Before writing my review, I want to extend a huge thank you to NetGalley, Darby Kane, and William Morrow, William Morrow Paperbacks for gifting me the ARC of this book! I appreciate you trusting me with an honest review!! It was a privilege to be able to read THE ENGAGEMENT PARTY before publication on December 5th.

I love love love locked-room mysteries! So when I read the premise of this book and saw the comparisons made to Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THEY WERE NONE, I knew I just had to get my hands on THE ENGAGEMENT PARTY! And I’m so glad I did!

This was my first book from Darby Kane and I really enjoyed it! The storyline was captivating and kept me reading well into the night. The escalating suspense propelled the book forward at lightening speed and kept the reader guessing until the very end. The characters, for the most part, were well developed, especially one of our main protagonists, Sierra. Her evolving relationship with Mitch was an intriguing part of the narrative. However, not all of the characters were likable— in fact, some were quite despicable. But each added something unique to the storyline and helped progress plot points.

The isolated setting with a raging storm as the backdrop added to the eeriness and mystery of the story. There was a claustrophobic feel emanating from the characters as it became clear there was something or someone keeping them from leaving the island. And just when you think you have all of the answers, think again! In this clever thriller by Darby Kane, nothing is as it first seems, long buried secrets define friendships, and reliable narrators are few and far between. What you are left with is a fun, twisty, suspenseful read, perfect for mystery lovers and night owls alike!

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for the eARC in exchange for my honest review

Book Dynamics✨
Multiple POV
Book within a book-ish
Whodunnit

While I loved the concept and did enjoy how things wrapped up the journey was one I wouldn’t recommend. This book needed to be about 200 pages shorter.

I found myself not actually caring about the outcome because I was just trying to get to the end. I was skimming so much to get to the outcome that I got the gist of the book while simultaneously skimming full pages. Woof.

I have loved all of Darby’s books and she will continue to be an auto buy author for me but this one missed the mark

Overall: grab if you love a whodunnit isolated island popcorn thriller

Favorite Character: lol no

I really enjoyed this book. The lock door premise using an island setting was fresh and interesting. There were a lot of characters to keep straight and they were mostly unlikeable. There are a lot of books coming out with the "group of friends have a secret they've kept for years" trope. But I did enjoy this. In the end, the twists and turns and deaths didn't amount to a huge reveal of a mystery but it did keep me reading until the end. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Absolutely fantastic plot! Could not put the book down once I began reading it. Cannot wait for it to be released. I will recommend it to everyone I know!

In this creepy locked door mystery, a group of friends reunite to celebrate an engagement. Each person is hiding things and keeping secrets, but they’ll be forced to come to light over the course of the weekend. The mystery began with an untimely death (and possible murder) of their friend Emily on graduation weekend, but there are other connections to the past that keep coming up. Notes of warning appear, someone is creeping around the property, and the tide has risen so no one can leave the island. Will the truth come out?

This book gives vibes from I Know What You Did Last Summer, Agatha Christie, and Daisy Darker. The setting of an island at high tide is perfect, and the storm makes it atmospherically creepy. There are twists and red herrings throughout, making the final reveal very difficult to guess. The characters are all unlikable and one in particular is over the top in her villain portrayal. Despite that, I enjoyed this thriller and would recommend it to those who enjoy an atmospheric locked door mystery.

Thank you to Darby Kane, William Morrow, and Netgalley for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

Kane's a powerhouse writer in my opinion and I could not wait to read the latest book so thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Four stars. It kept my attention most of the time and I liked the thrilling parts but the others felt just ok to me. I think I would go back and read it again at a different point.

