Book Review: ‘The Secret Dinner: A Novel’ By Raphael Montes

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The book is in stores on Tuesday, August 18th. Click on the link to buy a copy. https://amzn.to/4hoSCwr

The year is 2018, and four friends, Dante, Miguel, Hugo, and Piglet (his nickname) are going to college in Rio and will be living together. Things at first go okay, but as the years go on, things get bad. The economy in Rio, and then Covid hits. Piglet has dropped out of school and is just being a lazy, fat bumb Dante works in a bookstore, Hugh is a master chef who keeps getting fired from his jobs, and Miguel is at a hospital, working on his medical license. When Dante learns that Piglet hasn’t paid the rent in six months, he is in love with a hooker, Cora, and has been giving her the money. They will lose their apartment if they don’t come up with almost $26,000 in two weeks. Hugh comes up with the plan to have a secret dinner that he will cook, it’s all the rage right now, and they will charge $3000 per person. When Piglet makes it a ‘human meat’ dinner they are swamped with people. They’re all disgusted by this but decide to do it, and steal a body from the hospital, and it’s a successful evening. When a rich, powerful man wants to keep doing these dinners, it draws the four of them, plus Cora, into a world of murders, dinner parties, friendships exploding, and not all of them will survive, and it leads to a shocking dinner party finale, and an even more shocking ending. The subject matter is gross, but the story is riveting, page-turning, shocking, and it’s one of the best books of the year. This one is not to be missed.