Greedy by Callie Kazumi

Greedy is a novel about a desperate man who finds himself the private chef to a billionaire with a specific greed. Ed is a British man who now lives in Japan with his Japanese wife and their young daughter. After losing his job, he fell into a pit of gambling that led to massive debts with the yakuza, and no way of paying them off. When he sees a newspaper ad for a private chef job that values discreetness over culinary skill, it seems like the perfect opportunity for Ed to pay off his debts. But the deeper Ed gets into this world, the more it seems like he might’ve gone out of the frying pan and into the fire.

This is one of those novels where you can guess even from the marketing what the twist will be, but it is all about getting there. The narrative spends a long time building up Ed’s mindset and each choice he makes that takes him further down the road to finding out his new employer’s secrets, and unless you’re someone who hasn’t worked out the twist, it does at times feel like Ed is incredibly naive, maybe frustratingly so. If you’re looking for a book that focuses more on the “special meat” side of the narrative, this isn’t that book, as that is more like the climax to the story and it isn’t necessarily explored as much as in other books that have similar themes, but instead it is more about the desperation and greed that people have.

I did like the final additional twist at the end, which brought an extra layer to the narrative that we hadn’t seen before, and made one character seem very different to what we had previously seen. Overall, it’s a fun book that is very predictable (other than the final twist, which I hadn’t predicted), but in the sort of way where you’re watching someone’s descent with a knowing eye whilst they don’t seem to realise.