The Guest List

By Lucy Foley

Published by Harper Collins 20th February 2020

What it’s about?

TV’s “Survival” star, Will and digital magazine publisher, Julia are the perfect couple. Goodlooking, ambitious, up and coming celebrities, they are successful and glamourous.

Their wedding, on a remote Irish island, is an extravagant, no expense spared social event. But secrets and resentments simmer beneath the perfect wedding smiles and tensions between family and frieds increase with each glass of champagne.

The narrative is split between five different perspectives:

Julia, the Bride

Aoife, the wedding planner

Johnno, the bestman

Olivia, the bridesmaid

Hannah, the plus one – wife of the bride’s bestfriend

The story unfolds as the past and present collide and someone ends up dead. Who? And why?

What I think:

I really enjoyed The Hunting Party which I read at the end of last year (Thank HAprper Collins for my gifted copy).

And The Guest List is written in a similar multi-narrative, slow-reveal style.

It’s hard to write too much without giving spoilers!

I personally though this was better than The Hunting Party.

the relationship are more complex and the characters seemed more multi-dimensional.

The splt between the actual present, earlier in the weekend and memories of the past allows the tension to build as the story is pieced together.

Like The Hunting Party, the victim and the murderer are not revealed until the end of the book and there were genuine gasp outloud moments for me. There are no shortage of potential victims in the tangled web of relationships and plenty of potential suspects. Some of the characters are quite vile and I did end up wishing that a couple more had been killed off!

If you like clever murder mystery thrillers then you will love The Guest List which is out at the end of the month. Thank you Netgalley and Harper Collins for my advanced copy in return for an honest review. You can pre-order at:

Waterstones: click here

Amazon.co.uk: click here

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