The Guest List: A Novel

I loved this book. It has to be of the best thrillers I've read this year maybe even last year. Jules was engaged to/Will a famous TV star. They both felt it was fate that brought them together. Their wedding was held on an island off the coast of Ireland supposed to be haunted. The wedding brings out all the bad sides of Will. Now that he has five people who want him dead for his bad decisions since he was in school who wants him dead and who did it.Great read, keeps you guessing to the end when the lights go out.

The story takes place on an unusual uninhabited island off the coast of Ireland that can only be reached by boat, and the crossings are rough. An unusual place for a wedding, but that’s where Jules, a successful owner of an online magazine and a social influencer has chosen for her wedding to the fabulous Wills, her soon-to-be husband. He is handsome, charming, charismatic and star of a Tv show. They are the perfect couple, or so it would appear. But there are undercurrents of secrets and darkness lurking under the surface of the festivities. Then there the grooms friends from the exclusive boarding school. Their hijinks are overdone. The best man doesn’t fit in with the classy guests. The bride’s maid of honor is a man who has come with his wife. There’s the wedding planner who has to make sure everything happens on time and smoothly. There’s the chef who does all the cooking behind the scenes. The tents in which the festivities take place are lovely unless a guest wanders off into the darkness and falls into a peat bog. The weather doesn't help with gusting winds and dropping temperatures. If a reader is smart(I wasn’t) they will remember the clues that are dropped throughout the story. It all leads to a dramatic and surprising climax. Thoroughly satisfying read.

The Guest List by Lucy Foley is a captivating story that is told in different time sequences and builds with suspense through the telling of details by multiple people who are interconnected in surprising ways. From the very beginning you know someone is murdered but who, how, and why is not known. The ending is a twist I didn’t quite see coming! I would recommend for people who enjoy who done it stories, suspense, spooky settings, murder mysteries, and satisfying endings.

The writing style, common to many authors today, is like a girl's diary, which is not appealing and nearly led me to stop reading. Foley can be quite literary with some of her writing, particular setting descriptions, which demonstrates talent. As for the plot, it was somewhat cliche and copied a few classic mysteries, notably Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, without anything especially new or original. Foley paces the story well and creates decent suspense, but the characters are superficial and their actions and motivations contrived and unbelievable. All the male characters are "frat" insiders or outsiders, stuck in their high school personas, while all the females are fixated on similar adolescent feelings of self-image. Despite some decent aspects of this book, the premise, characters, plot, and resolution bordered on silly.

I read this for the 52 Week Book Challenge, which challenges you to read a book a week. Week One was on the theme of the "locked room" mystery. This novel is a variation of the "locked room mystery": that is, the main characters are in a literal or figurative locked room, with no one able to enter or exit, when a crime, usually a murder, occurs. A well-known version of the the "locked room mystery" is Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express." The victim is murdered aboard the famous luxury train while it is moving: hence, the murderer had to be one of the passengers. A key element of the locked-room mystery is the mutual fear and suspicion the characters, who are usually strangers from different walks of life, have for each other. Another element is the claustrophobia as there is no way out of the locked room.In this particular telling of the locked room story, the locked room is an island, the fictional island of Inis, specifically, in a remote area off the Atlantic coast of Connemara, a region in western Ireland. The main characters--the bride, groom, bride's sister, the groomsmen, and so forth--have all gathered there for the destination wedding of Jules, a famous blogger and influencer, and her TV star fiance, Will. The wedding is orchestrated by Aoife, the wedding planner, local, and owner of the inn where the wedding takes place. One of the wedding party will wind up murdered, and the rest of the guests as well as Aoife will fall under suspicion. As is also traditional in this kind of story, most characters have a motive for killing the victim.The story was a little slow at first but picks up in the middle. It is artfully told through multiple points of view of the guests and the wedding planner with their individual perspectives on the other characters and the story events. The narrative also moves back and forth in time, until focusing on that one fateful moment: the murder.This is a worthwhile read for lovers of the mystery genre.

I am so glad I chose this book to get me out of my reading slump. I had heard good things and they were all true. I loved the various points of view and that they worked well to conceal the ultimate connections of the plot. I changed my mind on how it would end every chapter or so and still didn’t fully predict the ending! Very well written and great character development. Highly recommend!

Such a great writer! Her stories are amazing!!! Love all of her books!

What a great read with lots of twists and turns.

Gripping, a page-turner... Well-written plot. One of the best thrillers I've read recently. I give a 5 star, although I have figured it all out before the end... It has nothing do to with 'And Then There Were None' by Agatha Christie, however some people were making comparisons, maybe because the murder venue is on an island...and the ones who did were giving a better evaluation to The Guest List... Not true ! "And Then There Were None" is the best thriller ever !

[Deutsch]Ein wahrer Lesegenuss. Die Geschichte wird aus verschiedenen Perspektiven (aus der Sicht verschiedener Personene) erzählt. Und davon bin ich, ehrlich gesagt, überhaupt kein Fan. Oftmals hemmt das den Lesefluss enorm. Doch hier ist dieses wechseln der Erzähl-Perspektive fantastisch gelungen.Das Setting ist grundätzlich bekannt: Menschen treffen an einem abgeschiedenen Ort zusammen und jemand wird ermordet. Dann beginnt die Mördersuche während niemand den Ort verlassen kann. Klassisches Murder-Mystery.Doch bei dieser Geschichte ist vieles anders als erwartet und es ist herrlich wie sich am Schluss alles zusammenfügt.[English]A real reading pleasure from the beginning. The story is told from different perspectives (from the point of view of different people). And to be honest, I'm not a fan of that at all. Often it inhibits the reading flow enormously. But here this change of narrative perspective is fantastically successful.The setting is basically familiar: People meet in a secluded place and someone is murdered. Then the search for the murderer begins while no one can leave the place. Classic murder-mystery.But in this story, many things are different than expected and it is wonderful how everything comes together in the end.

Il libro è davvero avvincente, scorrevole e lascia spazio all’immaginazione! Ho letto anche “The Paris apartment” della stessa autrice: breathtaking!!!