Best Offer Wins
A Novel
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4.3 • 112 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick * A Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick * An ELLE Best Mystery/Thriller of 2025 * A BookRiot Best Mystery/Thriller of 2025
“It starts out feeling pretty light and fun, but I promise you, you have no idea where this story is going.” -Taylor Jenkins Reid, recommended for her Must-Read Book of 2025 in TIME Magazine
An insanely competitive housing market. A desperate buyer on the edge. In Marisa Kashino’s darkly humorous debut novel, Best Offer Wins, the white picket fence becomes the ultimate symbol of success—and obsession. How far would you go for the house of your dreams?
Eighteen months and 11 lost bidding wars into house-hunting in the overheated Washington, DC suburbs, 37-year-old publicist Margo Miyake gets a tip about the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, slated to come up for sale in one month. Desperate to escape the cramped apartment she shares with her husband Ian — and in turn, get their marriage, plan to have a baby, and whole life back on track — Margo becomes obsessed with buying the house before it’s publicly listed and the masses descend (with unbeatable, all-cash offers in hand).
A little stalking? Harmless. A bit of trespassing? Necessary. As Margo infiltrates the homeowners’ lives, her tactics grow increasingly unhinged—but just when she thinks she’s won them over, she hits a snag in her plan. Undeterred, Margo will prove again and again that there’s no boundary she won’t cross to seize the dream life she’s been chasing. The most unsettling part? You’ll root for her, even as you gasp in disbelief.
Dark, biting, and laugh-out-loud funny, Best Offer Wins is a propulsive debut and a razor-sharp exploration of class, ambition, and the modern housing crisis.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This wickedly satirical thriller makes your worst real estate nightmare seem like a candy-coated daydream. Margo Miyake is a successful, self-obsessed woman who wants the best of everything. But she’s staring down the barrel at 40, sharing a small apartment with her husband, and aching to upgrade to a big house and have a kid, like all her friends. She’s lost out on one house after another. And she is over it. Advance notice of her dream home entering the market sends her into a spiral of increasingly inappropriate maneuvering. It quickly becomes clear that Margo might not be above blackmailing the owners—or worse, if that’s what it takes. We get a close-up view of her gradual unraveling as the plot turns increasingly dark and twisted. Author Marisa Kashino’s background as a real estate reporter gives her the ideal vantage point to make the over-the-top action seem disturbingly feasible, and she also hilariously nails the details of Margo’s vain, thirsty lifestyle. Best Offer Wins is the ideal thrill ride for anybody who spends a lot of their free time on Zillow.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former Washington Post reporter Kashino debuts with a wicked satirical thriller about the cutthroat world of Washington, D.C., area real estate. PR executive Margo Miyake and her husband, EPA lawyer Ian, are on the hunt for a house in a "godforsaken market" where bidding wars leave hopeful homeowners grasping at straws. Determined to leave the couple's ugly rental apartment and start a family, Margo becomes increasingly unhinged in her pursuit of a house that hasn't yet hit the market. She stalks the owners, Jack and Curtis, first on the internet, then in real life, sidling up to Jack in a yoga class and launching a charm offensive that backfires in an awkward, ugly dinner scene that ends with the couple's permanent blacklisting. Margo's escalating fertility troubles ratchet up her self-imposed pressure to find the perfect home, the relentless pursuit of which strains her marriage and pushes Margo to violence. Kashino's description of Margo's economically precarious childhood offers superficial insight into her motivations, but the character's eventual swerve into monstrosity feels under-motivated. Still, this darkly comedic novel of millennial anxieties will likely strike an uncomfortable chord with readers under 40. Agents: Meredith Miller and Ethan Schlatter, UTA.
Customer Reviews
So disturbingly delicious
The main character Margo is completely unhinged and has a pathological need to win the house of her dreams.
After manipulating her way into the sellers home for a dinner under false pretense, she is thrown out and loses her opportunity to buy the house.
After being outbid on 7 previous houses, Margo isn’t taking “no” for an answer and takes matters into her own psychopathic hands.
Absolutely full of some truly hilarious satire and dark humor as well surreal moments with Margo along her evil crusade to get the house of her dreams.
Finding that Dream Home Emotions Captured
Ms. Kashino captures the angst, stress, and roller coaster of emotions buyers feel in a very competitive market in its extreme. The house hunting journey, both entertaining and exasperating, reflects the process and Margo herself, on the determined quest to secure the seemingly ever-elusive “Dream Home”. It’s a fun, wild ride. Enjoy!
The way I devoured this
I was so hooked from the beginning and read it in under 24 hours. Definitely going to look into more from this author next!