Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino
Publisher: Celadon Books
Publication Date: November 25, 2025
Format: Hardcover - 288 pages
Paperback - 288 pages
Audiobook - 8 Hours 38 Minutes
Kindle - 275 pages / 3.9 MB
Nook - 288 pages / 3 MB
ISBN (Hardcover): 978-1250400543
ISBN (Paperback): 978-1250400567
ASIN (Audiobook): B0F55BWVY7
ASIN (Kindle): B0F4SLKT6D
BNID (Nook): 978-1250400550
Genre: Thriller
Buy The Book:
Disclaimer: I purchased a hardcover edition of the book from my monthly Book Of The Month (BOTM) subscription. This book review is from my personal honest opinion.
Book Description:
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.
My Book Review:
In her debut novel, Best Offer Wins, author Marisa Kashino weaves a riveting thriller that easily draws the reader into a dark storyline that follows a woman's determination to buy her perfect house at all costs.
Margo Miyake and husband Ian Tanner have been living in a cramped apartment for the past eighteen months. After being outbid eleven times in a very competitive housing market in the Washington DC suburb of Bethesda, MD, there hasn't been any new listings that spark her interest until her real estate agent calls with a tip that a house will be listed at the end of the month. Margo is determined to make an offer to the sellers with the hope that they will accept the offer before it is publicly listed. What ensues is a woman that is so determined to buy her perfect dream house, that she becomes obsessed and on edge, desperate enough to go to any lengths and make unhinged tactics to ensure that her best offer wins!
Best Offer Wins is a complex and multi-layered tale told in the first-person narrative by Margo Miyake. Margo takes the reader along for the ride as her obsession to purchase her perfect dream house is so extreme that it will leave the reader shocked by the unhinged tactics that she applies to make sure that their best offer will be the winning bid. As Margo's story unfolds, there is a dark intensity with riveting twists and turns that kept me engaged, even though I was not a fan of Margo and kept thinking to myself that this is one batshit crazy lady!
The author does a phenomenal job in her debut novel of delving into Margo and Ian's lives, interweaving her troubled past with the secrets in their marriage, and her dark and desperate mantra: no house, no baby, no life, that kept me turning the pages until the shocking last sentence of the story.
Best Offer Wins is one heck of an adrenaline rush of a thriller; it just doesn't get any better than that!
Rating: 4 Stars
About The Author
Marisa Kashino was a journalist for seventeen years, most recently at The Washington Post. She spent the bulk of her career at Washingtonian
magazine, writing long-form features and overseeing the real estate and home design coverage. She grew up near Seattle, graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in journalism and political science. She lives in the DC area with her husband, two dogs, and two cats. Best Offer Wins is her first novel.
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