The Guest List
Ratings628
Average rating3.6
I seem to have somehow lost the review I posted here after reading it, as it's no longer on Goodreads. Nevertheless, I consider it my favorite due to its gripping depiction of eerie settings and masterful plot twists. As the story unfolds, old conflicts resurface, building tension that culminates in a shocking and tragic event. The novel skillfully intertwines suspense through multiple perspectives, creating a captivating narrative. The portrayal of the island was both peaceful and unsettling, evoking a sense of mystery. While a few sensitive themes were incorporated into the story, the conclusion was flawlessly executed. Moreover, I believe that Jodie Comer from “Killing Eve” would be an excellent fit for the role of Jules if the book were ever adapted into a movie.
The victim was revealed towards the end of the book for a change. Loved the way her writing just lucidly flows into chapters. Could have read the the book for hours and hours. New favorite author!
PS. Listened to the audiobook for this and it had an Irish character. Bonus points for the Irish accent!
Would recommend to every murder mystery fan.
Recensie van audioboek (via Storytel)
Nooit gedacht dat ik dit eens zou zeggen, maar dit boek had misschien net iets te veel plotwendingen, onthullingen en toevalligheden.
De setting en de opzet waren echt heel fijn en deden denken aan klassieke who-dunnits, maar de ontknoping liet mij een beetje koud.
Het audioboek had wel een heel fijne cast aan vertellers, die enorm hielpen de personages uit elkaar te houden.
2.5/5 The ingredients were all there for a good murder mystery whodunnit - creepy and claustrophobic atmosphere, multiple suspects with motive to kill, loads of secrets threatening to be revealed but this book falls a little flat.
I could guess the secrets halfway of 3 out of the 4 pov characters so my mind wasn't blown really which is the #1 thing I want out of a thriller. I also didn't like the characters much at all. Jules was so self-centred. I thought I'd like Charlie but he turned out to be a spineless POS. Hannah was just so hungry to be desired from rando males it made me roll my eyes. Olivia is a hot-mess but she's only 19 so she's the only ones that gets a bit of a pass. I love flawed characters but these people aren't flawed they are just miserable people. I'm only giving it 2.5 only because I still turned the pages to see who actually had died. I've DNF'ed thrillers before. I don't understand the hype. This is as average as average gets.
What a very fun read. It's quite the page turner and I pretty much read the majority of this book in a day. I typically don't read much fiction and was recommended this book, so I decided to try it. I've only read a couple of mystery novels so far but this one is really entertaining and kept me guessing until the very end. It reminded me of Big Little Lies, but I enjoyed this one much more. I thought this story was more gripping.
Overall very entertaining! It's a bit juicy and it's got drama and it's got a few twists, as you would expect. It doesn't get overly unpredictable though, as the “bigger” twist isn't that hard to figure out, but it wasn't too on the nose either.
Part of the mystery here is not only who did it, but it also takes up until the last quarter of the book to figure out who actually got killed. And then after finding out who, the book very suddenly ends and there are a few plot points you don't really get closure on.
A fun read though, especially the audiobook.
A very well written book. I loved it. The plot was great. The characters were good. The twists were amazing and there was no way I could ever figure them out. Would absolutely recommend. This was my first Lucy Foley book. It kept me interested the whole time, I read the last half of the book in 24 hours.
I had reservations about the fact that there's so many perspectives being told in this story.
It was hard initially to get used to, but after a few chapters it was fine. There was a good few different plot twists, not all of which were believable. It was made a 5⭐️ read by two plot twists. One was at the end where it was revealed who was the murderer. I'm not sure why but I didn't see it being that character, but I was so taken by surprise. There's another twist during the book that just had me shocked. Those two things alone made it a 5⭐️
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
This book was not really for me... I liked the plot but I had a hard time connecting with the story and the writing. It was too slow for me and the time jumps really confused me. I did like how it ended though, at least how everything was revealed and explained!
The bride ‧ The plus one ‧ The best man ‧ The wedding planner ‧ The bridesmaid ‧ The body
The editors must've thought this was a clever way of introducing the mystery, except that we get points of view from the bride, the plus one, the best man, the wedding planner, the bridesmaid, and the groom. Guess who ends up being the body?
