So many characters to keep track of. It was hard to enjoy the story line with all the characters and perspectives. Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC

Thank you Harper and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC of The Club by Ellery Lloyd. This was a solid 4⭐️ read. This isn’t a spoiler; in the Prologue, we know that something really wrong has happened and that two people are trying to make it off the island. We spend the rest of the novel learning about The Club, which rich and entitled “celebrities” get the honor of joining, who is invited to the launch weekend of the newest island location, and who is desperately trying to leave. It was a truly wild ride because any of the messed up people could have ended up in the Land Rover. Throughout the novel, Ms Lloyd intersperses bits of a Vanity Fair article, that reports on the events of the weekend and has interviews with some attendees, with chapters of the story told through a handful of individuals. As the story progresses, the reader is able to narrow down who made it off the island. For me, Nikki was the only likable person with redeeming qualities. Although I liked the way that Ms Lloyd developed Jess’ character, understood her motivation and sympathized with her, I still didn’t much like her. Overall, I would recommend picking up The Club and I look forward to reading more from Ms Lloyd.

I had high hopes for this one. The synopsis sounded so good, but sadly I DNF 50% in. I just couldn’t concentrate and connect to the story or the characters. I’m sure there are people who will love it, that just wasn’t me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper for gifting me an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

It took me a long time to read this but I am happy I did. I love a good thriller and this reminded me of like a dark Gossip Girl. I loved the drama and the twists and look forward to reading more from this author.

Wow! This book is a ride. The Club features the opening of Island Club, the newest in a ultra-exclusive chain of celebrity getaways. There are absolutely no cameras or cell phones. Privacy is highly guarded at the invitation only locales and no expense is spared. The word "no" just doesn't exist. When two bodies are found and people go missing, questions are raised.

I enjoyed the mystery aspect to the book. This is definitely a story about the super rich behaving super badly. There are stories of heartbreak and secrets galore. I did enjoy getting the story through various viewpoints, but felt that the telling of it overall was a bit disjointed. Overall, this was an entertaining read. If you like a good whodunnit then this is for you!

The premise of this story completely drew me in. An elite/exclusive club? Something bad is bound to happen. This story didn't fully grasp my attention and I felt more could have been added to the plot. Overall, it was a good mystery.

Blaaaah. I wanted to love this book so much. I was so bored and just couldn’t find anything to keep me interested in this book. I was disappointed because I loved Lloyd’s first book. This one just didn’t do it for me.

Summary
The Home Group is a glamorous collection of celebrity members' clubs dotted across the globe, where the rich and famous can party hard and then crash out in its five-star suites, far from the prying eyes of fans and the media.

The most spectacular of all is Island Home—a closely-guarded, ultraluxurious resort, just off the English coast—and its three-day launch party is easily the most coveted A-list invite of the decade.

But behind the scenes, tensions are at breaking point: the ambitious and expensive project has pushed the Home Group's CEO and his long-suffering team to their absolute limits. All of them have something to hide—and that's before the beautiful people with their own ugly secrets even set foot on the island.

As tempers fray and behavior worsens, as things get more sinister by the hour and the body count piles up, some of Island Home’s members will begin to wish they’d never made the guest list.

Because at this club, if your name’s on the list, you’re not getting out.

Review
Overall the book wasn’t for me. I felt no connection to characters and had a hard time staying interested in plot.

I’m not sure what it was about this book but it just didn’t work for me. I wasn’t invested in the characters at all, I didn’t like any of them. I felt like it drug on way longer than it needed to. The concept was good but it just fell flat for me.

There was A LOT going on in this book. It may have flowed better with one less character or two. Lots of unlikable people doing lots of terrible things. It's entertaining, and kept me reading,

Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for providing an ARC for my review.

Set during the grand opening on an exclusive island hotel, The Club is a multi-perspective locked-room mystery where someone is dead and everyone has a motive for the crime. Island Home, the newest Home Group luxury hotel, has been plagued by financial trouble and construction delays. Ned Groom, CEO of the Home Group, has devised a nefarious method of financing the new project. However, once guest begin to arrive on the island, everything begins to unravel.

Told from the perspectives of Jess, the Head of Housekeeping, Annie, the Head of Membership, Nikki, Ned’s personal assistant, and Adam Groom, Ned’s brother and right-hand man: Ellery Lloyd was able to develop unique characters with their own struggles and motivations. The novel begins with the disappearance of Ned Groom and you’ll spend your remaining time piecing together clues and revealing secrets that the characters don’t want each other to know. Everyone has a motive for murder and you’ll be left guessing until the very end.

