August 1, 2021
Successful people who have made it on their own might count themselves lucky when they are invited to live in the guesthouse of a Hollywood Hills mansion owned by Graham and Lyla, but not so. The wealthy couple revels in wrecking the lives of their guests, whom they see as intolerable upstarts. But their latest guest is downtrodden Demi, who has secretly taken over another person's life, and she knows how to fight back. Won in a boiling-over six-way auction, this book from the author of two YA thrillers has been bought for television.
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Starred review from November 15, 2021
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. Agent: Sarah Bedingfield, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary.
February 1, 2022
More like bad rich people. Or insufferably rich people who are drowning in a never-ending flow of Mo�t. Margo and Graham need a new tenant. Someone to dominate. Mother and son have recruited Lyla, Graham's wife, to join in their depraved "game." First, they select victims to live in their Hollywood Hills guesthouse, victims who are self-made successes, unlike their own born-to-privilege selves. Then they contrive a way to make them lose everything. The last round came to a truly unfortunate ending in a bloody fountain. Enter Demi, simply looking for a quiet, peaceful place in the city. Good candidate, think Margo and Graham. It turns out, however, that Demi's place is being taken instead by a crafty impostor. An oddly orchestrated cat-and-mouse game ensues. Parallel first-person narratives by Lyla and "Demi" disjointedly convey their transformation from rivals to allies and, at times, allies to enemies. Like a David Lynch film, this one is sometimes disturbing but always mystifying.
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December 3, 2021
Life's all about the game and all about winning in this dark tale of greed and control from Brazier (If I Disappear). Lyla Hershel, her husband Graham, and his mother Margo are super rich and super bored. For their own amusement, they take struggling tenants into the guest house of their L.A. mega-mansion and then proceed to ruin them. When homeless Demi Golding insinuates her way into their lives, assuming the identity of a prior, now deceased, tenant, she becomes their latest target. But she's a fighter and determined to beat them. At a party involving guns and over-the-top antics, Lyla and Demi vie to up the emotional ante and a deadly competition ensues. VERDICT Though not as well-crafted nor character-rich as her debut, Brazier's second novel is a twisty tale populated by obsessive, manipulative, and odious people. Full of fast cars, designer clothes, and pulse-racing cinematic thrills, this is a sharp-edged look into the lives of zip code 90210 residents.--Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge Island, WA
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