DNF @ about 50%

I wanted so badly to love this book but it didn’t work for me for a few reasons that all boil down to that this didn’t feel like the book that was advertised to me. It seemed like there were two distinct plots (zombie and rich people) but there was no forward movement through this point. The different elements seemed disjointed and did not feel like one well-meshed story. There were also several elements that didn’t make sense. As a concrete example, the MC is offered a job that has health insurance because she and her mom are uninsured. But a mother would not be able to get health insurance from a child (rightfully or wrongly - but if you agree or not is a different story), so the plot point doesn’t make sense. I read some reviews with spoilers and it also seems like the “ate the rich” claims are much exaggerated. Overall, this seemed like it was trying to do too much and the pacing suffered. Thank you to the publisher for the gifted arc!

The first book that these authors wrote, found a home in my classroom very quickly and several of my students who were Haitian said it was the first time they’d ever seen their culture on the pages of a book. With this book there seems to be even more Haitian culture, Even the part that is folklore or myth, please a major role. I really liked the fact that they made a concerted effort to correct the zombie understanding in America versus what it means in Haitian culture. I also think that many of my students will connect with the immigrant mentality of always pushing forward and working no matter what. The commentary on the ridiculousness of the rich and the pharmaceutical world are ones that are right for discussion in my classroom and I look forward to bringing this book there.

I really enjoyed this, Gossip Girl meets Hannibal in a take down the rich way. I loved the Haitian culture that was provided throughout, and learning about the zonbie of Brielle. Despite being a zonbie she is very caring and loving,

I don’t want to say too much it’s better going in not knowing.

I really loved The Summer I Ate The Rich! It was incredibly captivating from the beginning, with a strong cast of characters. It was very informative highlighting the lesser known zombie lore of Haiti. Brielle was a delightfully sociopathic protagonist, who readers will easily sympathize with as she tries to fight for her family and use her zombie skills to take revenge on the horribly affluent residents of an island in Florida. Whether teens are interested in socioeconomic inequality or just looking for a great horror, this book is a must-read.

A wicked, lip-curling satire. I regretfully admit that it took too long for me to understand some aspects of this, mostly the stuff related to Haitian mythology; I genuinely would like to learn more about the subject. Still, it is nice to see a new take on zombie folklore, though since the book is solidly set in the Haitian culture/diaspora were the mythos originated in the first place, maybe it’s more of a return to the roots.

3 ☆
Let me say this cover art is gorgeous, and I love how it is hiding the "tooth" in the picture! Did you notice it?

I was intrigued by the storyline: A Haitian-American girl uses her previously hidden zombie abilities to exact revenge on the wealthy elites who have hurt her family. Brielle Petitfour loves to cook—but with a chronically sick mother and bills to pay, becoming a chef isn't exactly a realistic career path. When her mom suddenly loses her job, Brielle steps in and uses her culinary skills to earn some extra money. The rich families who love her cooking praise her unique flavors and textures, which keep everyone guessing what's in her dishes. The secret ingredient?

I felt like the pace of this book was a little confusing! The beginning was extremely slow, the middle was a medium pace, and the ending was fast. I think I wanted to know more about her zombie abilities. I can't really do a review without spoilers. I recommend reading this one.

Thank you, Netgellay, and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group for the ebook in exchange for my honest review.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I wasn’t sure how I would initially feel about it - with the Zonbi aspect - but the author wrote that character to be one that was extremely relatable. I enjoyed the short chapters throughout the book. This kept the reading face-paced and kept you wanting to continue to read chapter after chapter. This book was also similar to several “eat the rich” themed movies I’ve seen over the last few years - “The Menu”, “The Glass Onion” etc. definitely would recommend this book to others! A surprisingly good read!

I absolutely devoured this book!! The Summer I Ate the Rich was so good I could not put it down. Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book was unlike anything I've ever read and I mean that as the highest compliment. I loved the interiority of the narrator combined with the propulsive plot that pulled me and didn't let me go.

Amazing book will definitely recommend to friends and family love the characters development. Love the plot line

Now this was the YA read that I was waiting for this year. It's got a stellar premise that is delivered on while containing relevant social commentary.

