The Guest List
Lucy Foley
★★★★★ 3/5
Fiction: Crime, Murder Mystery
Par for the course for the who-done-it genre
To be accurate this is more of a who’s-been-done-for-and-by-whom rather than a traditional who-done-it. This genre, preying as it does on fundamental human curiosity in the context of tragedy (or scandal) , seldom fails to engage. The Guest List by Lucy Foley definitely meets that low bar. But you know that moment of clarity in the book where it all comes together and you slap yourself wondering how you missed all the clues? Well, that moment never arrives with this book.
I picked this up thanks in large part to Alex Michaelides’ glowing endorsement blurb on the front cover. And the only reason I know of Alex Michaelides is because of his brilliant The Silent Patient which was a murder mystery that I thoroughly enjoyed especially for its mind blowing ending.
Well concocted slow burn storytelling; but weak on plot
The first pages of the novel foreshadow a terrible event at what we gather is a high profile wedding on a remote and hard to access island. Whose wedding and who the guests are, is then revealed through narration by the bride and each of the guests in turn. While this is an interesting construct, it feels contrived because Ms. Foley fails to give a distinctive voice to each person’s narrative—not an easy thing to do. All the chapters appear to be one person writing on behalf of each of the guests.
Now I’m not the most savvy of mystery readers but even I could correctly guess some of the inter-connections among the lives of some of the guests. Nevertheless there are surprises and without revealing too much, I will say the plot relies on several coincidences which stretch believability and dilute the impact of the book. There are also some logical headscratchers like this one (*spoiler alert* before you click)
Overall: Recommend RSVP No!
The book’s subtitle claims You’d kill to be on this Guest List. I say that’s quite the exaggeration. In fact this wouldn’t be my pick for a recent finely crafted mystery thriller and so I’d advise RSVPing with a no. But by all means give it a read if you can’t get enough of mystery books.
James from WhatWereReading concurs: “…overall I found things a bit easier to predict than what I’ve come to expect from her.“
1 thought on “The Guest List”
I’m a big fan of Lucy Foley, but The Guest List is probably my least favourite of her works. Whilst the setting of a remote Irish island does a sterling job of hosting a creepy whodunnit, the characters didn’t particularly stand out as in her other books, and overall I found things a bit easier to predict than what I’ve come to expect from her.