Lucy Foley is back with another thrilling tale of suspense and murder, once again set in a remote location. This time the scene of the crime is Inis Amploir or Cormorant Island, off the coast of Ireland and completely abandoned since the 90s. That is, until event planner Aoife decides to restore its crumbling folly to host a high society wedding between TV personality Will Slater and magazine owner Julia Keegan, bringing over a huge wedding party to the brooding island covered largely in peat bog and reputedly haunted by ghosts of a massacred religious sect. Everything seems to be going smooth as clockwork until the night of the wedding when someone winds up dead…
The blurb likens this to an Agatha Christie novel as there are similarities to Christie’s most popular novel, And Then There Were None, with guests invited to a remote island where a murderer lurks. However, an Agatha Christie novel’s key feature involves very subtle hints behind the murder carefully seeded throughout the story which are wrapped into a neat bow at the end by the novel’s detective, leaving you to marvel at her ingenuity and how obvious the murderer was in hindsight. You can’t go into The Guest List with a similar expectation as this isn’t really a murder mystery – we don’t even know the identity of the murder victim until the 92% mar. So if your idea of a good time is trying to put together the clues and guess the murderer’s identity, this will be a struggle as it’s hard for the audience to guess about means, motive, and opportunity without any idea who the victim is.
The Guest List is a slow-burn psychological thriller that focuses on establishing key characters by switching between first-person perspectives for Aoife the wedding planner, Jules the bride, Hannah the plus-one, Johnno the best man, and Olivia the bridesmaid. Each of the short chapters ends with an ominous observation (‘This place is enough to make you believe in ghosts’), ironic statement (“Today I am getting married and it is going to be bloody brilliant”), or mystery (“I’m the bad thing. What I’ve done”) which helps to build an increasing sense of dread along with flashing periodically to the night of the wedding when the shocking discovery of a body is made.
Most of the story is devoted to fleshing out the tense interpersonal relationships between the main cast and teasing out their mysterious long-buried secrets or recent traumas, which emerges as the real strength of the novel. These characters may not always be likeable, but they feel convincingly real with all their foibles and flaws, and even as I shook my head at Jules’ selfishness or Johnno’s pitying self-delusion, I surprisingly still felt pangs of sympathy because of how well the first-person perspective made me relate to them.
Of course the main intrigue we’re all here for is the identity of the murderer and murder victim, but because there is such a lengthy delay in revealing either, the author peppers in smaller mysteries about our protagonists to keep us invested. What painful trauma is behind Olivia’s self-harm? What is the dark secret that ties Will and Johnno together in spite of the obvious disparity in their social and economic status? Who sent the note warning Jules to call off the wedding? What happened on the infamous stag night that still haunts Charlie? And is there anything illicit in the connection between Jules and Charlie that Hannah needs to worry about or is she just being overly territorial about her husband? All of these questions make The Guest List an addictive page-turner and the short chapters rapidly switching between characters enhance the temptation to binge-read so you can get answers.
This is a book dripping with eerie atmosphere, sure to send chills down the spine of its audience even on a bright sunny day. If you’re looking for a read that offers interesting, flawed characters with shocking secrets, thick with tension and plot twists in a unique creepy setting, then look no further!
The Guest List is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of June 2nd 2020.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Set on a remote island off the Irish coast, this is one guest list no one would want to be on, just as no one would have wanted an invitation to the New Year’s Eve party in Foley’s previous novel, The Hunting Party . Lives unravel amid the revelry on an eerie and remote island as family and friends assemble for a glam wedding in an updated Murder on the Orient Express. Each of the principal characters has a reason to want one of their number dead, there are old secrets, and one of them is murdered.