Along with the multiple perspectives of the individuals who work for and around Ned Groom, the novel also contains interspersed Vanity Fair articles. I found this to be a creative way to add in background information to the story as the plot progresses forward. It helps to glean details that establish the story, as well as tie up loss ends after the weekend opening of Island Home reaches its catastrophic end.

Overall, I think that this is a vast improvement on their first novel, People Like Her. The secret lives and lies of celebrities are, personally, a far more entertaining concept to me than a novel about influencer moms. The plot can be difficult to follow when mixing in the different perspectives, as well as the news articles, the ending could not be more satisfying. If you’re a fan of Agatha Christie or Lucy Foley’s The Guest List, pick this one up.

Thank you to Harper for the Advanced Reader's Copy.

Intriguing premise for a book, but I found it hard to follow at times with the multiple POV. Some like able characters, and many twists and turns to keep me turning the pages!

I had heard a lot of mixed reviews on this one going in to the book so my expectations weren’t high. I enjoyed her last book, People Like Her so I had some hope but I did not like this one as much. It still had enough interest for me to finish but just didn’t get me as much satisfaction as the last one.

Synopsis:

Everyone's Dying to Join . . .

The Home Group is a glamorous collection of celebrity members' clubs dotted across the globe, where the rich and famous can party hard and then crash out in its five-star suites, far from the prying eyes of fans and the media.

The most spectacular of all is Island Home—a closely-guarded, ultraluxurious resort, just off the English coast—and its three-day launch party is easily the most coveted A-list invite of the decade.

But behind the scenes, tensions are at breaking point: the ambitious and expensive project has pushed the Home Group's CEO and his long-suffering team to their absolute limits. All of them have something to hide—and that's before the beautiful people with their own ugly secrets even set foot on the island.

As tempers fray and behavior worsens, as things get more sinister by the hour and the body count piles up, some of Island Home’s members will begin to wish they’d never made the guest list.

Because at this club, if your name’s on the list, you’re not getting out.

My thoughts:

The two brothers, Neal and Adam who ran the club were despicable. I wanted to like Adam but in the end I was unable to reconcile his actions. Three women are also at the heart of the story, Annie the PR guru, Nikki who has worked for the club for many years and was taken under Neals wing after finding herself over her head and Jess who took a job to exact her revenge on one of the members. I had sympathy for both Jess and Nikki because they had been wronged but Annie was only looking out for herself.

Read this if:
You enjoy celebrity drama
Rich people behaving badly
Women getting revenge for the wrongs men have inflicted upon them

Thanks to NetGalley and all for an ARC copy of this book in return for an honest review.
I really enjoyed the plot and twists and turns on this one. However I didn't feel that this had strong character development so I didn't feel connected.

This book was intriguing and suspenseful. It involved more than one crime including murder and blackmail. The story is told by the characters involved in the action. It is filled with many twists and turns. The more I read, the more I wanted to read. I highly recommend this book to other mystery readers.

This story was many POVs and also a time line that bounced around so you definitely had to be focused on the story or you would be lost. It took a bit to get to the meat of it but by the end I wanted to see the resolution. If you like celebrity gossip and the lifestyles of rich and famous then get this book. There was definitely some surprises at the end.

I apologize but I was not able to finish this book. I was in a different headspace at the time of requesting / recieving this book and the time I got it.

The Club was one of my most highly anticipated books of the year. It revolves around a dark mystery and winds together multiple perspectives and an array of characters with big secrets that they will do anything to keep hidden.

While I enjoyed the characters, they did start to cause a bit of confusion. Jess, Annie, and Nikki really started blending together for me towards the end of the story and that caused some of the building tension to burn out for me. There are about four perspectives in The Club but a ton of other characters, so enjoy the unwinding mystery but do keep in mind whose perspective you are getting, especially from the female characters, as you go along.

So I was a little disappointed in the book, I felt like it started of strong but for some reason got flat for me and at times I felt it dragging.. It also felt far fetched and predicable. I usually liked alternate points of view but in this case it became confusing for me and thought there were way more categories than necessary.

Sending a thank you to NetGalley for an early release for my honest opinion.

The Club was a book filled with characters with interwoven histories. The success of The Club has dark roots and once they surface no ones past is safe. It was an interesting and unexpected storyline.