I also appreciated the use of the original myth of the Zonbi being used here. Zombie is one of those westernized terms that we all generally are aware of but the meaning has been warped from It's Haitian French source. Here you don't see the "Walking Dead" in Brielle but rather the more tragic and accurate to myth interpretation.

Brielle is such an interesting protagonist and her decisions are what make this narrative so compelling. There are also stylistic choices for certain chapters that keep exposition entertaining and fresh (I am always down for more Greek choruses in fiction).

I think there's some issues with pacing and the stakes of the narrative don't feel strongly communicated but readers might overlook that.

I had a fun time with this and I think others will too. Mostly I'm just glad to see a YA with no romance subplot and that feels actually appropriate for the age group.

I found this book to be quite a surprise. At first, it’s unsettling, but once you get into it, you realize it’s on a whole new level of horror. I loved the drama and the unexpected turns. The zombie angle was unique and refreshing. Overall, it did feel a bit lengthy to me, but I’ve got to give it props for its originality and for keeping me engaged. Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

This was a fun fast paced, read that kept me engageed the whole time I read it. Whenever I had to do something else I practically groaned as I got dragged away from Brielle & her mess. .

Becuase what she did throughout this book…that was PURE MESS. Every choice she made made me cringe, but I was still oddly proud of her for standing up for herself, and her community.

Things I loved:
Getting a sort of omniscent view of the the paralells between Brielle & her mother from the Haitian muses. I feel like it's easy to forget that parents are people who are just as flawed as the rest of us, and the story did a great job at showing us how our parents mistakes can easily become the same ones we make.

Things I loved a little less:
The ending of the story felt rushed. Our girl really saw no consequence to everything she did, but it also felt like we didn't get a full picure of her power, and for a fantasy that was so grounded in realism, I wanted more of that fantastic, and a little more of an explantion of how it impacted her world outside of those small vignettes with indivdual characters.

I was drawn to this book because of its bold premise—a young Haitian-American woman literally “eating the rich” as a form of reclamation. It promised biting satire and sharp commentary, but what I read felt muddled and directionless.

The most compelling parts were the interludes about Brielle’s mother and her past in Haiti. These sections had a lyrical depth that stood in stark contrast to the rest of the novel. Unfortunately, Brielle herself felt like a passive protagonist, swept along by events rather than driving the story.

The romance subplot didn’t add much either, and the lack of clarity around Brielle’s powers as a zonbi made the plot feel even more disjointed. I really wanted to love this, but it left me more confused than satisfied.

I chose this book because “eat the rich” has been a mantra by which I, personally, have been living for years. The concept of a young Haitian-American woman literally eating the rich in a reclamation of power seemed to me to be a satirical and powerful way to comment on income inequality and racial hierarchy.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that is the book I ultimately read. To start, I could not figure out how seriously this novel wanted me to take it. At times, I believed I was meant to see this story as a light-hearted take on some serious topics, something evidenced by the lack of a real plot and certainly any character development. This book was mostly comprised of ideas and events than any real narrative structure, relying on the reader’s own desire to “eat the rich” to keep them engaged instead of a compelling story. If the book had been funnier, more ridiculous, more in-your-face, I actually think this could have worked.

But then there were times that I thought the book actually wanted me to take it seriously. These times were largely the Greek chorus interludes, in which Brielle’s sisters in Haiti provided some heartbreaking and important context for their mother and the circumstances that led to her move to the United States. These sections also contained the strongest writing, which was poetic and lyrical, unlike the rest of the novel, where the writing was not bad, but certainly nothing that caught my attention or wowed me. During the times when the reader was being told a story of love and possession and defiance and difficult choices, I found myself questioning the rest of the novel; why is this the story of Brielle, who, throughout the course of this novel makes very few choices and mostly just reacts to events that happen around her, instead of her mother, whose past is agonizing and shocking and torturously difficult to imagine oneself in? In these “flashbacks,” so to speak, Brielle’s mother is a woman of agency and nerve and fortitude, and I feel that in the “present” of the narrative, she’s largely reduced to a burden that Brielle must navigate around and account for.

