I could not put this book down.
I live in the Highlands and reading about Inverness and Fort William had me trying to guess the location of this lodge.....
I also identified with the alien feeling that people like me gave during the harsh winters here.
The story if murder and who did it really gripped me.
Well done Ms. Foley.

I shall read your next book. Linda.

I wasn't sure about this one to begin with, but as the characters developed and the plot thickened I was hooked. A great whodunnit with an excellent twist. Highly recommended reading.

4 stars from me

The Hunting Party is a fabulous debut and I had the pleasure of reading it from within a remote cottage in the Welsh countryside (not quite the Scottish highlands in the snow but close enough!).

I enjoyed the playful elements of the story which I agree could easily be likened to an olden days whodunnit but for me the star of the show was the relationships between the friends and the uncomfortable tensions contained within them. Incredibly well observed and well told.

Great debut and I look forward to more by this author.



Synopsis: The Hunting Party is the author’s first crime novel and is described as combining elements of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (HarperCollins) and The Secret History (Penguin) by Donna Tartt.

The novel follows a a tight-knit group of Oxford university alumni as they celebrate New Year’s Eve in the wilderness of the Loch Corrin Estate in Scotland. A HarperFiction spokesperson said: “In these wild, white climes the group reminisce, go deer stalking, and hide friendship-destroying secrets, secrets that set a razor-sharp sequence of events in motion, culminating with a broken body in the snow.”

Lucy Foley's novel, The Hunting Party, is set in a holiday house in a very remote part of Scotland where a group of friends gather to enjoy a New Year break well away from their normal busy London lives. When the weather closes in cracks soon appear in what they all assumed are lifelong friendships. Mutual trust turns to suspicion when tragedy strikes and they find themselves cut off entirely from the outside world. Foley's plot continues to thicken like the ever- falling snow but the twists and turns are never predictable. Enjoy the read as you try to piece together the jigsaw.

A brilliant thriller. The story follows the ill-fated New Year's Eve celebrations of a group of old university friends and how the journey of their lives ended up at this point.
A real page turner and a must read.

Like a modern take on an Agatha Christie plot: a party in a remote location cut off by snow, a group of friends with hidden tensions and stresses, sinister co-guests and troubled staff... all ending in murder. With red herrings galore and a cast of unlikable characters, this is all about the twists and revelations. Compulsively entertaining: 4 deliciously trashy stars!

I really tried to like this book; it has the most awesome blurb and exciting setting, which I felt could have been used to even greater effect. However, my strong dislike for the characters sapped the enjoyment away for me. I've been on a reading spree, reading a book or so a day lately, but The Hunting Party took a week to finish. At around three quarters of the way through I started wanting to skim through and just find the answers,.

For me, the characters really lacked any sort of spark. I hated most of them. They all seemed absolutely obsessed with their Oxford educations, even decades later, to the extent that it actually distracted from my enjoyment of the book. They were pompous, middle-class, and I recall at one stage one of them was outright unsympathetic towards their hubby from a less fortunate background. It frustrated me quite a lot that the most likeable and intriguing individuals - Bo and Nick, Heather and Doug - aren't really given enough airtime.

It is a sign of Foley's great skill that she is able to craft so many characters and fit them together with realistic lives and backstories. Sadly, I just think that this realism was taken a little too far. Like these characters, we all have our secrets, our vices.

Hiding both the murderer AND the victim was a stroke of genius. If you can get find something to like about the narrators, or don't mind hating most of a novel's cast, then you will genuinely adore this book. It's for this reason I've given it 3 stars instead of lower. Looking past my problems with the group of friends on this holiday that ends with murder, there is a intriguing winter story told here.

Thank you to Netgalley, Lucy Foley and Harper Collins for the opportunity to read this novel.

A very clever story! The suspense was maintained throughout, giving nothing away. The diverse characters remained true to themselves and were all credible. The location was perfect and the slow burn leading up to the New Year’s Eve party ensured the book was not put down until the end. Much enjoyed!

My thanks to HarperCollins UK and NetGalley for my ARC of The Hunting Party, my first read by Lucy Foley, which put me so much in mind of Ruth Ware's In A Dark, Dark Wood. An isolated location in the Scottish Highlands; a New Year celebration; nine friends reunited as they do most years. All of them together for the first time in ages. Emma and Mark, Miranda and Julien, Nick and Bo, Samira and Giles, their six-month old baby Priya - and Katie. Four days in a winter wilderness - Loch Corrin - very exclusive. Run by Doug, the gamekeeper and Heather, the estate manager. What could go wrong?

