I received this book for free via NetGalley. This did not impact my rating or review.
I would do a trigger warning, but honestly if I do, I spoil the entire book. This was originally published in 2016 though, so people may have read this before now newly released and translated in 2026. Most I will say is don’t eat while reading this. The main reason why I do give this five stars though it is not going to down as a favorite for me is that I wondered if the twist in the epilogue helped or hurt the book. I think that it didn’t quite work for me in some aspects, and others I thought it was quite brilliant. I just went back and forth on that so much and even while writing this review. I thought the overall plot, characters, reveals, and ending were really really good though. I felt like I knew Dante, Miguel, Hugo, and Piglet. And then I wish I didn’t know them. The choices the four characters make always seems to be the worst possible move ever. And the repercussions of those moves is pretty heavy. Again though I will just state, don’t read this while eating.
The Secret Dinner follows childhood best friends Dante, Hugo, Miguel, and Piglet after the leave their small town in Brazil for school in Copacabana, Rio. Dante is focused on being a business leader. Hugo wants to be a chef. Miguel is going to medical school to be a doctor. And Piglet is planning on doing something in IT. However, life doesn’t go the way they expected and in four years though Dante is done with school, he can only find a job at a bookstore. Hugo finds himself unable to keep a job at a restaurant and through his own ego can’t seem to find anything else. Miguel is dealing with a strict girlfriend and no money. And Piglet dropped out of school almost as soon as they got to Rio and eats, smokes weeds, and plays video games all day. When Dante is informed that the apartment they all live in is about to be lost to them due to lack of payment, the four friends struggle to come up with an idea on how to make money fast. And what started off as a riddle, turns into something dark and involves some very powerful people in Brazil.
I said this in one of my reading updates, but you are not going to like almost everyone in this story. The how behind these dinners is messed up and then you have the epilogue that sheds even more light on things. And as I said above, that threw me off some.
The flow works though I think at one point I started to get bored with just reading about how Dante was trying to figure out the person who is backing the dinners. We also go between Dante telling us this story and Piglet writing letters to his mother. There are reveals about a lot of things that I do shed light on the epilogue, but then it makes me think about a throwaway line that Dante’s mother tells him about Piglet’s mother and I wonder at maybe that helps explain the epilogue more? Ugh. See, when you read a good book you can’t let go of it.
The setting of Brazil seems a dark and awful place unless you are rich. When this is written, Dante is dealing with the recession and how many people are losing their jobs. I honestly a few times got some panicky feelings because the U.S. seems to be right about near the cusp of one and I already had several family members lose and find jobs over the last two years. Heck, I am still worried everyday I am going to find out our office is the new target of the administration and then what.
The ending was very very brutal and gory. And the epilogue had me going WTF a few times. I had to re-read it and again it either was brilliant or not. Would definitely love to hear other people’s takes on this one. I saw that a lot of one star reviews were in Spanish or Arabic so I couldn’t translate what issues readers had with this book.
- You – something about you; important to you; a favorite book, author, or topic; the place where you live or have lived (or of course the word you is in the title). Well something about me is that I love horror. And this was a very solid horror novel. I tend to move to more horror when it gets increasingly dark outside and we creep closer to Halloween. This is definitely a good book to pass away your time and be horrified by what you are reading.
