The Hunting Party

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

I bought this book on impulse on a recent foray into Waterstone’s, tempted by the big display peppered with critics’ encomia, several of which offered comparisons to Donna Tartt’s The Secret history, and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. As both of these rank among my favourite books, and buoyed up on post-payday enthusiasm, I took a punt, although aware that all too often in such impetuous purchases I have, as the knight presiding over the closing scenes of Indian Jones and the Last Crusade would say, chosen poorly.

Not so this time, however. While I would definitely question the validity of the reference to The Secret History, the book certainly delivers a tense whodunit worthy of Dame Agatha in mid-season form. Nine show more Londoners in their early thirties repair to a remote but luxurious lodge on an estate in northwest Scotland to celebrate the new Year with style. They have been friends for years, and most of them were students together at Oxford a decade or so earlier. They are not without a fair degree of emotional and experiential baggage, but these get-togethers for New Year have become a tradition, and always passed smoothly.

The landscape is glorious, but not without its own lurking menace. As the revellers arrive at the tiny local railway station, they find that their Lodge is a considerable drive away. Winter in the Highlands is no laughing matter, and shortly after they arrive a light snowfall begins. The gamekeeper who has turned up to meet them and drive them to their accommodation a taciturn man who struggles to hide his disdain for what he views as the overprivileged and irredeemably trivial visitors. In one of his few speeches that extends beyond the curtly monosyllabic he warns that the weather may turn much worse, and that they might well find that they are stranded beyond the few days that they had arranged. Just as they arrive at the lodge, a news report on the car radio advises listeners that the police are still investigating a murder in (relatively) nearby Fort William, but are no nearer making an arrest.

Of course, this all sounds as if the writer is piling the melodrama on thickly, and leaving no potential cliché overlooked in establishing a scenario of wayfarers marooned without contact with the outside world. I certainly felt my eyes rolling involuntarily, and sensed an oncoming sigh of, ‘Here we go again!’. But Lucy Foley is better than that, and while there may be something immensely familiar about the broad strokes behind the scenario, if not the specific detail, she brushes this off through her focus on the strains that gradually emerge in the various relationships. There is indeed a death, and it becomes apparent that it is a murder rather than an accident, but Foley handles the dissemination of information very deftly, switching between a ‘present’ of 2nd January, and the two or three days leading up to that date.

Foley writes in a brisk style that immediately captures the reader’s attention, and keeps them locked in with a blend of deftly managed suspense and genuine mystery about who might be behind the various chilling events that occur. This was highly entertaining. show less

The Guest List + One by One + Mean Girls

While at Oxford, a group of friends begins to split into couples (with one exception). It’s to the point, the group only gathers for New Year’s Eve. This year, the spot chosen is a Scottish estate that sits on the size of its own country. When a body is found, the caretakers must try and figure out if there was foul play and if help will be able to get them through the snow-in in time.

I was surprised to find I loved this even more that The Guest list! First, I guessed almost everything about TGL. Here, I got the victim right, but was completely wrong about the predator. As well as some other twists. I also love that this book is so dark throughout. These people are supposed to be the oldest show more of friends, but you see how almost everyone truly thinks. I also appreciate how Lucy does her PoVs. She doesn’t have everyone as a narrator, so she doesn’t overwhelm the reader. However, she doesn’t only give us one or two narrators, ruining “whodunit.”

I will say I wish I had had more time to order the book from the UK. I really wanted the UK edition, as I prefer that cover. Unfortunately, I couldn’t trust the post right now so wound up buying the American version so I could have it for my Readathon.

Buy this for yourself or someone looking for an unpredictable mystery! Or, if you’re twisted, get it for someone who has mentioned they’re not as close to their school friends as they used to be. show less

A group of thirty-somethings gather at a remote lodge in the Scottish Highlands to ring in the new year together. The friends try to relive their Oxford party days, but there's a menacing atmosphere as everyone begins to realize they aren't as close as they used to be. When someone ends up dead everything unravels. We flash back and forth between past and present and different characters' POVs. A gripping read full of jealousy and thinly veiled threats. A great final book to close out the year.

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.

A group of old Oxford friends chooses a remote lodge in the Scottish Highlands for their annual New Years get together. By New Year’s Day, one of them is dead. Since there are only 13 guests art the lodge along with two staff, he suspect list is rather short. After years of being together, the group are more frenemies than lose friends. The story is told in alternating perspectives but the author appears to be concentrating on developing her characters leaving the reader to put together what happened, who is killed and why.

Of course it all falls into place by the end of the story, but by that time I really didn’t care as I found most of these people highly unlikable and too many red herrings had been added in to throw us off. show more However, this was a well done thriller set against a dark feeling of menace. As the snow falls trapping everyone at the lodge, secrets and resentments are exposed. Leaving you to wonder not why someone was murdered but why it didn’t happen years earlier! show less