I totally enjoyed this outstanding audiobook. This was my first Kiersten Modglin book to read/listen to. Who doesn't love a good dinner invitation with the new neighbors where the deceitfulness, secrets, and riddles all come to a dubiousness and fictional ending? Six friends can't help but question who has moved in next door especially with the extensive security and walls they built. It's all the talk in the cove of close friends. What would you do if you were locked inside your neighbors house and had to play a game full of riddles to escape? Everyone seems to have secrets that must be revealed. I enjoyed the multiple narrators and loved listening to it on double speed. It was a fast paced book full of madness and deranged escape room vibes. The suspense builds and is certainly a fictional ending but that's why I enjoy fictional reading to escape the real world! I can't wait to read/listen to more books from Kiersten Modglin.

Thank you Dreamscape Media and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and give a honest review of this new to me author.

I've become a Kirsten Modglin fangirl! She's a dependable, fast-paced, suspenseful, thrilling author, and this audiobook is no exception. Twisted fun from beginning to end!

This book centers on a group of adult friends in a local wealthy suburb who receive a dinner invitation from a mysterious new neighbor. At the dinner party, it becomes clear that each neighbor in attendance has a secret -- or perhaps they all share the same secret. And the dinner party won't end until all is confessed and revealed.

Modglin excels at juicy fast-paced plotting and somewhat wicked characters. Her books are unputdownable, with great initial setups, and frequently over the top. This book, like some of her others, has a fairly unbelievable twist, but if you can strap yourself in to enjoy a little melodrama, you are in for a lot of fun. The narration of the audiobook is well-done, and even with the wild and crazy ending, I thoroughly enjoyed this group of characters and the adventures that unfolded. I'll keep reading every book this author puts out without even reading the blurb first, because she is always j credibly entertaining.

Thanks to Modglin, the publisher, and NetGalley for this really fun audiobook listen.

KMOD does it again! I loved the escape room concept with all the secrets that each friend was hiding. Most of the characters are unlikeable, but I think that adds to the story in a weird way. I particularly like that KMOD waits until the last few chapters to reveal the plot twist, but she keeps my attention throughout the story as well!

Audio was great on this audiobook! I would recommend! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I am normally a big Modglin fan, but this one fell a bit flat for me.

I really enjoyed the clue-like premise, but the beginning felt very slow and the end left a lot of things unanswered.

The game itself was enjoyable, however.

The narration was good.

I usually like her books but this one fell a little flat for me. The plot twists didn’t really make sense and I feel like a lot was left to still be tied up at the end. I’ll keep reading her books because I like the author. I received a free copy of this book from netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

I Know What You Did Last Summer + an escape room = Kiersten Modglin’s The Dinner Guests. This was a fun if flawed thriller. Things start off well. A new and mysterious couple move into the neighborhood, and while none of the neighbors actually get a chance to meet this new couple everyone can see there is a massive amount of work being done on the house. Skip forward in time a bit and a number of the neighbors receive special invitations to a dinner party. After an awkward dinner (the hosts sidestepping all questions about themselves) the dinner guests attempt to leave only to discover they are locked inside the house and their hosts have vanished. Absolutely loved the set up. and the early part definitely grabbed my attention. There is a secret they are all keeping, but what is it? And why have they all been locked in the house? While I definitely enjoyed this book, I must admit the further in I got the more my suspension of disbelief was challenged. Without including spoilers I can’t give specific examples, but I must say there were definitely a few times I found myself saying ‘no way would that have happened that way’. Still, I did it enjoy it quite a bit, the same way I tend to enjoy some action/thriller/horror films despite similar flaws. As for the narration. It wasn’t bad, though I can’t honestly say there was a need for three separate narrators. I understand the thinking behind it: there are three female POV characters, but I honestly think a single consistent narrator would have worked just as good if not better. Overall it’s a fun thriller and I’ll be checking out more of Modglin’s work in the future. Thanks so much to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for allowing me to listen to and review an audio ARC of The Dinner Guests.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R1UER3TX0DUMTN/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

An escape room in book form! I really enjoyed the characters and how the author built the story into an escape room scenario. I've read a lot of mystery and psychological thrillers, but this one was unique. I kept talking out loud to the book, giving my warnings and ideas to the characters! Well written, compelling, and entertaining.

