Shades of Agatha Christie. A wedding on an island with wealthy guests and family and many who have secrets to hide. Bad weather and faulty electrical systems set the mood. A murder to solve and we don’t even know who the victim is until the end of this “keep me up all night” book. What a novel way to do things.

I really wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. With that said, it was a quick read. I had a hard time connecting with the characters and had a hard time trying to figure out where the story was going. It took a long time for the discovery of the murder and in the mean time, a lot of building up of characters and their past connections with each other. I think the character development was important to the story and probably what kept me hanging on to the end. I felt like the characters were a bit annoying in their personalities though and this was probably one of the more difficult parts for me. I wouldn't let this story stand in the way from reading others by this same author.

The Guest List by Lucy Filey is a well written and suspenseful novel whose setting is an island in Ireland where a wedding will occur. This is not just any wedding but it is the wedding of a TV star on a survival show who is marrying a magazine owner. There are many guests arriving for the wedding and they are all transported by boat. This novel delves into the life of its many characters and there appear to be many connections. The groom (TV star) has many friends from his days at a prestigious boarding school both at the wedding and as part of the bridal party. These men over drink and act like high school students at times. Some of them also do cocaine. As the guests and bridal party arrive the book goes in the present, future, and past of different characters. Each chapter is written from one character.’s voice. This requires a great deal of concentration to keep everything straight and to remember that this is either in the past, present, or future. I enjoyed this writing stoke of the novel. Be ready for many surprises when reading The Guest List ! I would like to thank Harper Collins the publisher and netgalley for allowing to read this book for free in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for my honest review.

Julia "Jules" Keegan and Will Slater are the perfect couple. Jules runs an online magazine. Will is a tv star on a survival show. Their wedding is on a two mile long island off the coast of Ireland. The guests include Jules's half-sister Olivia, Will's friends from boarding school, Jules's best man Charlie and his wife Hannah.The island's only two inhabitants are wedding planner Aoife and her husband Freddie. Aoife knows that this wedding could catapult them into the spotlight.

However, it quickly becomes clear that the guests are all hiding secrets and dealing with their own issues. Jules has been warned not to marry Will. Will's father was the school headmaster and, while Will got many breaks because of that, he felt he could never get approval from his dad. Jules resents Olivia for her relationship with their mother but Olivia has dropped out of school and is struggling with something. The best man Johnno has always been Will's best friend but he's tired of everyone writing him off as stupid and unpolished. Charlie and Jules are best friends but Charlie's wife Hannah has always wondered if there is something more between them. Charlie has been acting strangely since the stag party and hasn't said what happened. Aoife is grieving a loss and has her own ghosts.

This book is a slow build which made me read it super quickly to find out what happened. The Guest List alternates between the points of view of Jules, Hannah, Aoife, Johnno and Olivia. It also moves back and forth between the day before the wedding and the wedding night. While that could be confusing, Lucy Foley does an excellent job of keeping things straight and giving enough information to keep us interested but not too much to give things away. I loved the twists and turns and how well Foley connected different stories together. The atmosphere of the island was harsh and foreboding. It creates a tension throughout the story that builds until the chilling conclusion. I really, really enjoyed this book. It's a well written, well-developed thriller with interesting characters and a spectacular setting.

A wedding on a remote island is the scene of a murder. Several members of the wedding party have a motive for killing one of their fellow participants. Who the killer is and why they commit such an act is just as surprising as who the murder victim is.
I loved this book! I enjoyed the different perspectives of each of the characters and the great detail that is given to their overall background. This is a very well thought out murder mystery that keeps you guessing til the very end.

The Guest List reminds me so much of an Agatha Christie novel. The guests are invited to a secluded island for the swank wedding of a beautiful magazine publisher and a rising TV star. Many of the guests have secrets and, as others start to uncover these secrets, you know someone is going to be killed and, of course, one of the people on the island has to be the killer. Lots of surprises and twists make this a fast, exciting read. Thank you to NetGalley for the advance read.

