When I walk into the club ... all eyes on ME.

This is very much how Ned Groom, owner of the luxurious, incredibly elite chain of Home clubs, feels when he walks into one of the locations. He likes to be the center of attention and when things don't go his way he can throw the biggest tantrum. Yet, if you're not at one of his clubs, then are you really somebody?

Told from different pov's we get pieces of a story that spans decades. This felt more like a heavy drama laced with mystery. The start is slow, and the pacing a bit off until you reach over the halfway mark and the ending was a bit predictable.

Jess, a girl trying to better her life and leave the past. Nikki, the PA to Ned, who is fiercely loyal when you are good to her. Adam, the younger brother living in Ned's shadow his whole life. Annie, who plays a role for Home that makes her the person to know. These characters tell us a story of blackmail, betrayal and murder!

I liked the idea here and would have liked to see it paced out differently and be geared more thriller with an active killer people are aware of. That said, if you are the type that likes to sit with some popcorn when drama unfolds, then give this one a go!

Thank you so much to Harper for the gifted copy!

Thank you very much to Netgalley and Harper for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

For me, The Club had the potential to be a great thriller with a unique premise, but it lacked the execution.

My thoughts:
-there were so many characters making it difficult to follow along.
-the buildup was a bit much. I love a whodunnit but we didn’t figure out who died until almost 75% in.
-I’m a fan of straight forward, non-descriptive writing and I felt this book had too much fluff & details
-the reveals didn’t blow my mind and the ending left me wanting more

I will admit I am very picky when it comes to thrillers and while this wasn’t my cup of tea, I know many will enjoy it! If you like, descriptive writing, a slow burn, and a unique plot then give The Club a read!

Huge amount of thanks to NetGalley and Harper publishing for an advance copy of this book in exchange for my opinion.
The Club is exactly that. An exclusive club for the most elite celebrities. The cover says ‘everyone’s dying to join’ and the body count within the span of a few days is impressive.
The amount of twists, turns, and secrets within this story are amazing. Each one is intertwined with another secret. A little bit of a slow burn, but when it catches, it blazes.
Really enjoyed it, highly recommend picking it up on March 1

Celebrities and staff behaving badly at the opening event of an exclusive island club. There are multiple characters and POVs, and many well-plotted twists and turns. You'll see some of them coming, but in a book like this, you will still get to be surprised.

I would place this book in one of my favorite categories--what I like to call the "luxury thriller". These books are the same as a typical mystery/thriller, but with filthy rich characters in luxurious settings. Think "Every Vow You Break" by Peter Swanson, or the book this one reminded me the most of, "The Guest List" by Lucy Foley. A great book to read by the pool on vacation.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

going into this u thought that the people who were killed and who killed them would be the center of the book. instead the murders were the least interesting part of the story for me. by the time we got to the murders i forgot this was supposed to be a murder mystery. in all of the chapters we got 4 povs and a snippet from articles. it was a very slow and descriptive book and tbh i wasn’t interested in the articles at all (which i think were supposed to keep me engaged). in those 4 povs we got to see what secrets they were all keeping. ultimately the ending was a bit unsatisfying

I loved the way the Vanity Fair article was used to weave the background information in this book. At the beginning this functions as exposition and later on the details of the article help fill in the gaps to help solve this mystery. The book was slow in pacing and it took a while for things to really happen. I felt like fewer details would have allowed for the same plot to happen at a quicker pace. It wasn’t until after the halfway point that I really felt like there was enough information to move the plot along. Before that it felt like we were following a lot of breadcrumb trails.

I commend the writers for the way they presented these terrible characters. While I didn’t truly like any of the characters, I really felt that they were all complex.

The novel wrapped up in ways that I found to be anticlimactic. I expected that this would be more of a thriller and it didn’t really feel that way. If you’re looking for a novel on the complexity of social relationships and selfishness, this provides a good case study.

Rating: 3.5

I liked the premise of this book, but it fell short. It was overly descriptive in things not central to the plot or character arcs. It started very slow and continued that way, then the ending gave me whiplash with the plot twists. None of the twists were interesting enough to increase my rating of the book.

