The Hunting Party

Best for:
Fans of the Liane Moriarty style of storytelling, who aren’t worried about slightly darker tales.

In a nutshell:
A bunch of friends of university - along with their partners - spend New Year’s Eve at an isolated lodge in northern Scotland. A storm hits. Someone is dead.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I was looking for something to listen to while running. Instead I ended up listening to it while doing pretty much anything because I couldn’t put it down.

Review:
This book has features I love: it travels back and forth in time (though only across three days); it takes place in an isolated location; it is told from multiple viewpoints.

We get five viewpoints in this book: Heather and Doug, who work at the lodge, and Katie, show more Emma, and Madeline, who are part of the friend group celebrating the holiday at the lodge. Katie and Madeline have been friends since childhood; Emma has joined the group of Oxford alumni as an outsider who is dating Mark. We learn early on that someone has died, but we don’t know who it is (not even their gender) or if it was an accident or murder.

There are hints as to who the dead person is, and any number of possible motives slowly reveal themselves. I had a bit six different theories by the end, and any one of them could have been true based on how the story unfolded.

Within the standard telling of a murder mystery, the author weaves in how relationships from youth change as we get older. There’s one couple with a new baby; two couples with a member who wasn’t part of the original friend group. There are shared stories and histories, and roles people are expected to play because they played that role when they were 21. 12 years later, people might have changed, and that can really play with the dynamics of a group.

This probably was around 3.5 stars for me, but I have rounded it up because I think there was some interesting character exploration and also some legitimate red herrings that kept me guessing until the end.

What’s next for this book:
I’ll be checking out the other books by this author for sure. (I’ve literally already bought the next one.) show less

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer On finishing this novel I have no idea how this lot called themselves friends to begin with.

I had mixed feelings about [b:The Hunting Party|37642030|The Hunting Party|Lucy Foley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1532439902s/37642030.jpg|59229722] as while I liked the idea for the story it was very drawn out and the characters all seemed to blend together. I was constantly questioning the character's actions and the situations they got themselves into on the holiday.

I did like the setting of this novel, an isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands, the perfect getaway for a group of thirty something friends looking for escapism during the New years holiday break. This was a tradition show more that the friends kept for the past ten years and this years location seemed idyllic until the unthinkable happens.

This book starts out pretty strong and I was attracted to this one as the premiese sounded so entertaining and suspensful. While I enjoy well rounded dislikable characters in a novel this lot had no redeeming features whatsoever and I really couldn't have cared less about how any one of them fared out by the story's conclusion. I was actually hoping that Nessy (the loch Ness Monster) might make an appearance in the loch and gobble them all up) actually that might have been more believable. The story goes through bits of their college days and friendships but I struggled staying invested in their boring lives. This is the type of novel that plods along and you begin to wonder if it will ever end. I didn't find it suspensful and although there were a couple of twists and turns along the way I think they came a little late in the story to redeem the book.

While I finished the Novel and found it to be an ok read I could not get past how a bunch of characters could be so dislikable or how much they seemed to dislike or resent each other and still end up on holiday together at Christmas time.

An ok read but a little too drawn out for me. show less

Foley has got a talent for pulling you into a story about a bunch of people in a remote place, slowly dropping information about each character, revealing secrets and psychological issues with a Turn of the Screw style build-up. I devoured The Guest List and thought I'd give this a go. It did not disappoint as a stand-alone.
Reading the two books so close together was not a good idea. They are too similar. As you get to know these people, you find that they aren't very nice or likeable, especially as drugs and alcohol are consumed steadily, inevitably guiding not-nice people to make reckless, damaging choices.
The eerie takeaway question for both: how well do you really know your friends and what binds the friendship together? For show more Foley, the answers are not wholesome; it's not love, it's secrets, lies, nostalgic hopes of returning to a past friendship that was never idyllic or trusting.
Well-written. Unsettling.
I'd say there is a seductive quality to her stories I could compare to a a display of perfect-looking peaches; you bring to it expectations and yearning of that perfect, juicy mid-summer, peach. You bite in. The peach taste is there, but the texture is...not quite right. There's a hidden dark spot, and the juice --there's something-- just a bit rotten... You keep taking bites eagerly looking for that elusive peachy perfection... it's close, very close, but not quite there. Her characters are full and attractive, a basket of fresh peaches. Once you spend time with them, you'll find they are sour, bruised, and damaged. show less

A PERFECT 10!

