Are you willing to kiss all your spare cash goodbye? Are you easily distracted by independent bookshops, bi Are you searching for the NEXT best book? The day before, people arrive on the island. The Folly is owned by Aoife (wedding planner) and her husband Freddy. On the bride's side, Charlie is Jules's best friend. Hannah is Charlie's wife. (Charlie and Jules are very close, but Charlie and Will don't like each other.) Olivia is Julia's younger (19) half-sister. On Will's side, Johnno is the best man, and the four ushers are four guys they went to boarding school with, Femi, Angus, Duncan and Peter. Three weeks ago, Jules found an anonymous note telling her not to marry Will. On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. Weddings are memorable occasions but, as we all know, there's frequently some level of drama simmering just under the pristine surface. Weird things are afoot. This is a two-year old review that suddenly disappeared today under the hardcover edition I reviewed it as and was replaced by a Kindle edition that I never added that basically zeroed out all the votes and comments. Anyways, reposting the original review under the correct edition!

There’s a storm happening on the island and there are high winds and crashing waves and the power goes in and out, and it just makes for the perfect spooky setting. This book honestly kind of reminds me of the movie Knives Out because of how clever and smart and atmospheric it is. Barbeito, Camila (27 October 2020). "The Guest List by Lucy Foley". Popsugar . Retrieved 27 December 2021. This is definitely one just for mystery-thriller fans. (I also wouldn’t recommend buying it for any young readers as it does have more “adult” aspects of it’s plot.) I read it over one weekend and for whatever flaws it has, I did enjoy the mystery. There’s enough cleverness in there that you’ll likely feel it was worth the time.Sorry friends who loved and praised this one! It was a perfectly fine book, and it has all the right ingredients for a good murder mystery whodunnit - creepy and claustrophobic atmosphere, multiple suspects with motive to kill, loads of secrets threatening to be revealed, and five intriguing narrators to move the story along, all wrapped up in a big festive occasion.

She has only known her fiancee Will for a few months. Just before the wedding, she got an anonymous note that said her husband “isn’t who she thinks” and she shouldn’t marry him. Yikes! Charlie Jules is frustrated about Olivia's unenthusiastic attitude about the wedding. Olivia confides in Hannah that she's sad about a recent breakup with her ex-boyfriend Callum. Afterwards, she started dating an older guy (" Steven") she met off an app. She took him to one of her sister's fancy parties to impress him, but instead got drunk and made a fool out of herself, so he ghosted her. There's more, but Olivia doesn't continue. Guests gather on a remote island off the coast of Ireland for a celebrity wedding. Sounds idyllic, right? Except this dream wedding turns into a nightmare long before the dead body is found. At dinner, there's talk of something that happened during the "stag" (bachelor party) to Charlie, but the guys won't say what. They also reminisce about Survival, a game they used to play in school where older guys would kidnap one of the younger guys and leave him in the woods to fend for himself for the night. (One kid died from it, though.) It's the game Will's show was based on. It was actually Johnno's idea and Johnno was given a screen test for them to host as a duo, but the producers preferred the good-looking and perfect Will as a solo act. Johnno is kind of a mess compared to the over guys (less successful, not from a wealthy family, etc.), and Jules doesn't understand why Will is friends with him. is one of the better thrillers I read this year and will be enjoyable to some extent for every adult. There is no need to impugn the originality of this novel due to the heavy influence by William Golding’s book Lord of the Flies and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None as the author herself admits it indirectly in multiple parts in this novel. There is also a high chance that this book will be the winner for the best mystery and thriller category in the Goodreads choice award this year.After studying English Literature at Durham University in Northeast England and University College London, Foley worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry, before leaving to write full-time. The Hunting Party was inspired by a particularly remote spot in Scotland that fired her imagination. The book starts off by assembling a colorful cast of characters in a unique and atmospheric venue. A wedding is such a great setting for a murder mystery, with all the fancy clothes, plenty of booze and so many people being forced to mingle. It equates to pretty much the perfect setup for a little mayhem. CWA Dagger Awards 2020 Longlists Announced". The Crime Writers’ Association . Retrieved 27 December 2021. For all I know this is a dream wedding (location wise) up until someone gets themself stupidly murdered. The other thing that didn’t sit well for me was simply the utter convenience and unbelievability of the plot and how some of these characters were connected to the murder victim. It didn’t elicit that “OMG, I didn’t see that coming!” Rather, for me, it just elicited eye-rolls. On top of that, it took forever to reveal the murder victim, due to the time jump, rotating narrators style of the chapters. I understand this is to build intrigue and suspense - good mysteries do that - but since I didn’t like any of the characters, by the time the victim was revealed, I just didn’t really care.

Will tells Olivia to keep quiet about their affair – she’s the one who wrote her sister Jules the note warning her about her fiancé. During the wedding speeches, Jules's dad makes the first speech. Jules thinks about how her father stopped giving her money after he married his new wife, which is why she chose this location. Jules had asked for venue proposals (through her online mag) and Aoife's pitch came with a huge discount. Olivia, wasn’t the biggest fan of Will and was also distraught about having to keep the secret from Jules.Finney, Joanne (7 May 2021). "The best thrillers and crime novels to read". Good Housekeeping . Retrieved 27 December 2021. On an island off the coast of West Ireland, Julia "Jules" Keegan and Will Slater are having a wedding at a place called the Folly. Jules runs a successful online magazine while Will is the host of a survivalist TV show. The night of the wedding, there's a storm, and the lights cut out. When they turn on, there's a scream and reports of a body. BUT… this book is an exception. I loved its slow building tension, I loved the notorious, immature, childish boys club (I’m talking about groom’s friends who are acting like wedding crashers and stayed in their teenage years), I loved variety of interesting, rich, attention taker characterization. And wonderful part is till the end of the book we are left in the dark and we have no idea who is death or the identity of perpetrator.

But the women are interesting. Jules is a little stereotypical but she makes some surprising choices to keep her more engaging. Olivia and Aoife are the standouts. The setting The stunning bride. She’s the manager of a successful design and lifestyle empire. She has a half-sister, Olivia. Her parents divorced and her father remarried. I absolutely loved the creepy atmosphere, I wouldn't have spent one night there no matter how much Jules insisted- because she would insist. Everything is all about Jules. The book revolves around multiple POV's which all are members of the wedding party. Yet the author did a superb job of making it really easy to follow along. The chapters were clearly labeled for each POV and if you didn't get it, she even had a description- wedding planner, etc...Yesss! I loved it! Our other characters: Helen (plus 1) married with bride’s oldest and best male friend Charlie, having doubts about their so intense and secluded relationship, mother, graphic designer at long maternity leave, suffering from traumatic family drama, having her own secrets, befriending bridesmaid Olivia.Did Will really not know that he had been involved with both sisters? Olivia used Jules’s apartment as a spot for her trysts with Will. Had Will never been to Jules’s apartment? Did Johnno deserve what happened to him? I was really pleasantly surprised by The Guest List. Loads of people I know have read and enjoyed it, but I was putting it off because of the five different perspectives. This almost never works for me. I just don't end up caring enough about the characters to be concerned about their fate.