The Club is about Home, which are resorts for celebs and rich elites. This is a crazy story of an exclusive club with various locations around the world, where members pay dearly for doing whatever they want. This book is full of twists and turns. It's told from multiple points of view. The owner is awful, but the staff do what they must to cater to their members. It definitely moves slow for a bit. I would say around halfway through the book it picked up. Everything really comes together by the end. I enjoyed it. Definitely recommend!

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

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and Harper Collins for the ARC!

The book is a little slow going in the beginning. There's a lot of information setting up the background of The Home Group as well as all the details about how Island Home is set up, the interior design, the owner's temper. I had a tough time getting through that part, but I'm glad I stuck with it because things started picking up about halfway through the book. Most intriguing was a Vogue article written about that weekend, which is interspersed between each chapter. It gives you just a bit of mystery and hints at what's to come, the fact that bodies start surfacing, but you don't know who or why or how. That's what really kept me reading. I needed to know what was going on. The characters are all pretty deplorable though. There was only one or two I actually liked. Celebrities, they're definitely not just like us.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins for gifting me a digital ARC of the new novel by Ellery Lloyd - 4.5 stars!

Home is a chain of ultra-exclusive clubs set in the best locations (including Upstate NY - love that!). The launch party at the newest Home on a very remote island off the English coast is the event of the year. Ned is the CEO, whom the staff alternately awe and fear; his brother, Adam, mostly does his brother's bidding. The staff is handpicked and all sign an NDA. Then there are the hand-picked guests. Everyone has a secret - and now someone - or maybe more? - is dead.

This is reminiscent of an Agatha Christie, locked room murder mystery - which I'm a huge fan of that concept. This is a bit of a slow burn, but I loved how everything unfurls to reveal all the secrets and lies - it was all excessive, over the top fun!

Home - a swanky club who only allows elite as members. It started in London, but now has many all around the world. The newest, Island Home, is having a grand opening and only the best of the best are included.

Everyone involved with Home - from the members, to the employees, to the owner - seems to have secrets. And they all seem to know secrets. Things seem to escalate quickly over the course of the weekend. Secrets are revealed. People go missing. And then things take an even more horrible turn. And not everyone who arrived at the launch will be going home alive.

I loved the multiple points of view and seeing things from different angles. I'm not sure I actually liked or trusted ANY of the narrators. But that just made it all the more interesting. Many of their stories, secrets and lies overlap. And the morals of everyone involved are questionable.

This is my first read by this duo, but I will definitely be checking out more from them.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Harper Books for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review!

The Club is one part murder mystery - like an Agatha Christie at set at Soho House - and one part social commentary on sexism and misogyny in the #metoo era. It's a whodunnit with a large rotation of POV and hidden motives, slowly revealed chronologically, with interspersed segments of future new coverage cut into the story to drive along the narrative. It felt remiencent of Sandie Jones' The Guilt Trip, Lucy Foley's The Guest List, or Peter Swanson's Every Vow You Break, but also unique on its own.

The book opens with a scene set at the height of the action - with no identifying details, just a teaser - before resetting to two days before at the beginning. The Home Group is about open its latest and greatest location in its collection of glamorous celebrity members' clubs arrayed across the globe, where the rich and famous can party hard in its five-star suites, far from the prying eyes of fans and the media. No cameras, no phones, no questions asked. This latest addition is named Island Home - a private, ultra-luxurious resort just off the English coast - and the three-day launch party is the most coveted A-list invite among the rich and famous. A very elite number of members are invited for a pre-launch dinner party, even more exclusive than the launch weekend. These members, along with a few Home employees, make up our cast of characters. It took me awhile (a few chapters) to start keeping them all straight. Ted and Adam Groom are the owners of the brand. Annie Spark is their head of membership. Nikki is Ned's personal assistant. Jess is the head of housekeeping. All of them have hidden motives for why they are there and what their agenda is going into the weekend. Kurt, Keith, Jackson and Georgia are the invited guests with secrets aplenty. As all the backstabbing and machinations play out, the tension amongst the group escalates until all hell breaks loose.

