Four childhood friends, Dante, Piglet, Miguel, and Hugo, swap rural Brazil for an apartment in Copacabana, Rio, eager for a taste of city life. But when their rent skyrockets, they adopt an unorthodox plan to stay afloat and are soon sucked into a dark world of secret dinner parties catering to the twisted fantasies of Rio’s elite. What starts as a joke spirals out of control fast, and as the money gets bigger the stakes get deadlier, revealing the twisted depths lurking within each of them and threatening not just their friendship but their lives.

Okay what is with the cannibalism books lately?? Headlights, Fabulous Bodies, and now this. I’m starting to wonder if the publishing industry is trying to tell me something or if I’m just somehow gravitating toward them on my own. Either way I’m not going to examine that too closely.

This book is not for everyone. Full stop. It has some genuinely gross moments and it is not shy about being graphic. But it was also ridiculously addictive and I could not put it down. It’s told as a confessional by Dante, one of our four friends, and what makes it work so well is watching his slow descent into examining his own morality and the morality of everyone around him. The author does an incredible job of portraying Dante as a good person caught in a bad situation and showing us all the depths in between black and white. You understand how he got there even when you’re horrified by where “there” is.

What I loved about this book is that the monsters are real. There’s nothing supernatural here, no things going bump in the night. Just the reminder that our fellow humans can be the scariest monsters around. And honestly? It made me think a lot about the meat industry and the ways we justify eating animals. The line between what we consider acceptable to eat and what horrifies us starts to feel a lot less straightforward when you really sit with it. This book will do that to you whether you want it to or not. The class commentary underneath all the gore is sharp and real and it elevates this from shock-value horror into something that actually has something to say.

I loved the Rio setting. It’s not one I’ve read much about and it added so much texture to the story. The ending I genuinely didn’t see coming and it tied everything together in a way that felt both shocking and earned.

Four stars. Completely unhinged, just how I like my thrillers. If you can handle the dark stuff and want something that’s less scary in the traditional sense and more real-life terrifying, this one is absolutely worth picking up. Just maybe don’t eat while you’re reading it.

AMAZON | GOODREADS | BOOKSHOP | ★★★★

The Secret Dinner is out now. Huge thank you to Celadon for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.  If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof.books.