The Guest List was SO good! This felt like a mix of a good Agatha Christie novel and the movie Clue. You know straight off that something bad has happened at a wedding taking place on a deserted island, but have no idea for sure. Then Foley takes you back to the day before the wedding and starts leading up from there, telling the story from the perspectives of multiple wedding guests. As their stories go on puzzle pieces start clicking into place and you begin to see that these guests all have something in common. And horrible enough, once I got far enough into the story I was actually rooting for something to end very badly for someone! It's a great skill for an author to have the reader rooting her on as the story unfolds. Well, well done.

Ooooh, I really enjoyed this one! Who doesn't love a wedding, the ultimate party and celebration? Especially one that takes place on an island. Everything is great, at least on the surface, until someone ends up dead. This tale is full of mistrust, arrogance, revenge, and suspicion all set against an atmospheric background that will send little shivers up your spine. The multiple POV's kept me turning the pages, looking for revelations and clues. This is my kind of book!

The Guest List by Lucy Foley is an old-fashioned whodunnit in the style of Agatha Christie. A wedding on a deserted island is the setting for the murder.....The victim and the murderer not revealed until the end. The story is told from multiple points of view and different timelines. I would have preferred less POVs because it was a bit confusing getting to know and remembering so many different central characters. Halfway through the book the speed picked up and I could wait for the mystery to be revealed. All in all a very satisfying read! I look forward to reading more of Lucy Foley's novels. Thank you NetGalley and the Facebook group, "The Book Club Girls" for the ARC!

Wow what a thrill! This starts off as a slow build up, getting the reader familiar with the characters - there's about five each with a story. The author did a great job because it then became all twisty and it was tough to put down.
It's intense, gripping, and the setting is creepy so good! Thank you to Book Club Girls, William Morrow, and NetGalley for this ARC.

I could not put this book down. There were so many twists and turns I was surprised over and over again! I absolutely loved the layout of the story going from character to character and uncovering the mystery as time went on. Amazing concept - a destination wedding on a isolated island with bad weather trapping everyone. And then there’s a Murder. Typical big little lies style you don’t find out who the killer is until the end which made it even more exciting. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

It took me a while to get into this book. Once I did, it moved quickly. The story intrigued me but in the end it was too far fetched. I disliked the characters. The plot had promise but the end had me shaking my head - too contrived. I didn’t care what character got killed or why. Better mystery writers out there. Pass on this one.

The Guest List is a fast paced whodunnit that kept me engaged throughout. A wedding is being held on an isolated island off the coast of Ireland. The groom is a handsome television star and his wife works for a magazine. The guest list is a group of people from the groom’s past with lots of secrets, some of them deadly. The book slowly peals back the layers of their past lives with many twists until the shocking end. Highly recommended for a thrilling read. #TheGuestList #LucyFoley #NetGalley

i started the book and it caught my attention right away.....there was a creepy undertone that left me wondering what was going to happen! the book was written with different characters telling their sides of the story.....there were lots of twists and turns that i totally didnt expect!! some of the advanced copies that i have received have been ok, but i really enjoyed this one! i will definately read more from this author!

The Guest List will keep you guessing until the very end. The story unfolds in multiple timeframes throughout the day before and the day of a wedding. We learn about the many narrators and the baggage they carry with them, and become sympathetic to them all. It is not until the end of the story that we discover who the victim is, and who hated them enough to kill.

Trigger warning: self harm

4.5 rounded up. This one was SO CLOSE to a perfect 5 stars and then it suffered abrupt ending syndrome :( But, I still enjoyed it so much I rounded up. The Guest List satisfies so many of the itches you must scratch when playing with the tropes it uses. I was caught up in all the emotions and intricacies and I hated so many of the characters and couldn't wait for their comeuppance. I did guess most of the twists but I didn't CARE because watching it all come together was so damn satisfying. It's why the abrupt ending was a bummer. I needed another few chapters of resolution to come down from the emotional high of the climax.

Regardless! If you like the isolated location trope, plus the messiness of a wedding, with tangled interpersonal relationships and lots of secrets, you'll love The Guest List. It even gave me surprise!boarding school secrets, a favorite trope of mine.

