Publishers Weekly
04/07/2025
Frey (Katerina) strives for TV-worthy suburban drama in this no-holds-barred if trite sex romp. A group of wealthy friends are wilting on the vine in New Bethlehem, Conn., unsatisfied by their mates. Two of them, “glamorous WASP” Devon Kensington McCallister and former “Dallas debutante” Belle Hedges Moore, throw a swingers’ party, appointing themselves as matchmakers in the partner-swapping. Devon wants ex-NFL quarterback Alex Hunter, while Belle picks Charlie Dunlap, the town’s hunky high school hockey coach, who’s dating their neighbor Katy Doyle. The next morning, Belle and Devon compare notes on their respective nights and speculate on how things went between Belle’s impotent husband and Alex’s “lovely” wife. Meanwhile, Katy wakes up distraught after a night with Devon’s “fucking pig” of a husband. A mortal consequence to the friends’ extramarital activity is hinted at throughout, and by the third act, one of them is revealed to be dead. Despite extraneous backstory, Frey never cuts below the surface of his characters, making the novel feel both padded and shallow. Still, he sustains the momentum with his signature clipped style (“ tried to think through what happened. The party. The card. The room. The glass”). This one’s strictly for the author’s diehard fans. (June)
People Magazine
A satirical look at the "beautiful, wealthy and unsatisfied.'
Book of the Month Club
"NSFW Gatsby."
Wall Street Journal
"A sizzling beach read about the misdeeds of the rich."
Vanity Fair
"A Connecticut sex romp–cum–murder mystery . . . 'big nods' to Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel, and Tom Wolfe. Accordingly, its characters would feel at home in the White Lotus extended universe."
Esquire
"Next to Heaven, by James Frey ... will be the novel on every beach towel this summer, all summer, everywhere. Because sex and murder, yes. And because Frey could always tell a great story."
Bustle
"With coke-fueled monologues, a surplus of extramarital sex scenes, and plenty of suburban ennui, Next to Heaven delivers a deliriously over-the-top portrait of decadence on the brink."
New York Times Book Review Podcast
"There's murder. There's intrigue. There's deceit. Lurid . . . Propulsive. . . appeals to one's baser instincts."
From the Publisher
"Gleefully trashy page-turner set among the one percent . . .Frey is in his element here. Let the revels begin!" —Kirkus Reviews
"A satirical look at the "beautiful, wealthy and unsatisfied." —People Magazine
People Magazine
"A satirical look at the "beautiful, wealthy and unsatisfied."
Kirkus Reviews
2025-03-22
A swingers’ party leads to murder in a wealthy Connecticut enclave.
After a seven-year hiatus from publishing adult fiction, Frey has found a groove with this gleefully trashy page-turner set among the one percent: four couples in the fictional town of New Bethlehem whose lives are thrown into chaos when two of the wives plan a spouse-swapping evening. (Rick Moody’s 1994 novel,The Ice Storm, lurks in the background, unnamed: “You know Key Parties were invented here.” “I’ve seen the movie, I’ve read the book.”) Their short-range goals are to sleep with someone other than their husbands (one is a sadistic nightmare, the other impotent), but there’s a long-range goal the reader won’t know about for a while. Frey is in his element here, with his signature breathless, over-the-top, unpunctuated sentences and one-sentence paragraphs; laundry lists of high-end brand names (at one meeting, people sit on Boca do Lobo sofas and Roche Bobois armchairs in Gieves & Hawkes suits); and a pharmacopeia so rich it almost gets you high to read it. (“He had cocaine from Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. Pink coke from L.A., which has slight amounts of ketamine and ecstasy cut into it. He had mushrooms in raw form, in pills, in chocolate. He had twelve different strains of weed, four each of sativa, hybrid, and indica. He had ecstasy from the Netherlands. He had acid from Northern California. And he had the rarest of recreational drugs, quaaludes.”) Wild excess is everywhere, and is often played for laughs. As we happily race toward the sequenced reveals of who is murdered, who did it, and what happens to all these delightful people, Frey pauses to rhapsodize about his home state in a lyrical chapter titled “Color Fields”: “Oh, Connecticut, how beautiful you are.…Your Maples. / Sugar and Red. / In all their motherfucking glory. / And it is glorious.”
Frey’s literary affectations don’t get in the way of the good times. Let the revels begin!