Just about everything. Harsh weather, no internet, hardly any mobile signal and friendships that soon become strained. Skeletons in cupboards, spite, old wounds. High flyers, Oxbridge types, all with secrets they would prefer to remain so, as a booze and drug fuelled weekend starts to implode from within with disastrous consequences. A body is found - not an accident. One of the group has been murdered and the culprit is amongst them....

Full of menace and dark secrets that are revealed as the group become trapped when a thick blizzard descends, The Hunting Party is a compelling read with plenty of twists.

I recieved an e-arc from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is about a tight-knit group of Oxford university alumni as they celebrate New Year’s Eve in the wilderness of the Loch Corrin Estate in Scotland. In these wild, white climes the group reminisce, go deer stalking, and hide friendship-destroying secrets, secrets that set a razor-sharp sequence of events in motion, culminating with a broken body in the snow.

So I really loved the sound of this book it was fascinating however I cannot get into the book at all.

I find the characters are all unbelievably shallow and I can't find it in me to like them.

I dislike the way it's set out flashing forward and back between times and then there's the memory flashes, I found it difficult to follow and had to reread some parts a few times before I really understood what I was reading.

It was slow and there was nothing to keep any of these people together for any amount of time other than obligation, which I find disatisfying.

I did love the descriptions of the countryside absolutely lovely. It's so rich and engaging which is what kept me reading for so long.

But I have found that I only want to know who died... And i dont want to find out any longer, they layout was annoying for me and makes me not want to continue. Sadly this just wasn't for me.

I'm afraid I didn't really enjoy this. It started well, but I found all the backwards and forwards a bit confusing. It went Now, then 2 days earlier, then now then 1 day earlier, then now and back to 2 days earlier. I found it a started to drag a bit there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary "filler". I know that the characters profiles had to be explained but I just found it all a bit too "wordy" and the twists didn't shock like they should have. By the end I didn't really care who had died or who killed them.

This was a bit of a sleeper agent for me. I requested it on a whim and was then completely blown away by this chilling, claustrophobic but utterly engrossing murder mystery. The Hunting Party was like a classic whodunit where the setting is an old country estate and the players are friends and acquaintances, but it went a level deeper than that and explored how the people we think we know change under certain pressures. In that respect it reminded me of the film Shallow Grave – you think you know someone, guess again. We’re used nowadays to crime with more gore, psychological elements delivered at speed and even to knowing who did it at the start but finding out why. This isn’t like those faster paced offerings. This is a gradual unwinding into the heart of human interactions solving a murder mystery the classic way. An excellent read.

Dull.... The characters are so much alike each other you're hard pushed to tell them apart ( even though each chapter is named after one of them). One of the most beautiful places on the planet described in such a way that strips it all down to almost nothing but grim, cold and eyeball deep in snow. The prose are almost headache inducing, rushing by at a thousand miles an hour and much of it to no consequence at all. Maybe it's just not my cup of tea however I've read plenty of books in a similar vein that didn't make me feel as though I was front and center at an eight hour insurance convention. Each to their own though..... You may well love it. I certainly didn't.

As soon as I saw the blurb I knew I had to read this, had a really different sound to it than the other crime / mystery books out there.

The main story is that a group of university friends take a holiday every year to bring in the new year together. This year Emma, a relative newcomer as she is the girlfriend of one of the uni friends, has organised the retreat in the scottish highlands. We start off the book with her POV and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the POV switched around to focus on other characters as well (though not all). Of course it isn't long before you realise there are a lot of secrets and resentments within the group and then one of the group gets murdered, but who is the culprit?

Although revealed early on, the actual murder actually happens quite far into the book, with the set up to it being a lot more interesting as events happen slowly unwind, mysterious strangers arrive and you can see the internal struggles within the group. It's really a slow burner and I did get a bit impatient waiting for things to start moving.

The characters in the book are not all very likeable but I think this is the point and I really loved having the different POVs, one character in particular who I started off hating by the end and thanks to reading their chapters I really grew to like them. A small negative for me is that some of the group members were not fleshed out at all and didn't really serve much purpose than to make up the numbers, I would have liked to see their POVs as well but understand this would have really lengthened the book!

The twist reveals and the murderer reveal were extremely well done, and kept me guessing right to the end. I was so absorbed with finding out what happened that I had to finish the book in one night and I really wasn't disappointed.

