Book Review: The Guest List by Lucy Foley

The Guest List by Lucy Foley
My rating: 4 stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Publisher: HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction

This was a great read! I'm giving it four stars but only because my criteria for a 5 is that I'd either read it again or it changed my life in a profound way. This wasn't that sort of book but it is the most enthusiastic four stars I can give!



If you follow my reviews you know that I'm a mystery lover. Be they book, tv or film, I will always choose a decent mystery to pass the time. I quite loved Lucy Foley's The Hunting Party and would have read The Guest List anyway. When I read the blurb I knew it was a book I would need to order upon publication in the UK because waiting for the North American debut was too long a wait. The island description conjured images of Christie's And Then There Were None and the added wedding party reminded me of Harper's Island (I loved it & I make no apologies!). It arrived in the post last week & I have had three good days of this multi-pov story unwinding and unfurling. I had some suspicions that were correct and the journey to those answers was great. And those things I hadn't seen coming, were told in a taut telling that I'm sorry is over. There were secrets, jealousies, envy, howling winds, watchful birds, irritating parents, frienemies, too much alcohol with a dusting of cocaine and a red velvet wedding cake that's description is simultaneously gloriously resplendent and a confectioned harbinger of bloody murderous doom.

I'm giving no spoilers but I am highly recommending this one. Foley is on my "Author, take my money! Give me the book now!" list. I am so looking forward to her next.

Favourite line (only one because I want to spoil nothing):

"'Shit's just got real.' Peter Ramsay whispers."


Summary: Set on a remote island off the Irish coast, this is one guest list no one would want to be on, just as no one would have wanted an invitation to the New Year's Eve party in Foley's previous novel, The Hunting Party . Lives unravel amid the revelry on an eerie and remote island as family and friends assemble for a glam wedding in an updated Murder on the Orient Express. Each of the principal characters has a reason to want one of their number dead, there are old secrets, and one of them is murdered.



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