In ‘Best Offer Wins,’ an ambitious millennial is driven mad by the homebuying process

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Marisa Kashino used to report on the real estate industry in Washington, D.C. That experience inspired her debut novel, Best Offer Wins, which follows an ambitious woman who goes to extreme lengths to secure her dream home. In today’s episode, Kashino joins NPR’s Miles Parks for a conversation that touches on the changing nature of home ownership in the United States, particularly for millennials.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The disillusionment of the American
0:07.7	dream is a pretty common theme throughout American literature. You know, a character goes on an
0:13.0	arduous journey only to find that what was sold was a bill of goods. And that journey can take
0:18.1	many forms. And Marisa Casino's novel, Best Offer wins. That journey is
0:22.6	buying a home. After the break, Casino talks to NPR's Miles Parks about how what home ownership
0:28.6	represents is changing and why trying to find happiness and material things is a losing game.
0:35.6	This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe.
0:40.2	When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.
0:46.3	Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com. T's and Cs apply.
0:51.4	Support for NPR and the following message come from the estate of Joan B. Kroc,
0:56.0	whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and seeks to help NPR be the
1:02.7	model for high-quality journalism in the 21st century. Buying a home is extremely stressful. It's often the biggest financial decision most people
1:13.0	will ever make, and that can make people go a little bit nuts in the process. Sound like you?
1:19.3	Then you might have something in common with the main character of Marissa Casino's new novel,
1:23.8	Best Offer Wins. I spoke with Casino and began by asking her about how reporting on the
1:29.1	real estate industry in D.C. inspired her first novel. I thought of her as, I don't want to say
1:35.0	typical D.C., but we are, you know, a city that's home to a lot of ambitious people.
1:39.8	Strivers. Yes, Striver is the word for her, because she is also self-made. I mean, she comes from very humble
1:45.3	beginnings. That is also a big motivator for her because she looks around in some of the rooms that
1:49.9	she finds herself in in D.C. and she sees a lot of people with trust funds and a lot of people who can
1:54.2	bid all cash. And she is not one of them. And she feels she has worked 10 times as hard for everything she has as a lot of the
2:02.2	people around her. So she really does believe that she has been pushed to a point now where
	...

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