Because of these odd tonal differences, I found that I couldn’t not take the story seriously, which had the unfortunately effect of my actually thinking about the plot. Or, where a plot should have been, had one been included. As I said before, Brielle, ostensibly the main character of the story, largely does nothing from beginning to end. The only real choice she makes, an on-a-whim decision right at the beginning to donate millions of dollars of someone else’s money when she has the opportunity to do so and the belief that she will not get caught, leads to a cascade of events that sometimes don’t make sense but that give her little opportunity to actually do anything. I think that, were she a real person, Brielle would have quite a lot of agency - after all, she’s not even a legal adult and she has a successful private catering business in Miami - but as a protagonist in a narrative, she doesn’t do much over the course of this book. Things happen, and she goes along with them, seemingly biding her time until…something. I’m still not sure what.

In general, the characters seem as superficial and lifeless as the plot. No one feels real, complex, or deep, and I would be hard-pressed to identify a character I believe grew or changed over the course of this story. Certainly I would not go so far as to call any of the characters likable, though I don’t believe that a character needs to be likable to be valuable to a story. It seemed that the characters largely existed in two camps in this book: “good” people who supported Brielle and didn’t say shitty, racist things out of pocket, and “bad” people who…were the opposite. There was very little nuance or room for complicated relationships or motives, which made every character read as flat.

I’m honestly not sure how I’m supposed to feel about Brielle’s romantic relationship with Preston. There are a number of reasons for this, but the biggest one is that I don’t understand how Brielle’s zonbi powers work (and, I suspect, neither do the authors, as the fact that Brielle is a zonbi is so absent from much of this book as to be a non-factor altogether). From what I could interpret, by the end of the novel, Brielle has…charmed? Preston into marrying her? At seventeen? So she can be come a part of the ultra-elite that she has spent the rest of the novel claiming she hates? Is this not the very definition of girl-bossing too close to the sun? But it’s okay, because Preston only got close to her because he wanted to know if she knew that he was the one who killed his great-grandfather? I think? To be honest, the romance felt very shoe-horned in, and yet I think the novel would completely fall apart without it, because so much of the time spent in this story is spent with the two of them and their rather ridiculous romance.

At the end of the day, I don’t think this novel set out to accomplish what it wanted to - although I cannot guess what it is that it wanted to accomplish. I hate to be let down by this book, because I did really have high hopes for it. I just wish it had delivered on any of the promises made in its summary; now that was a book I would have loved to have read.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn's The Summer I Ate the Rich is an ambitious, eerie tale that blends Haitian folklore, social critique, and a revenge narrative wrapped in a zombie story unlike any other. Brielle, a 17-year-old Haitian American living in Miami’s Little Haiti, isn’t your typical zombie—she’s a zonbi, rooted in Haitian mysticism. Struggling with her supernatural "urges," Brielle remains fiercely loyal to her family, creating a hauntingly complex, morally gray protagonist.
The story critiques wealth inequality, showcasing Brielle and her mother’s battle to survive while serving the wealthy. The novel’s title promises a satirical, blood-soaked look at "eating the rich," yet the gore is lighter than expected, giving way to subtler, more psychological chills.
The book’s plot takes its time; Brielle’s revenge arc is slow, entwined with subplots of family secrets and romance that, while intriguing, occasionally sidetracks the main narrative. Unexpectedly, the romance subplot adds a tender layer to an otherwise intense story. Themes of healthcare disparity and the influence of pharmaceuticals enrich the commentary, though some tonal shifts feel jarring.
Despite a climax that falls short of its potential, The Summer I Ate the Rich stands out for its cultural richness and unique approach to horror. For those seeking a novel that melds dark folklore with biting social themes, this story delivers a chilling experience

This book gave much more than I anticipated! A book about class and wealth disparities and the impact of being on the outside of that. I am still digesting this book but I highly recommend you read it for yourself.

The Summer I Ate the Rich was a book that tackled issues of class and privilege, but also seamlessly incorporated cultural beliefs. I enjoyed how the authors framed Brielle being a zombie, while still humanizing her.

I wouldn’t consider this book horror or thriller at all. There was very little talk about zombies at all. Definitely disappointing.

Very cool style with the muses and intermissions. I also liked the uniqueness of the story and characters. Some of the secondary storyline was confusing, but the book overall was gripping and interesting. Would recommend!