I generally really enjoyed this book. It was a clever commentary wrapped up as a murder-mystery/thriller. I saw a lot a negative posts going into this, and I have a feeling that a lot of readers may have been underestimating the commentary aspect of the book - this is not a straightforward thriller or mystery. So much of the who, what, how and why is wrapped up in that. I did find the jumping POV and "continued from" news coverage a little confusing - simply having those as part of the chapter or table of contents tabs would have made navigation a little easier, but that's something that might already be worked out in the final draft.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper for an ARC of this book.

This is an unusual story with a bizarre assortment of characters which is what makes it so entertaining. Island Home is an exclusive resort for celebrities and A-Listers. Ultra-posh where every whim is catered to and overseen by head honcho Ned, his brother Adam, Ned’s PA, Nikki, and Annie, who handles memberships. The guests are ridiculously self-centered, pampered, egotistical, all with baggage and hidden secrets and issues. The same goes for those who run the show.

When Ned sets up a blackmail scheme, centered around several of his guests’ worst secrets, the situation implodes in ugly ways. Till all is said and done, there isn’t just one body that turns up, but several.
Told from multiple third person POVs, the book also uses clips from an article about what took place on the island. There is plenty of glitz, and the twists and turns in the plot are nicely executed. It’s a little slow to get off the ground, but worth sticking with, especially when everything starts to slot into place.
If I have one quibble the book is on the wordy side. I’m a reader who loves description, but I often felt like I was wading through passages of lengthy prose, many that seemed repetitious of what came before. That aside, I would recommend The Club to those who like locked room mysteries with an eclectic assortment of characters.

The Club- a SoHo House-like, ultra-excusive resort is made to cater to the very rich and famous. The team behind the scenes is just as power hungry as their guests. Power, murder, and resort behind the scenes made this book interesting but not very good.

Each chapter changed points of view. I usually like this in a book but this one had too many narrators and I had trouble distinguishing them and keeping them separate as I was reading. I liked the character development for some of them, but I wanted more, with less voices. I liked the setting and the drama, but this book was just overall fairly mediocre.
2.75 stars

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy for review.

I am rounding up from a 3.5. This was an interesting mystery. I am not quite sure how to rate it because it did have its issues, even though the story was great and I enjoyed reading it.
The book begins with what appears to be a murder at the opening of Island Home, an incredibly exclusive getaway for the incredibly rich and famous. The island is the newest addition to the Home Group: world-wide members-only resorts for the creme-de-la-creme of celebrities. The celebrities--all paying members of the Home Group--vied for highly coveted invitations to the jaw-dropping opening weekend in order to be pampered in absolute luxury. However something quite sinister is happening at Island Home. And the question then becomes what exactly is wrong with Home? Who knows what secrets are being kept, and how far will people go to keep--or reveal--those secrets? When people disappear and then dead bodies begin to pile up, it becomes obvious that it is the people who have the most who will do the most to keep themselves safe.
This was a very twisty, well-thought out mystery. The reader is never really quite sure, especially at the beginning, who has died and who might be responsible for those deaths. Tidbits are slowly revealed that shed light on what exactly happened on that fateful weekend, and what events led up to making that weekend a flashpoint for murder, vengeance, and desperation.
The big issue with the fact that tidbits are slowly revealed is that very small tidbits are incredibly slowly revealed, while buried in pages and pages of inner monologs. Characters ruminate on why they don't like other characters, or how they dealt with serious events and tragic setbacks in their life, or how they ended up in the positions they are in now...and it got a bit boring. These interludes do shine a light on how exactly everything leads up to multiple deaths on Island Home and make each circumstance very impactful, but things also could have been trimmed. A great deal of time was spent in unnecessarily detailed descriptions and ruminations on what happened in the past. If these sections had been tightened up it would have created a greater sense of suspense and urgency and would have made the book that much better. I also would have liked a little more from Ned. He was such a huge part of the story that it would have been nice to perhaps see things from his point of view or get a larger sense of who he was. Most of what the reader sees of him are interactions with other characters when he is incensed or irate or enraged. Therefore he didn't come across as a three-dimensional character until towards the very end of the book. Fleshing him out a bit would have really added some depth to the story.
I did enjoy the book and would recommend it, despite of the issues I had with it. The ending was great and I loved it. If you enjoy a slow-burn twisty mystery, then you should check this one out.

