Lucy FoleyFiction · Mystery·b. 1986
The Guest List
- Pages
- 320
- Published
- 2020
- Language
- English
Synopsis
A wedding on a windswept island off the coast of Ireland should be the event of the year. Jules Keegan, a driven magazine publisher, is marrying Will Slater, a charismatic television survival star, before a select gathering of university friends, family, and staff. The setting is spectacular and remote — reachable only by boat, with a ruined chapel, a peat bog, and no way off once the weather turns.
As the champagne flows, the polished surface begins to crack. Old rivalries, buried humiliations, and secrets that several guests would kill to keep resurface across the long day and into the night. When the lights go out during the reception and a body is discovered, everyone on the island becomes a suspect — because almost everyone had a reason.
Told through multiple points of view and a timeline that circles between the days before the wedding and the night of the murder, Lucy Foley's bestselling thriller is a modern take on the Agatha Christie closed-circle mystery: atmospheric, sharply attuned to class and status, and built to keep readers guessing until the final reveal.
Collected in
How it reads
Prose complexity 4/10
- I'm not trying to be mean but i think 2 stars is too generous for this book. I loved the premise at first, i mean i really like secluded settings and islands and cemeteries.. But it was so slow and boring and disappointing and i didn't like any of the characters or their decisions, i was basically waiting for this book to end. 1- This wasn't a thriller at all, i feel scammed. This is adult teenage drama with 20 pages of mystery in the end. The whole murder and motives of the characters are not revealed until the last 20 pages and then there's a reveal. That's it. It feels rushed and bad and by the time i got to the "mystery" part i had lost all interest. 2- Why did we have to be reminded every 2 pages that Will is an extremely good-looking man? Like, okay we get it. It got really annoying after the first 200 times. That's literally all the characters had to say about him. Even when it was his turn to give his POV, he mentions how handsome he is!! Wtf. (We also are reminded every few pages of how ugly Johnno is, which i also found weird.) 3- The characters are all annoying, literally all of them. Except Hannah and Aoife. The ushers were unbearable, Johnno is fine except for that part with Olivia which felt so out of nowhere, Will and Charlie are so boring, Jules is unlikable and Olivia is. So. Damn. Annoying. She's literally the most annoying character ever. I understand she's been through trauma but oh my good her decision making skills are awful and everything is so dramatic with her, it's like she actively TRIES to get into s••••• situations. And why did she decide not to tell Jules about the whole thing with Will ? How stupid can you be? 4- The ending is one the most rushed endings i've ever read in a book. And i'm not even gonna go into how weirdly everything wraps up, how convenient everything had to have been for the murder plot to work. It doesn't make any sense. 5- This. Book. Was. Slow. Veeeery very slow. Not enjoyably slow. So much vomit inducing sexual tension and so much drama and romance, everything but the thriller part. Like i really don't give a s••• about anyone's sex life, i was in for the murder mystery and the thrill, but like i said that only comes in in the last 20 pages of the book. Very disappointing.
- ⭐️ 3 stars This book had all the ingredients of a thriller I should have loved: an isolated island, a wedding, multiple POVs, secrets, tension, and a murder mystery at the center of it all. Unfortunately, the execution didn't work for me. My biggest issue was the pacing. The story felt incredibly dragged out, and by the time I reached the end, I was more relieved that it was over than excited by the big reveal. The mystery kept me curious enough to continue, and I didn't guess the killer, which is always a plus, but the journey felt much longer than it needed to be that it kinda made the surprise element fade away. I also struggled with how Will was written. As the story unfolds, it seems like every single character has a reason to hate him. Somehow, the dude has beef with almost every character in the book. He's connected to nearly every tragedy, betrayal, and traumatic event. Instead of feeling like a complex character, he started to feel like a convenient way to give everyone a motive. The constant revelations eventually became less shocking and more repetitive to the point that the question asked went from "Who could have done it?" to "Who wouldn't have done it?" since everyone and their mother had a good valid reason to do it. That said, I enjoyed the atmosphere and the concept. An isolated island wedding where everyone is hiding something is a great setup, and I can see why so many people love this book. Overall, this wasn't a bad thriller, but it was an underwhelming one. It had a lot of potential and all the elements I usually enjoy, but I just couldn't connect with it.
- One of my favorite parts of this book was just how interconnected the characters are. Every single character is flawed and unreliable that I felt like I wouldn’t be able to figure out the twist - which was entirely true. I was biting my nails with suspense trying to figure out who done it and even in the end was shocked. As someone who’s just really getting into thrillers - really appreciated how easy this was to read. The plot didnt feel too heavy and the ensemble was incredibly easy to follow, even with the POV changes. I feel like this is a great book to choose if you’re looking for a starter/palpable thriller!
- This was an insanely slow book for me. I don't always require fast pace or action packed but the back and forth and past, future, character, who is who and who is doodling who or wants to doodle who in the present or past and crushing on who and traumatized by who - was a lot to keep up with (for me).
- This book is too slow paced for me, it only got interesting after 65% of the book. The ending is ok, but I expected more.