The Guest List
By Lucy Foley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Author’s Journal | Pen Date 4.14.22 | TW: Violence, Death, Sexually Explicit Content, Trauma, Abortion
Have you Read “the Guest List“?
Tell me what you thought!
|Synopsis|
Lucy Foley’s The Guest List is a mixture of a Whodunnit murder mystery with a WhoISit. We, as the readers are made aware that someone is dead, but we replay the events of the narrative from the start of a Wedding Weekend on a remote island off the coast of Ireland, interspersed with the characters’ search for the body that we know exists.
The story utilizes multiple first person POVs to give us insights into the “suspects,” their motivations, and how they react through those chapters with a 3rd person narrator that leads us on the search for the aforementioned body.
Can you solve the mysteries before all is said and done?
|The Good|
I like Foley’s writing style, especially the way she allows us inside the characters’ minds through their first person POV chapters. It makes for a solid bit of investment in the characters. Her prose does well to support the manuscripts’ readability.
The reason for the murder. I didn’t see it coming and enjoyed that bit of the twist.
|The Bad|
If you stop to think for even a minute, it should become immediately obvious who the murderer is and who the victim is. I won’t spoil it, but just give it some thought.
The ending doesn’t provide any real sense of closure as only the reader knows whodunnit. I have more to say about this, but don’t want to spoil it here, so for a spoiler-review check out my Ko-Fi Knowledge Tier.
|Overall|
This is a Movie. Not a novel. I imagine that Foley plans to double dip on this one, and I think it will play great on the “Big Screen” or maybe as a Netflix original.
But as a book it falls a bit flat, betrayed by its structure of who the POVs encompass and who they don’t. In my humble opinion, there are plenty of better whodunnits out there worth readers’ time.
For more on my overall opinions and takeaways for Foley’s The Guest List, head over to Ko-Fi and see my SPOILER REVIEW by joining my “knowledge tier,” which provides more in-depth reviews and takeaways on novels and KindleVella exclusives that won’t be found anywhere else.
Review also available on Goodreads
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