It's is multi-POV, to great effect. You get the wedding planner, the bride, the brides maid (half-sister of the bride), the plus one (wife of the bride's best friend), and the best man. Then, it jumps back and forth in time: in a neutral third person POV you know on the night of the wedding the power goes out and a waitress screams, thinking she's seen a body. And then all the character POVs (1st person) start the day before and lead all the way up to that incident. Each character is vivid and well-drawn, and produce wildly different impacts. Olivia and Hannah, the half sister and plus one, are our audience surrogates--the "nice" ones who bear the brunt of the more horrid characters, ie: the bride (Jules) and the best man (Johnno), plus side characters without POVs (Will, the groom, all of his awful ushers, Hannah's husband Charlie, Jules' parents). Aoife, the wedding planner, is a welcome outside POV who gives us a glimpse of how all the other characters appear on the outside.

That said, it was a slightly slow start for me as I settled into each character and got a sense of what I was in for. Aoife is the most perfunctory POV (b/c she's the third party wedding planner) and she's the first POV we get, so I was worried after a first chapter of pure set-up about how I felt. Jules, the bride, is the second chapter and she's a DOOZY of a character (at turns understandable, but mostly unlikeable), but once I got to spend time with Hannah, Olivia, and even Johnno and then it turned to the earlier POVs to build the story, I was hooked.

I flew through the book, and it's one where I got SO ANGRY on behalf of various characters. I was so sucked into their personal dramas and traumas. I did pretty quickly piece together a few things, and read on the assumption of certain twists, and while I was right, the book didn't feel too predictable. There were one or two surprises.

God, I just love some messy wedding drama. That plus all the secrets and entanglements... I won't go on. I loved it, save the rushed ending. It's really the book's only flaw. I just wanted to see a few more things resolve/sit a bit, since I was so wrapped up in the character's and their problems/fates.

First I want to thank the author and publisher for the advanced reader's copy of the book.

The story focuses on the wedding event of the year between magazine owner Jules and her famous, good-looking fiancee, Will on an island off the west coast of Ireland. It begins the day before the wedding with flashes to the wedding where a body has been discovered and the discovery of who was murdered and why. The reader is treated to multiple pov's between Jules the bride, Will the groom, the wedding planner Aiofe, the plus one Hannah, Johnno the best man, and the maid of honor Olivia.

From the beginning, the author brings the reader into the story; I found myself wanting to find out what happened and why. While, at first, I found it confusing switching between the point of views and the characters (which is usually a challenge for me in these types of books), I came to see that it was an integral part of the development of the story and characters to hear from the various people in the story and to understand how the story unfolded into the ultimate climax.
I will add that one thought I walked away with was how one person could cause so much destruction in one's path and still feel like that they were basically a good person and, at times, a victim--a great example of how well Lucy Foley developed the characters in her book.

This was a great story and well written; I enjoyed reading it.

Friends and family gather on a remote island to celebrate a wedding. Someone ends up dead. Who is it and who did it - so many secrets that are being kept.
Wow! That ending! I did not see it coming. I was already devouring this book and after that I could not wait to see how it ended. Very engaging and the author did a great job of helping keep all the characters clear. Quick read because you can’t put it down!

The Guest List is about the wedding between Julia, a magazine editor, and Will, a Bear Grylls-but-handsomer tv star. They decide to get married on a remote island in Ireland, which provides lots of storms and bogs and graveyards to be the perfectly creepy atmospheric setting. This book had one of my favorite things in thrillers- a completely implausible twist that you don't even care is too contrived because it is just so good. The kind that has you gasping and flipping back to the beginning of the book to check if your hunch is correct. Recommended for readers who like creepy settings, multiple narrators, gaspy twists, or are fans of Ruth Ware, Thanks to NetGalley & the publisher for an arc of the book.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced reader copy.

5 star read!! This novel was excellent from the jump. I love the different points of view and just slightly, the different times. I love that it all took place over one wedding weekend and I thought the author did an excellent job of describing the landscape and the layout of the Folly.

Just one I thought I figured out the twist, there was a second and a third twist! I absolutely loved this book. Kept you reading and engaged the whole time!