I was torn between three and four stars, as I was entertained and swept along the whole way but disappointed in the denouement. Too many coincidences that stretched credulity. But in the end, it's the experience not the destination, and I enjoyed myself almost the whole way.
Horrible people, damn near every last one of them in fact. And enough plot twists to give me whiplash. At least it only took a few hours to read so I didn't lose to much time over it.
It was a very quick read and it did have it's moments, but ultimately it failed to deliver. To start with I was having a hard time with this book because I just didn't the vast majority of the characters. They're all defined by one or more significant character flaws that makes empathizing with them somewhat difficult. If I don't like the characters in a book then the plot must be that much better for me to enjoy the book.
Unfortunately the plot here, while initially interesting (for a good 2/3rds of the book even), by the end felt very contrived. It was hard to suspend disbelief with how convenient all the relationships of both the killer and victim ended up being. It just felt incredibly forced.
Enjoyed this one way more than I thought I would. Surprising amount of twists, some I saw coming but they were well done and not glaringly obvious twists. Definitely a satisfying ending.
Interesting premise where you are wondering who the victim is before placing your Poirot hat on. Having said that, I had 3 major problems with this book:
1. There is not much of a mystery until the 70-75% mark, it is way too slow to get to the character motives
2. Why is it just a single murder when quite literally the entire cast could've been axed? Can we get at least one likable character? I honestly cared for none.
3. This is a more general gripe than a shot at this book, but new-age murder mysteries are morphing into “thrillers with additional POVs”. Where are the innovative murder methods? Where are the trails of clues nudging the reader to the ultimate satisfaction of solving the murder? Where are the alibis? the red herrings? A singular victim and a cast of suspects do not equate to a murder mystery. This book and many others I've read recently (cough One by One cough) tend to dramatize the narrative and dilute the actual mystery. With this plot, you could very easily replace the murderer with anyone else on the island and it wouldn't change a thing; no one's motives felt stronger than the other.
Finally, this book had a very abrupt ending, like the author was on a deadline and she had hours to finish the last few pages. A bit more closure would've been nice.
Was the Blurb/Genre Accurate: Yes, veryOverall rating: 5/5Writing: 5/5, the language and descriptions from the start have an omnious tone!Plot: 5/5, you could tell this was carefully and artfully crafted. The ending was well foreshadowed without giving it away. It's amazing to start guessing the who and why with all the clues provided.Characters: 5/5, most of them are very unlikeable. BUT they are believable. I have known many men and women that are exactly this crappy in the same ways. Every person is well crafted and feels real and fleshed out.
Narrators: multiple narrators, you get perspectives from the bride, the planner, the sister, the groom, the best man
POV:Multiple POV in 1st person
Genre: Mystery Thriller, Locked Door Mystery
Type: Standalone
Content Warnings: death (on and off-page fairly graphic), betrayal, child abuse, suicidal thoughts and a suicide, depression, anxiety, abortion
I loved this book so much. I'm usually not a fan of books with super unlikeable characters but this is an exception. And there are two redeeming people that you care and root for. The plot is carefully weaved throughout as you get little teasers of the death to come and why it comes. I had a blast buddy reading this with my mom so we could discuss the clues and theories we had as the book went on. I could tell that this was well planned and she selected information to share as it went. There were no info dumps here, in fact, you often find yourself wishing someone would go on about their story.
Another huge accolade to Lucy Foley for crafting believable characters of both sexes. The men in the book are genuine men. Not good men, not men you'd want to be buds with, but believable men all the same. Not a touch of romanticized shaping here. All characters have obvious motivations and lives beyond the book. It's a masterclass in characters imo.
I'm very excited to read more from this author!
Was a 2 star, until the end. Glad about who died, kinda glad about how it all came together, but I guess this writing style isn't really my thing. Not entirely happy with the end, but am content.
But wow yeah not a mystery. It is a thriller...ish, and you don't even find out who is actually dead until almost the end. More suspense with the feeling of unease as you learn about all the characters and what they are dealing with.
Will say that the characters felt very dynamic and were easy to differentiate.
That all being said... I might try another book by this author and I might like it better now knowing what I would be getting into.
I read the first 200 pages in one sitting, which I think says all that needs to be said.
Um bom livro, confesso que fiquei travada na leitura até a primeira metade mas depois disso devorei o livro sem parar, definitivamente não esperava tantas reviravoltas.