Jules, successful founder of her own online magazine, and Will, charismatic star of his own reality TV series, have chosen a remote island off the coast of Ireland for their destination wedding. But as the wedding party assembles and the guests arrive, things may not be as perfect as they appear.
Very character-driven, the plot was slow to develop as we learn the backstories of Will, Jules, friends and family members. But the story unfolds with lots of unexpected twists and turns to a surprising conclusion. I loved it!
I would probably recommend this title to those who enjoy thrillers that are not terribly gruesome and violent.

Guests gather on a remote Irish island to celebrate the wedding of Jules and Will, a day that is sure to be extravagant and unforgettable. Told from multiple points of view, what begins as a fun and relaxing get together for family and old friends, turns into a nightmare no one could have predicted. Foley weaves an extremely suspenseful and compulsive story that you just can't put down. Fans of Agatha Christie, Ruth Ware and Louise Penny will enjoy this novel immensely. Highly recommend!

The Guest List by Lucy Foley was just as amazing as I wanted it to be! I read some reviews and the readers who got early copies of this book raved about it so I went in a little nervous that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations… but I loved it. I gave it five big Goodreads stars.

Each character has an interesting story and chapters alternate between them. The descriptions and the writing is pitch-perfect here, I enjoyed how the author phrased things and described the scenery. This is a book where I felt that the plot, characters, pacing, and ending could not have been any better.

Synopsis:

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.

I can totally see this as a movie and I’m sure someone will grab the rights if they haven’t already.

The Guest List will be published on June 2, this is an absolute must-read! Pre-order here.

I never ever tire of books that take place over the course of a twenty-four hour time period, and honestly that was my initial draw to this book. The Guest List follows the events leading up to one of the most cringey best man speeches... but most importantly, the murder of an unknown wedding party attendee. Jules a successful bride of an online magazine is marrying Will, a tirelessly charming, reality tv celebrity. An exclusive wedding calls for an exclusive location on an island only accessed by boat. What could possibly go wrong?

My favorite thing about books in the 'thriller' genre is the way you can binge a thriller and reach for another like potato chips. The Guest List is definitely 'potato-chip-level' binge-worthy. For me, the most successful part of this novel is the way Foley set the mood with some very carefully crafted atmospheric writing. This created an electrically charged sense of foreboding that carried my interest through to the end of the book. The experience of reading this book was unique because Foley built on that uncomfortable foreboding until it became so consuming I had to race to the finish to lift the discomfort. I don't do haunted houses, but I imagine the entire industry is built on the manufacturing of this feeling I am describing.

The way the author structured her chapters was very interesting. The chapters each rotate a new character perspective and when we aren't hearing from a wedding party guest, we are slowly learning what events led up to the actual murder in little present day snapshots. In the hands of a less skilled author this story structure would have felt very gimmicky, but I felt that it enhanced the way the plot unfolded.

When I sense a reading slump coming on, I pick up a thriller as a preventative measure! If you are in the midst of a book slump or want to jumpstart your reading hobby again, The Guest List is a great place to start! It will get you reading again, and when you inevitably come to the end you might find the compulsion to pick up another book. If nothing else, come for the murder and stay for the cringey best man speech!

Reviewer note: I was provided a copy of The Guest List by HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review.

I am an Agatha Christie reader and this was the main reason I read The Guest List. It is comparable to Christie in many ways and yet very different. It is a “locked room” mystery with many possible motives/murderers but there is no one person that guides us through the mystery like a Marple or Poirot. In this well written murder mystery the victim gets just desserts and the murderer is justified. Good character development.

This book gives off strong Agatha Christie vibes and I loved every second! I wouldn't equate Foley's writing with Christie's because Foley definitely brings a more modern tone, which is fun in it's own right, but still brings that turmoil that we love so much. The pacing of this book is solid and moves quickly while still providing enough information to keep you invested in the plot. The characters can be a bit angsty and over-the-top but I think it really works within the whodunnit style of the book. That's part of a good murder mystery is believing that any one of the characters could have committed the crime at one point or another.

One slightly shallow part that I loved is that this book has short chapters galore! I know, I know... that doesn't matter, but with quarantine-brain it kind of does these days, for me at least. I'm generally a slow-ish reader but I buzzed through this one! A great vacation (or quarantine) read!

Thanks to Harper Collins & NetGalley for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first title I've read by Lucy Foley, and I think I need to seek out her previous books. I read The Guest List in one day!

Told through multiple points of view, this is the story of a wedding, held on an exclusive island off the coast of Ireland. Over the course of the weekend, secrets are revealed and a murder is committed....we're told that in the book's description. Exactly who is murdered, by whom, and why...well, this is pretty explosive stuff! Several powerful motives are revealed as the different points of view are woven together. I'm grateful to NetGalley and William Morrow for access to the eARC in return for an honest opinion.

Chilling and Intense!

Lucy Foley stuns in this stylized "whodunit". Set on an island, tensions begin to run high at a wedding. Relationships begin to fall apart and people suddenly want off the island - fast.

This was excellent! I love Foley's writing style. I loved this just as much, if not more, than her previous novel The Hunting Party. There were twists and turns of epic proportion. A fantastic psychological thriller!

Highly recommended!

This was a quick read for me. I didn’t like most of the characters but the pacing of the story kept me going, I wanted to see how it would all get wrapped up in the end. Didn’t love this but didn’t hate it, it was just in the middle for me.

Thank you to the publisher & Netgalley for this eARC.

