The Guest List

Book's trigger warnings at the end of this review.

OK, so this book wasn't as much like Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None as I had gone in expecting. This was a really, really good mystery that I couldn't put down and with a structure that I really enjoyed. I did think that some of the pacing elements got a bit repetitive and even formulaic after a while, but overall I'm not mad. Each of the characters were so well fleshed-out that you end up with a lot of things to say about every one of the main ensemble.

The set-up is pretty simple. Successful career woman Jules Keegan is getting married on a remote island off the Irish coast to her celebrity actor boyfriend Will Slater. The action jumps between past and present, as we see the guests first realise that there might be a dead body outside, but also jumping back to the day before the wedding where the main bridal party arrives on the island. This book really got into its element using multiple character perspectives - if that's not your thing, maybe avoid this book.

At first it almost feels like Foley's message with the multiple perspectives is about how everyone's secretly insecure and envious of everyone else around them, even as the other person is envying them back. Later, we realise just how many deep dark secrets each of them are hiding from everyone else. It's the convergence of all these secrets that forms the central mystery.

Of all the characters, Hannah and Olivia were my favourites for most of the story. Olivia because she's just a regular girl stepping out of her teenage years into young adulthood but just not being around the right people, being so unsure of herself, and just being sadly misunderstood by some of her nearest and dearest. I like Hannah on a more personal level, probably because it feels like she's the closest to me in my time of life, being a mom in her 30s. All the men in this one are pretty dislikeable unfortunately, so there's not much to pick from there. I am very familiar with that almost tribal way that some people (usually men) band together over something that happened in their teenage or young adult years, and can agree with how sad it looks on 30 year olds still dredging that up.

I think the only reason why this wasn't a 4.5 or 5 stars for me is that the pacing felt a bit repetitive after a while. More under spoilers as it might give away some parts of the book: You know that certain chapters are going to end with cliffhangers, and after a while you realise that these cliffhangers are red herrings so you don't really pay attention to them after a while. In a sense, the book tries so hard to be shocking at the end of every chapter that you can see it coming. There is set-up but then there is no pay-off, and when that happens a few times you learn to ignore the set-ups. For example, when a chapter ends with the ushers spotting Freddy approaching them and “seeing what he had in his hands” in an ominous way, like he might actually be dangerous. Then it jumps to a flashback again. Then when it jumps back to the ushers, we learn that, oh, Freddy was just carrying a harmless torch and he wasn't threatening them. This is just one example but this sort of thing goes on through the book, so whenever I read another cliffhanger, I stop anticipating anything of real threat coming from it because I figured there probably won't be.

Thoughts on some of the plot twists and the ending: Somehow, after it was revealed that Olivia had gotten pregnant by the mysterious Steven from the dating app, I actually called it that it was Will under a false name. I just couldn't figure out why she wouldn't already have known him given that he is a celebrity, but then remembered later on that Will is only just a rising star and was probably a lesser-known actor when Olivia first met him. At the same time, I also guessed that it was Olivia who had sent Jules that note asking her not to marry Will. After Will's dirty deeds started being dished out, I was wondering whether he was going to be the murder victim and honestly hoping that he would be - and that was before the reveal that he had also been behind Alice's humiliation and subsequent suicide. I was really wondering if everyone would just gang up and kill Will. Aoife caught me by surprise at the end, and even more so that she'd let Johnno take the rap for her. Now that I think about it, though, it was pretty obvious it had to be her because everyone else had too much motive, so if they had done it it would actually have been anti-climactic.I was also so so so enraged by Charlie cheating on Hannah with Jules when she was bloody recovering from childbirth. I mean, I guess because pregnancy and childbirth was a recent experience for me and I know how damned painful and miserable it was, I can't imagine the stomach someone needed to have to decide that your sex drive trumped being a decent human being and standing by your partner who needs your support the most right at that moment when they're physically, emotionally, and mentally at their lowest. I'm kinda miffed that the story doesn't really give Charlie and Hannah a proper break-up which therefore leaves the potential for them to actually brush this aside. I wanted to see Hannah leave Charlie and maybe hit it off with Olivia or something, because they were the two characters who deserved more happiness.

It's easy to recommend this to just about anyone, but definitely please read this if you're a fan of murder mysteries, Agatha Christie, and thrillers.

Trigger warnings: Murder, suicide, self-harm, accidental pregnancy, abortion, bullying, infidelity, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, fat shaming, female objectification