The Summer I Ate the Rich by Maika Moulite
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Summer I Ate the Rich was a mixed bag experience for me. I’m not even sure how best to explain my thoughts and feelings on this one, but let’s give it a whirl, shall we?
In this story we follow Brielle, a Haitian-American girl, living in the Miami area with her Mom. Brielle has big dreams of becoming a world-renowned chef.
Her Mom works in a domestic-capacity for an extremely wealthy family. It’s not easy work and she’s also dealing with a chronic illness that leaves her dealing with constant pain, and a lot of medical bills, but she does her best to provide for them.
Unsurprisingly, Brielle spends a lot of her time and energy trying to help her Mom, worrying about her, and trying to make sure she gets the care she needs.
After her Mom’s job is no longer there, Brielle has to step up in a big way; using her culinary skills to support them.
Brielle’s menu items are far from mainstream, and she keeps the rich families eating her food guessing about what exactly is titillating their taste-buds.
The short answer: human flesh.
I’ll be the first to admit, a lot of this story flew over my head. I enjoyed Brielle, and followed along quite well in the beginning, but then it got to a point where my eyes sort of glazed over.
I understand and appreciate the important topics these authors touch upon in this story, and I think their own inspiration for writing it is compelling ((be sure to read the Author’s Note at the end)), however, a lot of it lost me, NGL.
The synopsis mentions it being a modern-day fable, and that is quite apt. In addition to Brielle’s perspective, we also get these sections, they might have been called Intermissions, or Interludes, but they are told in a very whimsical-style by beings I believe were supposed to be Brielle’s ‘sisters’.
Those sections were a complete wash for me. They were so jarring in comparison to Brielle’s perspective, and they were taking me out of the story every time.
In the audiobook, they also had different narrators, which was great, I love multiple narrators, but these sections, the Muses, all I could picture was the ladies from Disney’s animated movie, Hercules.
And I guess for me, that felt more out of place and distracting than I think the author’s intended. I’m sure this is just me, I’m most likely missing a very real reference, or connection, to some greater story, or folklore, but I still need to be honest about my experience.
At the end of the day, I was hoping this would be much darker and clear in its execution than it turned out to be. I was into it at times, but then it would veer off and leave me spinning my wheels, wondering what was happening.
Nevertheless, I would recommend it for any Reader who feels the synopsis sounds intriguing. It’s definitely worth giving it a shot, and I would be interested in reading more from these authors.
Thank you to the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, as well as Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review.
There’s def a good story here. I appreciated the themes and risks the authors explored and took, however it just wasn’t suited to my tastes, and I do rate based on my overall experience in comparison to other books of the same genre.
