'Eat the Rich'... Before They Eat You [Eat The Rich #1 Review]

In Eat the Rich, what unspeakable horror eats away at the heart of Crestfall Bluffs?

With law school and her whole life ahead of her, Joey plans to summer with her boyfriend Astor in his seemingly perfect hometown of Crestfall Bluffs. It’s a chance to finally meet Astor’s family and childhood friends, all while enjoying a vacation with every need attended to by servants. But beneath the affluent perfection lies a dark, deadly rot… will Joey discover the truth before it’s too late, and if she does, can she survive to tell the tale?

Eat the Rich #1 Review

We’ve all wondered how the other half lives. (Or the other 1%, as it may be more accurate to say.) What’s waiting behind the walls of those mansions? What are the people inside really like?

Regular, not-rich person Joey is about to find out. As she agrees to spend the summer with her boyfriend at his family’s beach house (read: sprawling summer home), she’s hit with a wave of panic about the reality of her situation. She doesn’t know anything about how these kinds of people live. What’s going to be expected of her? Is she going to stick out like a sore thumb and totally embarrass herself?

The short answer? Yeah, pretty much.

It’s bad enough she’s already dealing with the awkwardness of meeting her partner’s family for the first time. But it quickly seems like her fears about their different social classes were completely valid. Joey fumbles through her first evening, committing faux pas like trying to carry her own backpack, offering to hold a baby, and almost requesting an un-ladylike apéritif. (Gasp!)

And because all that isn’t bad enough, Astor’s family happens to be hosting a big retirement party for the groundskeeper. So now Joey’s not just managing one rich family, but dozens. We’re talking backhanded compliments galore, people. Eat the Rich does an incredible job of setting Joey up as the “other” in this world. I felt so uncomfortable on her behalf during this big party scene, I found myself reading faster in hopes of leaving it behind.

But when Joey does back away, escaping the horrors of the party, she finds herself caught up in an even more horrific scene. As it turns out, the Crestfall Bluffs elite have a very different definition of “retirement” than the rest of us…

Eat the Rich paints an incredibly visceral picture of the class divide – cringey and uncomfortable, but you can’t look away. Then, it hooks you in with the gory, dark underbelly of this community. It’s got a bit of a Ready Or Not type feel to it, and I’m very into that. This first issue largely does the legwork to establish the world, so we’ll have to wait for the next one to find out what Joey will do about the situation.

In the meantime, you can check out the preview pages for Eat the Rich #1 below.