Best Offer Wins - Marisa Kashino

BEST OFFER WINS

MARISA KASHINO

*****

How far would you go to get the perfect home?

There was a time when Margo thought she knew. But that was before a soul-destroying eighteen months of house-hunting hell.

Now she’s not sure. Her life, her marriage, her family, her career are dangerously out of control and all she needs is a new home to get them all back on track.

So when the ideal house comes up, desperate measures are called for. A little online stalking. Some sneaky surveillance of the property in question. Befriending the owner. All reasonable enough, right?

But soon it’s clear that nothing is off limits, because when your best offer might not win, then you just need to do what it takes…

MY REVIEW

*****

Having recently bought a house, I am acutely aware of how stressful the process can be and when I saw the premise of Best Offer Wins, I was excited to read more.

Margo wants a baby, but to get that baby, she first needs a bigger house with her husband and that is proving harder than ever to achieve. With houses being snapped up before they even go on sale and queues for open houses around the block, she starts to use more… unconventional methods to get what she wants…

Best Offer Wins uses one of my favourite narrative techniques – the unreliable narrator. Although Margo is very upfront with the reader about what is happening, it almost feels like watching a car crash in slow-motion, you can see what is happening and you are powerless to stop it. Margo goes from being a woman that you completely empathise with, to one you are starting to get red flags about what she is doing, which only gets worse the more you read. It’s paced so well that the change is subtle at first, and it’s only when it starts to really build up from the middle that you realise that her methodology has well surpassed what a ‘normal’ person would do. By then of course, it’s too late and you are already very invested in her getting the house!

The book itself is fairly short, but it packs a lot into the plot and there’s a lot of action happening. As I said above, Margo does become difficult to relate to past a certain point and she is in general, quite unlikeable. I’m unsure how her boss doesn’t fire her for some of her antics! Other characters are only ever seen from Margo’s point of view, so we don’t get an unbiased picture of them past what Margo wants from them. There are quite a few brilliant twists as you go through, some of which I did not expect at all.

Overall, Best Offer Wins is a twisty thriller with a truly unhinged main character – a great thriller, although perhaps not one for those about to join the property ladder! Thank you to NetGalley & Random House UK – Transworld Doubleday for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

LINKS TO BUY

Amazon UK Waterstones