A group of friends are invited to a weekend gathering in Maine to celebrate one of them getting engaged. With four of the six gatherers holding secrets to a series of murders a decade earlier, the tension is high the moment they set foot on the island. What follows is a weekend of secrets coming to the surface, identities being revealed, and loyalties being tested.
···
I enjoyed the last two releases by Kane and was excited to receive an advanced copy of this one from NetGalley. I would say this is my third favorite (of three), but that doesn't mean it was not an enjoyable read. I think that readers will engage with Sierra and Mitch, but the premise that a group of friends would be able to keep their own versions of a murderous secret for years was a bit much...though I suppose ignoring each other for years helped a bit.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced digital copy.

I requested an ARC of this book because I enjoyed Darby Kane's first book (Pretty Little Wife). I also read a lot of thrillers and psychological suspense books, so this one should have been right up my alley.

Unfortunately, The Engagement Party (as it stands right now) is sub-par. If I had not been reading this to review for Netgalley, I would almost certainly have quit reading by the 30% mark. I am hoping that the publisher takes the feedback from early readers into account and uses the commentary to revise before publication!

Here are my specific critiques:
1.) I had a terrible time keeping the characters straight in my head. For whatever reason, I found the men to be indistinguishable from one another. A cast of characters at the beginning would have been helpful. It took me a while to remember that Cassie was married to Alex and that Sierra was the co-worker/love interest for Mitch. Also, what exactly does Mitch do? I feel like in different places he was doing landscaping, construction, and refinery work. I had very little sense about who these people are, which probably contributed to my inability to keep them straight.
2.) Once the characters are all congregated on the island, I felt like a scene of them being lulled into a false sense of security was needed. Maybe they could enjoy a meal or cocktails together before discovering the (first) dead body?! Also, I could have used more description of the island setting. In general, the beginning of the book felt clunky and awkward. Take out some of the ridiculous drama with creeping around in the dark/pouring down rain later on in the book if you need to so that you can set up the characters and the setting a little bit better.
3.) The body count in this book is ridiculous. Let's tally them up: Emily, Brendan, Tyler, Jake, Will, fake Dylan, and finally Alex. That's a lot of dead folks. I'm also not really sure how long this took. Did the portion that took place on the island take place over a day? 12 hours? How long, exactly, is the island causeway submerged? If we had some kind of a countdown in the chapters (1 hour until high tide; 2 hours before low tide, etc.) that would be neat.
4.) These characters are not very bright and their decision-making is awful. For example, at one point in the book there is a terrible storm raging outside. One character decides to go out into the terrible storm to chase a shadow (or something-it was flimsy, whatever his reason was). Everyone tells him not to go, but of course he decides to. Then the other stupid characters argue over who needs to go after him. Why does anyone need to go after him? One character does, and in the three sentences that passed Alex managed to get whacked in the head. Another example-these characters are stupid enough to PUT ON THEIR OWN ZIP TIES when the fake Dylan shows up. What? They are all that stupid? Really? At a certain point I just felt like they were all too stupid for words and that they deserved whatever ending fate dealt them. Oh, and another thing-the "police officer" showing up around the time that they discover the first dead body in the trunk was so obvious. No one called him...surely someone in that group of knuckleheads would have questioned how he knew to show up.

To balance my critiques out, here are the things that I think work in the book:
1.) I liked Ruthie's book notes. They came across as melodramatic, but that worked here! I love a book-within-a-book plot device.
2.) I thought the fake-out of the end of Dylan actually being female was clever, as well as the explanation that she had manipulated this whole situation into existence. I love the idea of Ruthie/Dylan being a genius who was almost out-smarted, but who ended up vanishing into thin air. In my head, she had an escape plan at the ready and she is typing up her book from a deserted island retreat somewhere under a new identity.
3.) I also thought that it worked that Emily died by drowning and that it was Cassie that killed her.

Thank you for the ARC of this book! I think with some editing, it has the potential to be a much better thriller. I will hold off on posting a public review until I can take a peek at the final version of the book.

Darby Kane’s upcoming The Engagement Party is full of chaos and deception. It was an incredible yet disastrous roller coaster of twists and turns as a group of old college friends gathered to celebrate one of them getting married. The proposal was quick. The location is remote. The group is anxious. Someone is dead.

