The Guest list - Lucy foley

Something a little different than usual for me, but it's come highly recommended and didn't disappoint. An eerie whoddunit murder mystery that takes place on a remote island off the coast of Ireland during a wedding.

I find commercial fiction like this sometimes sacrifices prose and literary style for mass appeal, but Foley is an excellent writer (and storyteller) and conjures a sinister atmosphere: dark, stormy, insidious. The dilapidated manor, the sheer cliffs, the peat bog, the tombstones crumbling in the cemetery.

While the story is suspenseful and unpredictable, I never really cared for any of the characters from the outset. Most are vain, entitled, or tedious, and by the end found myself despising the vast majority of them. It was almost unfortunate that there was only one murder (...or was there?)

Foley is good at weaving the anxiety throughout the chapters, all told from different character perspectives, leaving cliff-hangers for the reader at every opportunity. The last chapters are especially brief and keep the pace of the story barreling forward as the mystery culminates. I didn't call it, in the end, there was an inkling of something towards the beginning but I wasn't nearly close enough.

Hats off to @lucyfoleyauthor and a shoutout to @readswithrosie where I first heard about this book. A tense thriller that slowly brings all the puzzle pieces together into a grim, yet impressive picture.

3.9 / 5.0

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