I was so pleasantly surprised by this book after really not liking my first Kiersten Modglin. This book is about Beth, Lakyn, and Piper as well as their spouses. They've been friends since they were teens and now they've got a mysterious neighbor moving in on their street. The neighbors have uber security and things are super weird so everyone is really curious. Then they get impersonal invitations to dinner one night. They all go and the couple seems nice enough, but when dessert comes, some of them get notes under their plates with different warnings. When they try to leave they're all locked in and they're put in an escape room/ dinner theater game that none of them signed up for. We don't know who is behind it, but the couple that lives there is missing and presumably orchestrating it all. However, people start going missing as they try to figure out how to get out. Someone knows their secrets and they have to confess before its all done. I was curious the whole time and thought it was really fast paced and entertaining. The characters weren't the most dynamic or unique, but they weren't the worst I've read. Overall I was really entertained!

SPOILERS AHEAD:
When they were teens, there was a guy named Tyler that hung out with the group. One night they were all partying as teens and Tyler brought cocaine. He was having an overdose and the rest were super drunk and far out in the forest so they decided to leave him. They all thought they left him for dead and felt a lot of guilt, but that confession wasn't enough to get them freed. However, then Beth and Lakyn's husband confess that they were having sex in his car (while he was dating Lakyn) and Tyler showed back up. He was fine but was going to out them in their affair so Lakyn's husband (Henry) killed him. That confession was the end, but it actually wasn't because the new neighbor was Tyler! He didn't die and he went to the cops but they didn't prosecute because the friend group was all wealthy kids and the cops refused to pursue it. So he took matters into his own hands. He had help from the former tenants of the house ( a sweet old couple who was friends with everyone) but they didn't know that he was trying to kill them. They thought it was just a fun escape room. Theres a big showdown with guns etc. and Lakyn and Henry are both hurt but all is fine in the end.

✨ Some neighbors get invited to a little dinner party at a new neighbor's house.

💥This was my first book by this author, and I am really ready to read more! The pacing was very quick and I really loved the way the clues came together. So well, in fact that the ending was slightly predictable, but maybe that was because the journey led you straight there! However, I really liked the way the writing was so easy to read and more fun than work.

My face at the end: 🤓

🍪 I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to @Netgalley for allowing me to read this ahead of publication.

💯 For more details on the books we read, be sure to follow me on TikTok (@zaineylaney). I will give you a list of reasons to read! Or listen to our podcast, Elated Geek, wherever you subscribe.

“Sometimes there is beauty in letting things go, even if you spend your life making amends for the bad, even if you never quite forgive yourself. It’s ok to give yourself grace.”

Of course I enjoyed this book…because K. Mod. 🤷🏼‍♀️. She gets right into the thick of it. Her books are interesting and concise. She’s not a “word waster.” The audiobook was awesome too. I loved the narrator.

This book is about 6…well, 5 friends with boatloads of secrets. The friends have been close since they were kids and still live in the same neighborhood. Boring suburbia at its finest.

The friends suddenly get new neighbors. A very mysterious couple with newly added surveillance equipment everywhere. The group is curious, but they don’t make much effort to meet their new neighbors. Despite not knowing their new neighbors, the group gets invited to a dinner party. Weird. 🚩

Of course chaos ensures…it is K. Mod after all. Secrets surface and lines are crossed. Can the group’s friendship survive the night!? Will the friends survive at all!?! What did they do!?! In typical K. Mod fashion everything wraps nicely.

This is a book I absolutely recommend, with well-defined characters and escape room vibes.

Riddle me this…𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚒𝚜, 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚎𝚎.

4.25 ⭐
I know that when new neighbors move into my neighborhood I go into stalker mode 👀🕵, who are they? where are they from? where do they work? do they like to read? do they play golf? do they have any children? JK, or am I?? 🤣

Who are these new people that have moved into the quiet neighborhood? That's what Lakynn, Henry, Bethany, Leo, Piper and Shane want to know. When an invitation to a dinner party arrives in the mail these friends are eager to meet them, but soon realize maybe it wasn't such a good idea. Hosts Penn and Etta give off an interesting and mysterious vibe.

5 of the 6 have been friends since elementary school. With that many years of friendship there must be a few secrets this group doesn't want to get out. You'll just have to wait until the end for them to be revealed.

I love that it was told in the POV's of Lakynn, Bethany and Piper. Melissa Moran, Nancy Wu, and Allyson Ryan did a wonderful job narrating, even their male voices were great. They sounded properly frantic when necessary. 6 hours and 16 minutes ~ quick and easy listen at 2x while puttering around the house.

This was an exciting escape room thriller, with a couple of nice twists, that'll have you on the edge of your seat as they try to solve the riddles in order to get out.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

This book was highly entertaining and twisted. The nightmare dinner party kept me guessing throughout the whole book. At first all of the characters seemed to be good people, but as the tale went on it became clear they all had so many secrets and were not who I originally thought they were. This was a very entertaining read.

