The Guest List
Lucy Foley
Overall: 3/5
Plot and themes: 4/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing style: 4/5
Attention-grabbing: 3/5
The Guest List is your typical murder mystery who-dunnit type story. A celebrity wedding on a rural island out in the middle of nowhere packed with guests bringing all kinds of baggage. Julia just wants her perfect happy ever after and Will is the perfect groom. Her sister Olivia just wants to get away. Charles is Jules' best friend and married to Hannah, the unfortunate plus one. While Johnno is the childhood bestie who can't seem to catch a break. All of them combined with the wedding planner, Aoife, make for an interesting and random group of chaotic individuals.
I think that the beginning was kind of hard to get into and the pacing was off across the board. We were obviously trying to hold the reveal off till the very end to be more dramatic, but it just made for a whole lot of boring and pointless exposition at the beginning. I love reading books like this for the way that all the elements combine into something convoluted and impossibly complicated at the end, and while this book nailed that, we could have done with a lot less of the attempted red herrings.
I was also mad about the ending. I think that considering all of the tedious introduction we should have gotten a bit more insight into the consequences of each of the characters' actions. Without spoiling anything, I feel like we got the reveal and then we got kicked off the set. That was disappointing for me as I was more invested in the arcs of the characters rather than just the act of the murder. I don't know if I would never recommend it to anyone, but it's definitely not the best mystery ever.
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