A brilliant read and look forward to reading more from Lucy Foley!

I found this a really good read. It is set in a remote Highland estate with a small number of characters but the flashbacks used to explain the situation are very effective. The characters are true to their personalities and their behaviours are consistent, making the reader feel they know them.
The story begins as a superficial New Year holiday plan and gets darker and darker as the days progress. There is a "whodunit" element which provides the twist as the story reaches the conclusion.
I read it over a couple of days and really enjoyed it. I recommend it!

This was an interesting story that told the tale by moving back and forth over the Millenium weekend. The characters’ personalities became more obvious as the book progressed, leading to a grisly discovery. Fascinating reading and recommended.

I enjoyed this murder mystery very much indeed. A group of nine friends are booked into a luxury highland lodge for New Year, far from any form of civilisation. The narrative is from four different points of view: Doug the gamekeeper, Emma the organiser of the holiday,, the glamorous Miranda and Katie her best friend. As in all groups of friends there are tensions and jealousies and these become ever more apparent as the story develops with bitchy remarks, backstabbing and infidelity. Everyone it seems has their secrets and these have an effect on the group dynamic. Over the course of the holiday, their behaviour deteriorates with drunkenness, violence and drug taking all around. It ends in tears - of course it does - with one group member ending up dead. There are plenty of suspects in this story, not one of them appears to be a well balanced adult. They all, including the staff, have their issues. Unusually the author keeps the identity of the victim hidden until almost the end and this helps to build the tension because as well as many of them having the personality and motives of a murderer, several also seem to be courting violence. There were one or two issues I wasn't sure about, leading to a four star rather than five star review. The Icelandic couple intruding on the group didn't seem to add much and the Old Lodge although atmospheric, similarly didn't benefit the story. It was good enough without these two distractions.. The author does a terrific job in building up the tension throughout. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

Have I just read a forgotten and lost Agatha Christie classic? OMG that's how I felt during it and after and still now. Boy the atmosphere is carefully constructed and evoked here with style and an eye for detail and nuances that I haven't read in a while.

The setting might be fictional in name but it's evoked with such style it seems so very very real. Adn spookily claustrophobic too. The setting is ideal for the old school mystery which follows - hunting, deers in the park, a group of people staying at a lodge, Scottish fog and ...murder

It's the relationships between these characters which made me rub my hands in glee. At one point I almost went out to buy a glass of something even though I don't drink or shoot a dear which I could never do since watching Bambi. I will just have to settle for wearing tartan.

I said it reminded me of Christie. That's not to say it's similar or not unique - far from it - it just brings back all what I love about an old fashioned good old murder mystery and a sense of writing and style that is beautiful to take your time over.

I was never quite sure where this was going and was kept on my toes throughout, in the gloomy corridors, the ghostly shadows of the trees, the fog and the strange noises at night.

Deliciously deadly and dark. Foley fantastic you might say.

A group of friends who met and university – and partners – have a tradition of taking a holiday together. Emma, reasonably new to the group, has organised a stay in an out-of-the-way hunting lodge in the Scottish highlands. We learn early on that a body is found but we don’t know who, until much later. Or who was the killer. The book isn’t for people who want fast action. It concentrates on the backgrounds of the people, their present and previous interactions and the backstories of the three people who work at the lodge. For me, it worked because of the pressure-cooker feeling of isolation from the world. There was a heavy snowfall and they were cut off. The characters were not particularly likeable but their backgrounds went some way to explaining this. I enjoyed the read very much and felt I had the bystander’s view of a car crash at times. Really good stuff.

I was really impressed with this debut novel. The Hunting Party drops us right in on a group of seemingly perfect, privileged friends from Oxford. They are, for the most part, unlikeable and spoiled, enjoying a remote trip at an exclusive Scottish lodge for New Year's Eve. Although I wasn't completely fooled by all the red herrings, I was suitably satisfied by the 'whodunnit' nature of this book and it certainly kept me guessing. The author makes good use of the 'everyone's a suspect' style, expanding the narrative slowly to keep the reader curious and engaged. Although it is bound to happen with a cast of characters this large, I did feel that a few members of the party were only background noise and not much to do except in the thinnest sense in the overall story. I did really enjoy the final twist though, including the careful planning and lifelong obsession of the killer as finally revealed. The Old Lodge subplot could maybe have been discarded, I didn't feel it added anything significant except for a moment of peril. A real page turner of a debut, from an author who will probably only get better with time.