Review: The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell

The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell

Blurb from Goodreads:

A compulsively readable novel in the vein of The Bonfire of the Vanities—by way of The Nest—about what Washington, DC’s high society members do away from the Capitol building and behind the closed doors of their suburban mansions.

They are the families considered worthy of a listing in the exclusive Green Book—a discriminative diary created by the niece of Edith Roosevelt’s social secretary. Their aristocratic bloodlines are woven into the very fabric of Washington—generation after generation. Their old money and manner lurk through the cobblestone streets of Georgetown, Kalorama and Capitol Hill. They only socialize within their inner circle, turning a blind eye to those who come and go on the political merry-go-round. Parents and their children living life free of consequences in a gilded existence of power and privilege.

But what they have failed to understand is that the world is changing. And when the family of one of their own is held hostage and brutally murdered, everything about their legacy is called into question.

They’re called The Cave Dwellers.

My Review:
 

I thought I would love this one since it sounded juicy and is set in DC.  I usually love politics including politic thrillers, political history and political romance but this was just . . . lifeless.  It was trying to be super scandalous and just fell flat, for me.  I didn't even mind all the different POV but in trying to have a larger theme of political corruption and money that infects politics in the worst ways, it just felt onerous and boring.  I haven't read anything else by this author but I am now curious and may see what she's written in the past.  Although this didn't work, I could see potential.

The Cave Dwellers comes out next week on May 25, 2021, and you can purchase HERE.  

The walls of this mansion are covered in law books, encyclopedia collections, and photographs of foreign diplomats, kings, queens, and presidents--and Jeff Bezos. An original Chagall hangs above the library's green marble fireplace, near which seven men are seated in Chippendale chairs that form a circle. The men are hard to differentiate from each other, rich white men who are undoubtedly power players. But you'd have to know what kind of car each one drives or the neighborhood in which he lives to truly know who he is: Kalorama, McLean, Chevy Chase, Georgetown.