The Guest List

Love a good mystery. This was not one. It is full of cliched, awful characters with no likeability and little sympathy. Told from multiple points of view, it is a muddled mess. Red herrings are tossed in almost as afterthoughts. And I figured out the killer about 1/3 of the way in. The book is so boring and so cliched, I cannot believe it is a best seller. A vain bride, even more vain groom and 150 drunk wedding guests on a remote Irish island. What could possibly go wrong? The fact I dropped $14.99 on this.

There is a line in Lucy Foley’s 2019 novel The Hunting Party “…the remembered one and the one in front of me, seem to converge on one another.” which really resonated with me because ‘The Hunting Party’ and `The Guest List’ are, essentially, the same book. Foley has simply recycled her cardboard, cliched characters from `The Hunting Party’, changed the names and PC details and plugged them into relationships with the SAME EXACT DYNAMICS as in `The Guest List’. These books seem to have more in common with a paint by numbers kit than a creative endeavor. Eventually, I just started laughing out loud as yet another setting, character, and plot point resurfaced with the scantest of disguises. It’s not that funny, though, as I notice that the book is on the NY Times Best Seller list. That this mediocre rehash has sold so well is truly dispiriting. What is also not so amusing is that, since the Quarantine I’ve been buying books (library is out for now) so I purchased both `The Guest List’ and `The Hunting Party’. Instead of `Two books for the Price of One!’ it’s more like `One Book for the Price of Two!’. I actually feel ripped off. I am tempted to go through all the ways in which these two books are the same but that would involve spoilers and it might make the book more enjoyable for some to spot the recycled parts on their own. I, of course, will not be reading any future books by Lucy Foley because I am pretty sure I’ve already read them.

Not awful but definitely not great

I typically dont enjoy multiple POV novels (the back and forth can be tedious and tiresome), but this all came together deliciously. It was a great way to let off a bit of steam vicariously. Im afraid to say more for fear of spoiling anything, but a great, smooth summer read. Truly enjoyed it.

Good craic from start to finish. A wedding on an isolated island that seems to want its own revenge. Walk right and you fall from a cliff, walk left and you drown in quicksand. Try swimming and you’re caught in riptides. And what about the bodies buried in the bog? Not an especially safe place for drinking and cavorting (which the guests do non-stop). The author could have a franchise based on her characters: Death at the Stag, Who Smothered Mother, Bullies I Have Known! (no spoilers here) Into this menacing locale come our heroes, aging schoolboys, unhappy wives, dis-functional families, all of whom seem capable of homicide. So who dies, who kills the victim, and why? Read the book and enjoy the journey of discovery.

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