The Guest List

A wedding on a remote island off the Irish coast turns deadly. The Bride, The Best Man, The Plus One, The Bridesmaid, The Wedding Planner they're all carrying their own secrets, but are they enough to kill for?

The Guest List is a slow-burn mystery that I read with such compulsion, I had to stop my roving eyes from straying ahead on the page and focus on the all the passing details because Lucy Foley is a writer where everything counts. Things said and unsaid. I don't often read mysteries - something I'm trying hard to rectify - but when I do this is the type I enjoy. The type that really pulls you in and almost forces you to wrap yourself up in the characters to see each of their perspectives.

I loved the setting, the remoteness of the show more island how it is so beautiful, but there's this layer of danger lurking beneath the surface.

It's kind of a good representation of the major theme of the story which I think is appearances. How we present ourselves to others, how our personality can conform based on whose company we're in, how we look at ourselves when we're alone. Our insecurities, our wants, our desires, our secrets. A wedding is also a perfect accompaniment of this as well because what is a wedding but a show, a spectacle, a party, a fairy-tale that's only real for the one day and then reality breaks through. I loved making all these connections and even while I'm writing this, I'm still making them which I think is a mark of a really well thought out story.

There were a couple of aspects in regards to the broader murder mystery that I thought were a little too coincidental, not necessarily out of place, but definitely on the verge of making things a bit too neatly wrapped together.

Overall, this is my first book by Lucy Foley, but it definitely won't be my last. If you love the intricacies of unfolding a slow-burn mystery, you'll be engrossed with The Guest List.

*ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. show less

Lucy Foley has clearly mastered the art of the psychological thriller involving a connected group of people in an isolated situation. [b:The Hunting Party|37642030|The Hunting Party|Lucy Foley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569862373l/37642030._SY75_.jpg|59229722] was her first, and it was super.

That said, I found [b:The Guest List|51933429|The Guest List|Lucy Foley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1580194251l/51933429._SY75_.jpg|73094861] to be even better. It had a more solid structural feel; I find it easier to handle the idea of a group of people meeting up for a destination wedding on a remote island off the coast of Ireland than a group of friends meeting show more up for New Year's Eve at an isolated resort in the Scottish Highlands. That could be just me, of course, since I didn't have a tight knit group of university friends that I would be likely to meet up with a decade later, so that falls outside the range of my experience to begin with.

We start with the brilliant couple to be married, Jules and Will, beautiful and successful, and add friends from his past, relatives from her present, a plus one, and the resort staff. To this cast and their many backstories we add peat bogs, cliffs, and a storm raging in off the Atlantic, complete with power outages.

Blended together in chapters of varying length and alternating POVs, with Foley's smart, crisp writing, and you get a thriller I didn't want to put down. Unlike [b:The Hunting Party|37642030|The Hunting Party|Lucy Foley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569862373l/37642030._SY75_.jpg|59229722], not every character is completely unpleasant, and in this book Foley takes more pains rounding out their personalities.

Observation for audiobook fans: I was initially a bit apprehensive about listening since each character is represented by a different narrator. This is not typically an approach I enjoy, but it definitely worked here. A few characters needed regional dialects, and I have to admit that was well handled here (particularly with the incomparable Aoife McMahon representing a character named - Aoife!). show less

A very fast read. I don't usually like books that constantly change the narrator, but in this one it worked and didn't bother me at all. It was helpful, actually, to have the different voices and learn the feelings of some of the characters as so much on the surface would have been hidden, had only one voice told the story. I felt it really let you get to know the characters far better and gave you a truer sense of them as a whole person and why they behaved the way they did. Loved the isolated location. It was a fresh and creative change from a snowed in country house, something used way too often. Plus I always like murder mysteries that combine weddings for some reason. I really enjoyed hearing about the details and envisioning it show more all in my mind's eye.

I stayed up late last night to finish this book, and I liked the ending, which is rare in a lot of books I read. It was very enjoyable and I would recommend to anyone looking for a good murder mystery where the characters and motives are far more complex than they seem. show less

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather for the wedding of Jules and Will, a high profile media couple. In the middle of the celebration, a member of staff discovers a body outside. The narrative then shifts back in time, gradually introducing several other characters and setting the stage for the wedding itself. Every few chapters the story returns to the wedding night and the events immediately after the gruesome discovery. Who is the victim? How did they die, and who was responsible?

