Audiobook Review: Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino
Best Offer Wins
Author: Marisa Kashino
Narrator: Cia Court
Published: November 25, 2025
Audiobook: 8 hours 38 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: March 29- April 2, 2026
Jessica’s Rating: 4 stars
Book Description:
An insanely competitive housing market. A desperate buyer on the edge. In Marisa Kashino’s darkly humorous debut novel, Best Offer Wins, the white picket fence becomes the ultimate symbol of success—and obsession. How far would you go for the house of your dreams?
Eighteen months and 11 lost bidding wars into house-hunting in the overheated Washington, DC suburbs, 37-year-old publicist Margo Miyake gets a tip about the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, slated to come up for sale in one month. Desperate to escape the cramped apartment she shares with her husband Ian — and in turn, get their marriage, plan to have a baby, and whole life back on track — Margo becomes obsessed with buying the house before it’s publicly listed and the masses descend (with unbeatable, all-cash offers in hand).
A little stalking? Harmless. A bit of trespassing? Necessary. As Margo infiltrates the homeowners’ lives, her tactics grow increasingly unhinged—but just when she thinks she’s won them over, she hits a snag in her plan. Undeterred, Margo will prove again and again that there’s no boundary she won’t cross to seize the dream life she’s been chasing. The most unsettling part? You’ll root for her, even as you gasp in disbelief.
Dark, biting, and laugh-out-loud funny, Best Offer Wins is a propulsive debut and a razor-sharp exploration of class, ambition, and the modern housing crisis.
Jessica’s Review:
What a debut novel! Margo Miyake has a plan: The perfect marriage, the perfect house, and the perfect baby. Margo is quite the unhinged character! She lives in a cramped apartment with her husband Ian and finds out about a dream house in THE dream neighborhood in DC. They have been house hunting for 18 months and have lost 11 bidding wars. It’s already an extremely tough market, but being in DC makes it even more brutal. Realtors, watch out for Margo!
Best Offer Wins gives us an example of what this housing market can bring and how far one woman will go to get the house of her dreams once she sets her mind on having THIS house.
Margo is unlikeable in the way she approaches everything, determined at all costs to get this house. And the lengths she finds herself going… As a listener I was pulled in and wondered how far she will go to achieve her dream home. So many times I found myself saying, “All this for a house??!?!” I hope I never become as desperate as Margo when the time comes that I can afford a home to call my own. Just when you think Margo has reached the furthest she can go, she takes another step! Best Offer Wins is a shorter novel, about 8.5 hours on audio and the equivalent of around 280 pages for a physical novel, but it goes full steam the entire time!
The narrator Cia Court did a great job with her portrayal of Margo. For a debut, I am excited to see what Kashino brings us next!
Bound and determined to get this dream home, will Margo achieve her goal? You will have to read/ listen to this one to find out! And may the best offer win!