because beauty and money are God, and Graham is more beautiful, and has more money, than anyone I've ever known."

So goes the story of Lyla — who is forced to join her rich, beautiful and bored husband's games in order to prove to him and his mother that she's one of them. Details around "the game" are hazy at best, but you patch together that it has something to do with messing with the mind of the new downstairs tenant, a go-getter who wants to belong in their world but never can. Told in the alternating viewpoints of Lyla and the downstairs tenant "Demi," you enter both a world where money means nothing and everything.

What I Liked: The timeline of the POV switches really threw me off balance, but I think it adds a lot to the mystery and suspense of the story and really made the twists extra surprising. I also enjoyed both Lyla and Demi's viewpoints on the family's wealth. There's one point where Lyla talks about how awful it feels to wait in line and really shows how much money has shielded her from the world. But we also see the dark side of wealth, which is important.

What I Didn't Like: The plot is really slow in places and can feel repetitive. Eliza Jane Brazier's writing is very atmospheric, which some people may really love but will be boring for others. It was also a really dark book and both characters could be really frustrating, which really hurt my personal enjoyment. Finally, I had a hard time connecting to Lyla's motives for her actions. Maybe it's the wealth gap. 🤷‍♀️

A thank you to Netgalley for sharing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I don't have a lot to say about this book as I couldn't be bothered to finish it. I don't like giving less than three star reviews (it makes me feel mean) but I found the writing to be pretty bland and I just couldn't get engaged. It's an interesting premise, but the characters weren't, maybe because they didn't feel well-developed, so it did rock my world.

I was so excited to read Good Rich People. I loved Eliza Jane Brazier's debut, If I Disappeared, a moody, tense thriller, but I was disappointed in Good Rich People. The characters — particularly Lyla — felt flat to me. I couldn't tell if the depiction of the uber rich was intended to be satire or serious. It left me wanting more.

That said, I'll still pick up Brazier's third book and hope it's more like If I Disappeared.

This was kind of bizarre. I made it 50 pages but really didn't like the main character & the way she just took whatever her husband and MIL doled out. Will I go back to this? Maybe?? I didn't really care one way or another BUT lots of friends liked this so maybe it's me.

This book is the perfect way to spend a cold, snowy and/or rainy day. This book reads like a Lifetime Movie and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. It has unlikable characters, unreliable narrator, out of touch and one dimensional rich people. I would have liked a point of view from Graham. My man had some serious mommy issues. 🥴

BOOK REVIEW

BOOK: Good Rich People
AUTHOR: Eliza Jane Brazier
FORMAT: eBook
GENRE: Thriller
RATING: 7/10
3.5 stars

Thank you so much @berkleypub and @netgalley for the #gifted advanced copy of GOOD RICH PEOPLE, out now!

MY THOUGHTS

What a weird book!!! I went into this one not really sure what to expect after seeing some very mixed reviews (especially @jordys.book.club ‘s review), and I finished it with a head full of mixed emotions. My two thoughts immediately upon finishing were “WTF did I just read” and “Wow that was wildly entertaining.”

I loved how ridiculous this book was. I almost felt like each of the characters was a caricature of someone else, playing strongly into the satirical vibes I got throughout the book. The plot was pretty unique and I was eager to keep reading and see what was going to happen. The characters themselves were hysterical and I found myself laughing out loud at them a lot of the time (i.e., Margo and Bean). There were also little plot twists that were snuck in there that made the ending enjoyable.

I’m not entirely convinced that this book was intended to be satire? I wish that was clearer. I found it hysterical and ridiculous and but I’m not sure that was intentional. I also didn’t love how the alternating POVs occurred in parallel timelines. I found myself confused for a lot of the book and had a hard time piecing together what was happening and when. I also, despite liking the very ending, wish we got more of an explosion at the end. There was so much build up and suspense and I kind of felt like it plateaued. I definitely could have used an epilogue with some closure on what was going to happen to the characters afterwards.

Even though the book was a pretty quick and easy read, the plot didn't engage me as much as I hoped it would. I think the dual POV didn't really add much to the narrative since it was a complete replay of all the events from the first POV adding in some new details but those details didn't push the plot further really. I really wanted to enjoy the characters but I found them a bit flat and they just didn't live up to the potential craziness of playing this "game" that was hinted at for the whole book. I think had we gotten the perspective from the mother, it would have brought in a more interesting and crazy character that would have been exciting to follow. I really appreciated the potential that this book had in the plot but I think the execution (no pun intended) didn't pan out as well as I hoped it would. I would definitely read more by this author because I found her writing style to be quick and easy to read, which I always appreciate in a mystery/thriller.

My gosh, this book was so twisted and unexpected. Perfectly paced, GOOD RICH PEOPLE had me flipping the pages as fast as I could. All that glitters definitely isn't gold in this one. Original, bold, and breath-taking.

Good Rich People
By Eliza Jane Brazier

Good Rich People is a wild ride of a read, and I loved every bit of it. It is crazy, completely mental and hilarious in a wickedly disturbing way.

There is Lyla, and her husband Graham, and mother in law Margot who loves to play deadly games of people’s lives, and bringing them to a devastating and deadly ruin. This is their hobby and what keeps them from getting too bored with their very wealthy existence. Beneath their Hollywood Hills mansion is a guest house they rent out, and they painstakingly choose their tenant to play these deadly games with. But unbeknownst to them, their tenant Demi is not what they thought she would be. Let the games begin!

This is a fantastic and addictive read I could not turn the pages fast enough.

Highly Recommend!!

This is perfect fodder for a Hollywood movie. I'm sure it will be made into one. I just did not like it. I could not follow the timelines.