I could not put this book down. I stayed up late each night, wishing I could keep reading! The story is a classic whodunnit which will keep you guessing on who the dead body is, as well as the killer.

I found myself drawn to the “underdog” characters — Olivia, Hannah, Johnno. But each character has an interesting story arc that moves quickly.

Highly recommended!

I tore through this book, devouring it in a little over 24 hours. Set over a wedding weekend on an island off the coast of Ireland, the mystery jumps back and forth from some terrible unknown event that happens during the reception to the bride, wedding planner, best man, bride's sister, and a guest sharing the details of their arrival on the island and the secrets they're not sharing yet but are soon to be exposed. I really enjoyed the novel but there were several reasons I didn't give it five stars: seriously unlikable characters (mostly the groomsmen), predictable twists, and one plot oversight that annoyed me. Overall, however, this is an entertaining, binge-worthy thriller.

Readers know early on that something terrible has happened at a wedding, but we're left wondering what and to whom for a long time as the story unfolds. Once you know what happens, there is still much to piece together- because the suspect list is surprisingly long for a wedding on a remote island. The setting increases the feeling of danger and gloom. There's a lot to enjoy about this twisty ride, and it's easy to recommend.

Julia and Will have a wedding at a remote island in Ireland. The island is creepy with stories of people buried in the bog, not much cell phone reception, a graveyard, and rough waters to travel back. The story is told from many different characters who all seem to have secrets. The closest members of the wedding party are staying for the weekend in an old structure. Julia has a strained relationship with all her family and Will has reckless friends from school. When the lights go out during the reception and a scream is heard, a waitress says she saw a body outside. The secrets can't stay hidden for long.

Another multi-point of view story from Foley. I really don't like multiple points of view in books because I find it hard to keep track of everyone but Foley does a great job at describing the telling who each person is at the start of the chapter.

Everyone is on an island for a huge wedding, like the wedding of the year, though no one is really happy. Lives are intermingled in ways the guest list doesn't even know about with hate towards the same person.

Well, I definitely enjoyed this. The audiobook was well read with different narrators and accents. It has multiple POVs and the chapters are titled by person and easy to follow. The timeframes jump around but are well laid out and also indicated at the start of each chapter. This is basically a very slow build to figuring out who the victim will be and who has the most motive.

What I liked most was the look into each guests life issues. This is probably the juicest wedding I have ever read about and I loved it. There are predictable areas but my overall satisfaction at the close of this novel was high.

I can see why this rated so highly. I enjoyed this change in pace from my normal genre. For someone who doesn't read mystery or thriller often, I was glad I had the ability to read and listen to this book.

Thank you to Libro.Fm, NetGalley and the Book Club Girls for the opportunity to review this novel for an honest and unbiased opinion.

One wedding, two families ... and a body?

As families gather off the coast of Ireland to celebrate a wedding, a body is found. Several key players could be guilty as the narrator switches between points of view. The wedding planner, the bride, the best man, the plus-one (wife of the bride's male best friend), and more tell the tale, but who could actually be at fault?

The Guest List reads like a fun old school mystery, the whodunit style a la Agatha Christie et al. Foley does an admirable job keeping the reader guessing throughout the novel and the narrator's point of view changing really adds to the effect.

Highly recommend to mystery fans.

This book has a great setting--a remote Irish island--and an enticing premise--a guest found dead at a posh wedding. It moves between different times and different narrators, building toward one predictable and one fairly surprising final twist. My main critique of this novel is that, while some characters (Jules and Hannah) are pretty engaging narrators, anytime the story shifted to Johnno or focused on the groomsmen in general, my focus immediately started to drift away. They were not especially interesting or relatable characters and their "boys will be boys" antics were pretty boring in general. Fortunately, if I got through those chapters, I was usually rewarded with a better narrator and that kept me reading to the end.

This was a very engaging locked-room sort of mystery with a murder at a wedding on a remote Irish island. The eerie atmosphere was well done, as was the slow build of tension you feel knowing there will be a murder (it's in the first chapter) but not knowing who it is or how it will happen. The cast of characters were admittedly pretty cariacatured rather than fully realized but I think to an extent that can be excused by the Agatha Christie vibe the book cultivated.

This feels very familiar to the first book by this author. Yes, the location was different, this time it's a wedding, a bit bigger of a party, and there were still a bunch of secrets everyone is hiding from each other. However, the characters are just as unlikable. There was 6? POVs (in all honesty, I lost count).

There was still a lot of partying in this book. Adult people acting as animals almost, with so much unspent energy. Wasn't sure what the point of that kind of energy in this story was. To show off what kind of people the groom surrounds himself with? As in, the people you hang out with are a perfect show what kind of person you are? The overall feel of this party was a bit much for me, something just irked me the wrong way.

The mystery, which we know is going to be a dead body right away was what kept this book going. The other secrets were very predictable, and I had guessed all but two (one being who did it and to whom) by the time we came to the conclusion and that last bit was revealed. It was kind of a let down that these people were so predictable. Most being very stereotypical. It felt like none of them redeemed themselves in the end.

Overall an entertaining story but it won't stay with me for a long time. 3.5 (would recommend) rounded down to 3.

Lucy Foley takes the reader on a ride that you just don't want to end. Full of descriptive narrative, you feel like you are one of the guests on this remote island. Unexpected characters, unexpected twists, and turns. I kept flipping the pages digesting the story as fast as I could, I just had to get to the end. And then BAHM, you don't see whats coming. I had to go back a few chapters to understand what happened. What a tale, what a ride, get this book now!