Book Review: Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino

If you’ve ever refreshed Zillow like it’s a full-time job or felt personally attacked by the phrase “highest and best,” Best Offer Wins will hit uncomfortably close to home.

Marisa Kashino’s darkly humorous debut drops readers into the cutthroat housing market of the Washington, DC suburbs, where 37-year-old publicist Margo Miyake is eighteen months and eleven failed bidding wars into a quest for stability. The house isn’t just a house—it’s a lifeline. A way out of a cramped apartment, a way to repair a drifting marriage, and a way to finally move forward with the life she believes she’s falling behind on.

When Margo gets wind of the perfect house before it’s officially listed, she decides to bypass the madness of open houses and cash buyers altogether. What starts as a little “research” quickly escalates into stalking, trespassing, and a series of increasingly unhinged choices that blur the line between determination and delusion. And somehow—this is the most unsettling part—you’ll still find yourself rooting for her.

Kashino excels at capturing the absurdity and cruelty of the modern housing crisis. The novel is sharp, fast-paced, and often laugh-out-loud funny, especially in how it skewers class anxiety, performative success, and the quiet panic of feeling left behind. Margo is deeply flawed, occasionally exhausting, and painfully relatable in her desperation. Her internal monologue is where the book truly shines, balancing biting humor with genuine emotional weight.

That said, Best Offer Wins doesn’t land perfectly every time. Some plot turns feel a bit stretched, and there are moments where Margo’s escalation happens so quickly it borders on implausible rather than darkly comedic. A few secondary characters could have been more fully developed, especially given how central they are to the story’s tension.

Still, these are relatively minor quibbles in an otherwise compelling debut. Kashino’s voice is confident and timely, and the novel’s commentary on ambition, entitlement, and the illusion of the “perfect life” lingers long after the final page.

Final Verdict:

Best Offer Wins earns a solid 3.9 out of 5 stars for its sharp humor, relatable anxiety, and unsettling ability to make readers empathize with a protagonist who is very clearly crossing lines. It’s a smart, entertaining read for anyone who loves dark satire—or has ever lost a house to an all-cash offer and hasn’t fully recovered.