I absolutely devoured this book. It read so fast; I could barely keep up. I remember liking the author’s other book, Pretty Little Wife, so I knew immediately what was in store. The number of twisty happenings kept me guessing and each time I thought I knew who was the killer, I was wrong. The tension kept building all the way to the very end.

I recommend this to anyone who loves piecing together a multifaceted puzzle of whodunit.

The friends you make in college could potentially be your best friends for life, or you can be forced to stay friends because of your choices. Emily Hunt had many male friends and seemed to collect them like a hobby but is this what lead to her death?

Fast forward to the present Will is finally getting married to Ruthie and they have invited everyone to join them on a private island on the coast of Maine. No way on the island except to come at low tide once you are there you're there until low tide again.

Cassie & Alex have been together since college, respected lawyers and parents to Zara. Mitch and Sierra tagged along with them for the trip against all their better judgements no-one wanted to go and rehash what happened years ago. After all these years of protecting one another this could be the weekend to tear them apart,

As the weekend unfolds trust and suspicion as to what the real motive for this weekend comes to light. A coastal storm knocks out power (or so they thought), there is more than one dead body and everyone is a suspect. Until Dylan shows up out of nowhere and threatens to clean house.

Twists and turns, back and forth in time had you on your toes trying to really figure out what happened to Emily oh and let's not forget Brendan who also was found dead all those years ago.

I was given this ARC for my honest review from @Netgalley and @DarbyKane with @HarperCollinsPublishers. The Engagement party is Due out on December 5, 2023. I really enjoyed this story line living on the New England coast myself I could visualize where this was taking place, the only thing I would have to say was I wished that it ended a bit sooner, I pushed through the last few chapters more so to find out the real backstory. However in the end I was surprised by what I found out and was glad I pushed through.

Four friends from college reunite for an engagement party, but things turn deadly and it becomes clear someone wants answers to the unsolved murder of their friend. Sierra, the main character, is the only one with no connection to the murder. This is a very gripping, suspenseful book, with lots of threads to unravel, and I was glued to the pages. The red herring from Mitch's past and Ruthie's motivations felt a little opaque to me at the end, but I did love how convincingly Darby Kane planted false leads and misdirection, and it was a very satisfying conclusion.

I absolutely loved reading this book. I could not stop reading it. My first Darby Kane novel and it will not be my last. Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy for a honest review.

I have loved Darby Kane's previous books. This one fell totally flat with me. Since this was an ARC, I am offering my honest review and I read the book to the end. If it was not an ARC, I would have put it as a did not finish. This is about an Engagement party where people who were close in college come out to celebrate the engagement of Will and Ruthie. Will was in the friend group. Ruthie was not. She is a newcomer. We also have Mitch and Sierra, with Sierra being an outsider, and Alex and Cassie. The book gave very little introduction to the characters. Basically they received invitations and off they went. The party is being held at a remote home on an island in Maine. Turns out a storm is brewing too.

The book is a fast read with short chapters with the POV of each of the characters. So the readability was good. However, they stumbled upon something awful soon after they arrived and the book progressed from there. There is constant bickering. Stories about what happened in college that aren't true. Some stories that are true. They're all talking at once, and at times I forgot who said what. Turns out that a girl from their friend group, Emily, was murdered on graduation weekend. The question still remains as to who did it and why.

The ending was disjointed and really didn't match up to the book. It felt rushed and sort of thrown in just to end the book. I'm being vague here so as not to spoil the story for future readers. I see good reviews, so maybe it was just me. We all have different tastes. It literally pains me to give such a low review for a book by a great author, but it's an honest review. Somewhere toward the middle I really didn't care who did it or why and just wanted to finish the book. Thank you to Netgalley and William Morrow for the ARC. I greatly appreciate it and look forward to the next book from Darby Kane.