I hate leaving bad reviews, but we are supposed to give honest reviews on Netgalley. So here it goes. I hated this book. There wasn't a single decent character in it and the plot was ridiculous. I'm not going to go into any more details, but yeah - skip this book.

It’s too bad that it was so bitter cold here today because The Club is the kind of page flipper I prefer reading at the beach or at least outside.

There were quite a few characters to get familiar with, but once I had them straight, I enjoyed each of their perspectives.

The location is a private island, where the latest ultra inclusive Island Home Club is opening. It takes more than money or fame to get a membership, and Ned Groom, the CEO has a lot to say about everything. To put it mildly, he’s a rather unpleasant man right from the get-go, and as his secrets are revealed, let’s just say he took more than one step down in my opinion. The other MCs, whether staff or guests all have secrets that make for a lot of twists and turns.

Oh, and did I mention the book opens with a death, though the identity and motive will not be revealed until much later, so I had plenty of opportunities to guess what had gone wrong on this little slice of super-wealthy heaven.

I didn’t love how it ended but part of that probably had more to do with my location. Wealthy people behaving very badly and all their dark secrets just scream beach read to me. If you enjoy peeling back the curtain and seeing how very few people get to live, it will be easy to get caught up in all the drama. I would most likely add a star if I did read this on the beach.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ ½
Genre: Mystery Thriller

The Club is the story of a VIP club where all the rich, celebrities and A-list members meet in a luxurious place for parties and fun. Everybody is eager to be a member of this club and even the staff who serve these celebrities consider themselves lucky to have this job. Island Home is the latest luxurious club that is run by Ned Groom, the CEO of the Home Group. The story is set on an isolated private island and all the events occur during the first few days of the launch.

The story is told from multiple POVs using the third person narration. There is Jess, who is among the housekeeping staff. Adam, who is the CEO’s brother (Ned), Annie, who is responsible for memberships and later becomes the acting CEO, and Nikki, the personal assistant of Ned. The book has many other characters and needs some focusing so you won’t feel lost. For the size of the book, I do think that there were far more characters than required.

I absolutely loved the premise of this story. An isolated place, celebrities, hardly any likable character, and lots of secrets and backstabbing! There is lots of tension building if you are able to be patient with the pace. That is the main problem with the book, the pacing. The first 70% of it was very slow (I would have been OK if that pace continued) and then the last 30% was too fast and somehow went over the top with many characters dying and falling like flies! I was a bigger fan of the subtility that the slower part has offered. I feel it fitted the theme more. My one criticism of the story is the believability factor. I mean when you have a club like that with big names and VIPs staying there is supposed to be some kind of security force. I don’t recall there were any.

I have read the digital ARC version (ePub file) and I feel this book is not suitable to be read in such a format because there are many parts of the story that continue from a previous page. You get a header that says “continued from page 65”. Of course, reading an ePub means there is no way to know what page 65 was about. So I had to continue reading disregarding all that. If you are choosing a digital format go for a PDF if the pages are numbered. Otherwise, your best option will be the physical book once it is out.

This was quite an entertaining read for me. The characters were very interesting, their different motives were fascinating. The atmosphere and the setting both were superb. The pacing is the only downside of the story. I think the authors (Husband & Wife) did a pretty good job.

Many thanks to the publisher Harper and NetGalley for providing me with an advance reader copy of this book.

The most exclusive party only 150 people are invited to the private Island to enjoy a life of luxury and a weekend they will never forget. So many secrets from guests to staff make this book one intriguing read. How are they all connected? Ned is the ultimate puppet master with all their lives only no one knows but him.

For some this will be the last party they ever go to.

A locked room mystery in a Fantasy Island meets Lifestyles of The Rich and Famous setting. Slow start, but once the pace picks up, a fun ride