★★★★½
Titan Books | 2024
Filed Under: Let them eat cake.
I don’t know about you, but I’m fully in my Eat the Rich era.
Could things be any more fucking upside and twisted? I’m sure the answer is yes.
*laughing with tears* Every day gets worse!
Things are exhausting and scary and surreal right now, and I can’t even say I’m spared because I’m Canadian, which was the standard play the last time this shitshow circus of evil came to town. No, this time, the entire world is being affected by the Manchurian Cantaloupe and his merry band of Rich Pieces of Shit and Enablers.
Never thought I’d have to check each day whether my country has been invaded by the US.
Honestly, keep fucking up those Tesla dealerships. I’m 100% supportive of this kind of vandalism, apparently.
That said, if you are feeling very much like some cathartic violence against the rich and powerful (Free Luigi!) that is consequence free and doesn’t even require you to leave your house, may I suggest this fucking novel for your vicarious pleasure?
Dez is a college student with big dreams of a career in high fashion, but her pedigree – the daughter of a hotel maid – leaves her without open doors into the exclusive industry. If only she were a nepo baby in this late-stage capitalist hellscape. All Dez wants is a chance to prove she’s meant to be in fashion, but if life doesn’t give you one, you must seize the opportunity to manufacture that opportunity. Or something like that. I don’t know, don’t take life advice from me.
When she meets Patrick Ruskin, an arrogant, rich prick lacking so deeply in emotional intelligence and empathy, Dez recognizes that an opportunity is there somewhere. She has no qualms about using Patrick to get to his mother – the editor-in-chief of Nouveau magazine, the world’s premier fashion publication.
Dez tags along to the Ruskins’ private island for Easter weekend – witnessing for the first time exactly how the 1% live in immoral excess – and prepares to take her shot at Nouveau. But by dinner time, Dez’s bubble has burst. As the last ferry departs, the family trapped on their isolated island, the servants seize their own opportunity. With nothing left to lose, they want revenge, and they have planned exceptionally gruesome, gory and inventive ways to get it.
This novella reads like a fired bullet – fast, violent and unstoppable.
In a powerful 200 pages, you get a whole lineage of entitled men, NDAs, trying to buy people off, private islands, immoral sacrifices for power, an army of servants, family traditions, a million evaded consequences, only boys allowed vibes, FAFO vibes, designer clothes, cheers to supremacy, basically eugenics, deeply deserved revenge, being hunted, literal boot licking, guns, poison, straight razors, sharks and chum, ropes, knives, hammers, shears, pitchforks, pizza as a weapon, fire, cement, fetal abduction, forced abortion, rape, disembowelment, tennis balls, croquet mallets, roaches, rattlesnakes, fucked up horses, pearl necklaces, Louboutin heels to the throat, mutually assured destruction, decapitation, teeth, blood, guts and more blood.
I think this might be my favourite read of the year so far, but like I said, I’m in a fucking MOOD.
This is exactly the kind of brutalist social class revenge I needed right now.
The dedication to this book reads:
“If you’ve ever cleaned someone else’s dirty toilet…
If you’ve ever been cussed out while working a cash register…
If you’ve ever gotten covered in restaurant trash juice…
This one’s for you.
You deserve a lot more than this book.”
All of those statements apply to me and probably to most of you, as well. I’ll add, if I might, two of the more egregious moments of my customer service days: been humped by a drunk customer who had peed his pants, and robbed on my midnight shift where I was manhandled so hard I got literal whiplash.
This book is savage and cathartic. I can’t recommend it enough, and it fully cements (no pun intended – you’ll get it if you read it) Dawson as an auto-buy author for me. Girl, I love you so much👑
🔪🔪🔪
The Menu meets Ready of Not in this dark tale of opulent luxury and shocking violence from the New York Times bestselling author of Bloom.
Thrift fashionista Dez Lane doesn’t want to date Patrick Ruskin; she just wants to meet his mother, the editor-in-chief of Nouveau magazine. When he invites her to his family’s big Easter reunion at their lake retreat, she’s certain she can put up with his arrogance and fend off his advances long enough to ask Marie Caulfield-Ruskin for an internship someone with her pedigree could never nab through the regular submission route.
When they arrive at the enormous mansion on an island in the center of a Georgia lake, Dez is floored―she’s never witnessed how the 1% lives before in all their ridiculous, unnecessary luxury. But once all the family members are on the island and the ferry has departed, shit gets real. For decades, the Ruskins have made their servants sign contracts that are basically indentured servitude, and with nothing to lose, the servants have decided their only route to freedom is to get rid of the Ruskins for good…
heresthefuckingtwist.com 
great review! now i want to read this
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Definitely do! Let me know how you like it 🙂
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