Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > Good Rich People

I love morally bankrupt characters. I love morally grey characters. I love unreliable narrators. I love characters who are just empty inside, as empty as the color eggshell white. This book is absolutely filled to the brim with nothing but all of these things: morally bankrupt characters, morally grey characters, an unreliable narrator, characters as empty as the eggshell white on their walls and bedding, and their eyes as glassy as the windows in their mansions in the hills above Los Angeles.

This book is absolutely fabulous. I picked it up and was swallowed within the first couple of pages. Every time I had to put it down to attend to something else I was bitter and put out. I ate my lunch holding my Kindle in one hand and shoving food in my mouth with the other.

This book is told in two juxtaposed first-person POV’s: Lyla, the rich wife of a rich man who’s the son of an even-richer woman, and “Demi”, a homeless woman who has stolen the identity of the actual Demi who was meant to move in as a tenant in the guest house below Lyla and her husband. When Lyla is telling the story it reads like satire, almost like something Kathy Wang (who wrote Impostor Syndrome) would write. When “Demi” is telling the story it reads more like something gothic and suspenseful, like Meg Abbot (who wrote “The Turnout”) would write. This is reflected in how both women talk about their situations and each other in the narrative prose, and it’s a stunning writing style. It makes for a great tapestry.

The book has a texture to it, but a very claustrophobic feeling. All of the action mostly takes place either in Lyla’s home, the guest house, or on the grounds of the main house in its entirety. As such, you feel like these characters are all isolated in this ultra-rich location high in the hills above Los Angeles, where no one but the richest should be able to breathe the cleanest air available and build elaborate houses that might burn or fall down any minute.

As these characters play their games with each other, you will be revolted in some ways, angry in other ways, sad in some ways, and savage in some ways. This book isn’t a happy book. It’s a razor-sharp and suspenseful book that peeks over two different shoulders into the lives of people who have more money than sense, no moral compass, and are utterly bored with the game of life.