My first impressions were lukewarm, mostly because I found Jules and Will insufferable, and their world so over the top. But then I realized I wasn’t supposed to like or even identify with them, and I started to really appreciate the show more novel’s structure. Each chapter takes you inside a character’s head, and yet gives nothing away. I was initially frustrated when I guessed one plot point, until I realized that was far from the end of the story. By the time the victim is revealed, several characters have plausible motives, and yet there are still numerous plot twists ahead, which resolve in a satisfying way that I did not see coming. show less

This book is a nightmare in so many ways. When Julia Keegan (Jules), a beautiful, self-made woman, meets Will Slater, the famous star of a survival reality show, he seems perfect—honestly, the man of her dreams. So, when they decide to marry, Jules is determined to find the most romantic, original, and exciting venue. Right on cue, Aoife and her husband, Freddy, who has just opened an exclusive wedding site on Cormorant, a small, deserted island off West Galway, Ireland, book it and start planning the event of the year. Their first mistake, of course, is the guest list. Never mix antagonistic family members with rowdy, boozing college buddies. Throw in Olive, a suicidal younger sister with a past, Charlie, the bride’s best friend show more and old crush, and the ‘plus one,’ Hannah, Charlie’s wife, with her own secrets. Then, when a horrendous storm hits the island, the weather turns dark, and so do the guests, as lie after lie is revealed. The plot twists keep the story moving as the author keeps you guessing who will snap until the very end. show less

Do you ever feel like you are reading the same book over and over? I’m an outlier here. I thought the book was good, not great. There weren’t many surprises, a ton of zigzagging in time (over a two-day weekend), and when a murder finally occurred it was anticlimactic. The victim was a piece of work and everyone could have cheered at the death (ten people on a train could have committed it in the dark as the train barreled through a tunnel). To add insult to injury, an unnecessary epilogue was tacked onto the end. I was reading One by One at the same time and I had to stop because I thought I was reading the same book (like a soap opera whose plot never changes after ten years) - No matter where I picked up, I felt like I hadn’t show more missed anything. I stopped the Ware to finish The Guest List. I’ll go back to the Ware next week, after I’ve cleaned my palate.

I don't mean to be cranky, I'm disappointed.

Merged review:

Do you ever feel like you are reading the same book over and over? I’m an outlier here. I thought the book was good, not great. There weren’t many surprises, a ton of zigzagging in time (over a two-day weekend), and when a murder finally occurred it was anticlimactic. The victim was a piece of work and everyone could have cheered at the death (ten people on a train could have committed it in the dark as the train barreled through a tunnel). To add insult to injury, an unnecessary epilogue was tacked onto the end. I was reading One by One at the same time and I had to stop because I thought I was reading the same book (like a soap opera whose plot never changes after ten years) - No matter where I picked up, I felt like I hadn’t missed anything. I stopped the Ware to finish The Guest List. I’ll go back to the Ware next week, after I’ve cleaned my palate.

I don't mean to be cranky, I'm disappointed. show less

4.5 stars

Jules and Will have planned their wedding on a deserted (except for the newly created wedding “pavilion”) island in Ireland. The wedding party is expected to arrive the day before and spend two nights there, while the rest of the guests will arrive the day of. A bad storm is coming the night of the wedding. And things go horribly wrong…

It’s told from different points of view, but at the start of each chapter, we are given the name of that character’s POV for that chapter, as well as who they are. Some of them include Jules, the bride; Hannah, the plus one (her husband Charlie, is Jules’ best friend); Aoife, the wedding planner; Johnno, the best man (and long-time best friend of Will’s from way back in boarding show more school); Olivia, the bridesmaid (and Jules’ much younger sister).

The atmosphere is done so well – this deserted, dangerous, boggy island with a storm coming. The opening chapter starts with things going wrong during the wedding, then backs up to everything leading up to what happened at the wedding. Parts were creepy, and I was kept wanting to read. There were not very many likeable characters in this book, but there were a couple. No surprise here, but everyone had secrets. show less