A wicked good read kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the novel. I had the pleasure of reading and also listening to the audiobook. I highly suggest listening to the audiobook if you can. You will not be disappointed with the extra shivers and suspense the narrators bring to the story. I can't get enough of the bright, witty, intelligent writing of Lucy Foley; I swear she must be the secret love child of Alfred Hitchcock and Agatha Christie. Lucy Foley drugs me with the raw and intimate flaws of a group of college friends and makes me want to crawl into the book and become a part of the story, even if that means I might be the victim or the killer.

Sometimes I love a book full of terrible people. Not terrible like pedophiles or serial killers, but just the kind of people you would never be friends with and you aren't sad if something bad happens to them to take them down a notch. This book is full of these people...like pretty much everyone on the trip. The people that work at the resort aren't terrible, they're just a little odd, which is expected since they've chosen to live very quiet, remote lives away from society. Absolutely everyone has their secrets though, of course.
I love how you don't even know which person was killed until almost the end of the book; you find that out at about the same time you find out who did it and why. There are many, many red herrings...I thought show more a few things were very obvious, but I was wrong. I love that!
The only thing that I didn't love is, especially at the beginning, it was a bit confusing. You've got all the different people that are being introduced and if you aren't paying absolute attention at the start of the chapter when they give the name (each chapter is from someone else's perspective), you won't know who or what they're talking about.
It's a fun, quick read and I enjoyed it. show less

"Miranda stands up and fires the cork into the loch, where it makes its own series of ripples, widening out in shining rings across the water. We drink straight from the bottle, passing it around like Girl Guides, the cold, densely fizzing liquid stinging our throats.
‘It’s like Oxford,’ Mark says. ‘Sitting down by the river, getting pissed after finals at three p.m.’
‘Except then it was cava,’ Miranda says. ‘Christ – we drank gallons of that stuff. How did we not notice that it tastes like vomit?’
‘And there was that party you held down by the river,’ Mark says. ‘You two’ – he gestures to Miranda and me – ‘and Samira.’
‘Oh yes,’ Giles says. ‘What was the theme again?’
‘The Beautiful and show more Damned,’ I say. Everyone had to come in twenties’ gear, so we could all pretend we were Bright Young Things, like Evelyn Waugh and friends. God, we were pretentious."

"Were"? Why the past tense? These people are still annoying. Incredibly irritating actually.

They are a group friends in their 30s who were all at Oxford together and are now spending New Years Eve at a lodge in the Scottish Highlands.

I have a lot of issues with this book. And I mean, A LOT of issues, starting with the characters, who all behave as if they are in their early 20s, not their 30s. None of them seem to have had a life. Any life.

And as much as Foley may have tried to re-create the Bright Young Things one might find in an Agatha Christie mystery, all of her characters are self-absorbed, arrogant, vapid, vacuous snobs.

I also have issues with the setting of the "lodge in the Scottish Highlands" because it seems to have been written by someone who doesn't believe in research.

And last of all, the writing is pretty bad. Any writer who has to resort to dropping brand names to describe something, has lost with me. Any writer who tries to define their characters by their fashion choices, is worse. Add a chick lit tone of narration to it, and I am out.

DNF @ p. 81 of 391 show less

This is the second book I've read by Lucy Foley, and I really love her Agatha Christie-esque style. Foley has a way of telling us the whole story - letting us meet and get to know all of the key players, seeing the world through their eyes, experiencing the event leading up to the big reveal without telling us who has even been murdered. We get to read the book wondering not only whodunnit, but which of these characters won't make it to the end.