The past few books by Kiersten Modglin that I read just didn’t do it for me. They were ok, but nothing amazing. This one though, was what I have been hoping for since I read The Arrangement and falling in love with her writing! I did see parts of the twist coming, but I loved the escape room aspect as well as the life long friends. Overall, this is one of my favorites by her and it made me excited again to get to more of her massive backlist!

this was a short audiobook but goodness it pulled me in more than i can remember another audiobook doing. i couldn’t stop listening to the story and the characters. as soon as i thought “oh this might be it” BAM another twist was thrown in. definitely going to be looking for more books by this author!

A dinner party turned escape room mystery - a few close neighbors with a shared dark past lured into the home of a new neighbor in a small town under the guise of a welcome dinner party but with much more sinister intentions. When trapped, it forces the old friends to admit their deepest secrets in order to have their best chance at escape.

This was a super quick listen for me. I prefer consuming small bites of K Mod’s books this way… this is about my third of her audiobooks. There were a decent amount of characters and I had some trouble keeping track of who was who and married to who but got the overall gist. Entertaining as always!

Thank you to NetGalley, Dreamscape, and the author for the copy in exchange for an honest review!

3.5-3.75 stars

Another quick but intensely dramatic story. I really like this author’s thrillers because, for stories that generally feature murder, they’re often fairly fluffy (for lack of better wording). I was pulled in and pretty interested in the story almost immediately (even though it almost felt like there were two distinct plot lines that needed to be meshed together a bit more fluidly), but I was not sold on the last quarter or so. It was way over the top, unbelievable, and just generally felt like the writer was trying to do too many things at once. I didn’t dislike the book overall, but the lead-up to the ending didn’t really work for me.

Being from a small southern town, I know a gossipy neighborhood. In fact, was this my parents' neighborhood? Only kidding! However, also being southern, I'm very familiar with Faulkner. Reading Faulkner can be very confusing because of constantly changing narrators. Not a bad idea in theory, but for an audiobook and my oral retention skills, I was quite confused who was who for the majority of the story. Not that the audiobook version was bad or the narrators weren't distinct, but I think I just need to look at the words on the page. That said, this was an interesting, twisty story and I quite enjoyed the storytelling and pacing. I will definitely read more by Kiersten Modglin, but steer away from audiobooks in general for myself because it's just not a format that suits me. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. I know The Dinner Guests will be a smash hit for Modglin.

🔊Song Pairing: Be Our Guest - Beauty & the Beast because I am a sick weirdo 😂

💭What I thought would happen:

A dinner party gone horribly wrong (the best kind to read about)

📖What actually happens:

In a small quiet suburb the neighbours are in a bit of a tizzy when their wacky older neighbours leave and sell the house with no warning and now the new owners are moving in and building an intense large wall…

A select group of the neighbourhood, the ones who have known each other since grade school, are invited to a last minute dinner party in which they’ll finally meet these new strange people…they didn’t suspect they’d try to murder them…

🗯Thoughts:

Well jeez if I wasn’t convinced before then I am now..Kiersten is a gifted thriller writer. While I didn’t like this as much as The Reunion it was very enjoyable and soo quick!

I liked the way the events played out and I didn’t see the ending coming but to be fair it’s not very possible until the end. I’d say everything was a bit far fetched but meh I was okay with everything that occurred.

I struggled a bit with who the narrator was at the time as it switches between 3 women and I quite often was getting their backstories mixed up. Blame my aging pickled memory😂

This book was interesting because it made you wonder the whole time. It was definitely very easy to get through and seems very quick. It didn’t leave much to the imagination and I guessed the ending very quick.

New neighbors move in next door, installing top-of-the-line security systems. No one in the small neighborhood has seen these new people until they get a short note inviting them to dinner. Since all are so curious they accept, hoping to get some new gossip. It all goes well until they decide they are ready to go home, only to find they can't leave.

The story is fun, even if not original. I liked all the characters and the way the story was told in the voices of the two best friends, Bethany and Lincoln. Big surprise, these people have known each other since high school and have a secret they have been keeping for decades. Shades of "I know what you did last summer" but done with enough suspense to keep me engaged.

My only complaint was the ending. Not that I didn't like it, it just had way too many twists. So many it made my head spin and made what could have been a great ending almost laughable and very improbable. It felt like the author just didn't know when to stop and kept changing who was the bad guy and why and how they would get out, assuming they would get out alive.

The Audiobook was the best option for this story in my opinion. It made it easier to tell when the narrative switched between the 2 women.

Thanks to @netgalley, Dreamscape Media, and Kiersten Modglin for the opportunity to listen to this Audiobook in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.