A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST THRILLERS OF 2020
“I loved this book. It gave me the same waves of happiness I get from curling up with a classic Christie…The alternating points of view keep you guessing, and guessing wrong.” — Alex Michaelides, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient
“Evok[es] the great Agatha … wrong.” — Alex Michaelides, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient
“Evok[es] the great Agatha Christie classics…Pay close attention to seemingly throwaway details about the characters’ pasts. They are all clues.” — New York Times Book Review
A wedding celebration turns dark and deadly in this deliciously wicked and atmospheric thriller reminiscent of Agatha Christie from the New York Times bestselling author of The Hunting Party.
The bride – The plus one – The best man – The wedding planner – The bridesmaid – The body
On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.
But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.
And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?
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While this book absolutely took my breath away at times. I was completely addicted, but I’m not sure if I fully liked the book. Especially the ending.
That said, the writing was wonderfully done. There were some descriptions that literally took my breath away or made the deep place inside me pang. I loved the characters in terms of how complex they were, and I certainly enjoyed watching the wedding unravel in such spectacular fashion. But I didn’t love the characters…they weren’t always likable.
The ending twist was a bit much for me. I guess I felt duped as a reader, and I’m never happy about that. I felt that the writer could have worked a little harder to make the ending more complex and meaningful, instead of throwing in that surprise.
Overall it makes for a very compelling read and would certainly melt away a long plane ride or keep you up at night.
Excellent page-turner! I was truly guessing at the “who-dun-it” until the end. The atmosphere of the island with guests’ tense and long-standing relationships made for an incredible story with many possible motives.
One of the best books I’ve read in a long time. I will never go to a wedding and look at it the same way again. I thought I had read enough thrillers to never be surprised by one again, but Lucy Foley certainly proved me wrong. The storyline is superb. The characters have a depth and interwoven meetings, (or near misses), throughout.
This book is being touted as Agatha Christie-like, and that’s a fitting description. I should’ve foreseen the ending, but didn’t. Very well done.
If I could have left 0 stars I would have. Simplistically written, totally predictable.
Really enjoyed this book. Kept me on the edge of my seat. Cant wait to read more of hers.
This is a well written thriller. Once you begin reading it, you’ll be hooked!
4.5/5
Wow, what a doozy, and not a wedding I’d RSVP to!!
Eerie and atmospheric with a location that becomes a character in itself, it’s a tale of secrets (both current and past), revenge and just plain evil all culminating at an island destination wedding. Told in several alternating voices, the suspense keeps building as the reader knows the reckoning is coming. So it’s not so much a murder mystery but rather a who’s going to get to the bad guy first! LOL Recommended as a fun, twisty “gothic-feel” romp.
I really loved this tale of a murderous wedding. A golden couple invites 150 guests to a remote island for an exclusive wedding. It doesn’t take long for secrets and betrayals to infiltrate the party. Who was murdered? Who did it? There were so many twists and turns and the characters were well-drawn. Some readers might not like the multiple POVs, but it didn’t bother me. An excellent psychological thriller!
Slow burn, but I thought the end was totally worth it. I personally, didn’t see it coming until the very last possible moment.
It took a few chapters to get used to the use of first-person for every character but it was well written.
When someone dies at a wedding party on an isolated island off the coast of Ireland, ghosts of the past appear and we learn what happened from many characters. I enjoyed the atmospheric setting but thought it was a bit choppy with multiple narrators flipping back and forth in time. In the final pages, all became clear with a satisfying ending.
Really enjoyed this, a bit of an homage to Agatha Christie’s best. Love the way the author moved back and forth in time to build suspense.
I understand the sentiment when people say this book was unputdownable, and I will go out on a limb here to say that that’s largely due to expertly written and tactfully organized chapters.
The short lengths, shifting perspectives, and jumps in time all work to pull you in and keep you there, slightly confused but within sight of a clear path forward. I found myself overwhelmed with a feeling that if I could just finish one more chapter (it’s only four pages after all!) I would stumble upon the answer. The answer to what? I wasn’t always sure, but I was confident it was right around the corner—or rather on the other side of that next page.
It’s no surprise this lead to another late-night binge.
What I loved most about The Guest List is that there is a storm brewing at the heart of this novel, both in the wild and between the guests, and it’s a doozy. Like waiting for the drop on a roller coaster, the tension is palpable, and with a diverse and well-rounded cast leading the charge, it’s hard not to get sucked into the drama of it all. The women of this novel especially are complex and well developed with clear motivations that ground the plot.
Occasionally, I was a bit confused with the shifts in time. It wasn’t horribly difficult to figure out via context, but “Earlier That Day”, and “The Wedding Night”, and “Now” got a bit jumbled as the story progressed and the timelines started converging. Whether or not this was intentional, I can’t say, but I wished there were clearer anchors to the time setting.
Also, my one fumble as a reader is reading this like a whodunnit, which it’s not. It took me way too long to figure that out.
Predictable light read.
I only gave this a four star because I kept getting confused and rereading parts. There were to many characters and so much flipping between all of them. Others than that it was a good story line. I did enjoy the majority of the book. I would recommend this book.
The Guest List was a slow build read. It took a little while for the stories to really pick up and pull you in. A who-dunnit that takes place on a secluded island in Ireland during a big celebrity wedding? Sounds pretty good to me.
This book was told from six different POVs, focusing on the wedding and the day before. In true mystery fashion, once you started learning something interesting or got a juicy piece of information, the POV switched, which was a little infuriating but forced me to keep reading to get answers to my questions.
My biggest complaint was that every character (even those we don’t POVs for) was unlikable in their own way. Privileged, spoiled, selfish, naive, cold…you name it, one of the characters in this book exemplified that trait. Because of that, I found myself hoping it would be more than one person meeting their untimely demise at the end of the book.
The big reveal and the few chapters leading up to it were what really made the book for me. Some of the twists and revelations were predictable but, thankfully, there were quite a few that I definitely didn’t see coming. Loved how the POVs came together in the end, but found myself wanting more of a concrete resolution for some of the characters.
Overall, I’d definitely recommend this book. Even with the unlikable characters, it was a quick read with a resolution good enough to leave you feeling satisfied (but not totally happy) with where it went.
Excellent thriller. Didn’t want to put down.
Interesting book with several twists and turns.
It’s looking me an Agatha Christie.