🇧​​🇴​​🇴​​🇰​ ​🇷​​🇪​​🇻​​🇮​​🇪​​🇼​

Thank you to William Morrow, NetGalley, and Darby Kane for this ARC! It comes out a day before my birthday, 12/05/23!

𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗿𝗲 Thriller/Suspense
𝗧𝗶𝘁𝗹𝗲 The Engagement Party
𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿 Darby Kane
𝗣𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗿’𝘀 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆
Emily Hunt went missing from her affluent liberal arts school on graduation weekend. Her body was found floating in a river, and a quiet loner who most people on campus really didn’t know committed suicide. A tenuous link—one text—bound the two dead students together and was enough for law enforcement to close the case. But they got it wrong and now someone is determined to set it right.

Twelve years later, college friends gather to celebrate an engagement over a long overdue getaway on a swanky private island in Maine—with only one way in and one way out. Sierra Prescott, invited as a guest and unconnected to past events, is the only person who soon senses not all is what it seems.

The tension in the air is ignited when they find a dead man in the trunk of a car with a note: time to tell the truth. And things only get worse. As a torrential storm strands them together, the group’s buried stories begin to surface and secrets are bartered. To survive this deadly party, they’ll need to stop a killer before they become prey.

𝗠𝘆 𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀
𝟭. 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 4/5
𝟮. 𝗣𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 5/5
𝟯. 𝗣𝗹𝗼𝘁 4/5
𝟰. 𝗘𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 5/5
𝟱. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗜 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗴𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 5/5

𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 4.6 (rounded to 5)

𝗠𝘆 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄
This was such a quick and fun read! I loved “Pretty Little Wife” by Darby Kane and when this popped up on my feed I knew I had to request the ARC! I LOVE a locked-room mystery and this fit the bill but with an exciting modern twist — internet sleuths. While digital detectives can certainly help a case (finding missing clues, spreading the word, etc.) this book shows how easily they can hurt a case and others when they get too invested! The only con about this book is that I wish the end was wrapped up a tiny bit more. I am pretty sure I “know” who is writing the book notes but I wish she would’ve come right out and said it — maybe as the last line! I really enjoyed the Author’s Note in this as Darby thanks her readers and it was a nice little pat on the back for being a literature lover!!

Song Pairing: Haunted by Taylor Swift

So fantastic, thrilling and endlessly readable. I did not want to put it down at any time. Darby Kane is an author I will always recommend.

Wow wow wow! This was my second Darby Kane book and it was a wild ride.

This book started out fast and didn’t let up one bit. The story felt almost like it could be a movie - “I Know What You Did 12 Years Ago” as the book revolves around two deaths that occurred in college and the group of friends who will go to great lengths to keep a secret.

The book is told in three points of view, always a plus, and takes place on a remote island, for an engagement party. What starts as a little reunion, turns into a who-done-it as the body count starts to rise. Just when you think you figure out what’s going on, Kane throws a twists you don’t expect, even at the very end. I really only liked one character, the rest were very easy to hate once you start learning their backgrounds, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good book!

Overall, this was a fast, entertaining read that I would highly recommend.

(Note: There were a few pages where Alex was referred to as Alec.)

For the first time in twelve years, a group of college friends meets up to celebrate an engagement on a private island in Maine. The only way in and out of the island is through a causeway that isn’t available to cross at night.

Soon after arriving, the group discovers a dead body in the trunk of a car and they realize that a killer is on the loose. Is the killer one of them or is someone else lurking in the shadows? To make matters worse, a storm is coming and several people in the group are hiding some dangerous secrets.

The Engagement Party is a modern twist on Agatha Christie’s classic, And Then There Were None. As soon as I began reading, I could not put this one down. I completely devoured this propulsive thriller in less than 24 hours! I'm a huge fan of Darby Kane and I knew this one would be great. I had so much fun playing detective and trying to figure out the whodunit parts before it was revealed. This fast-paced, locked room mystery had me on the edge of my seat with its game of cat and mouse.

The Engagement Party by Darby Kane will be available on December 5. Many thanks to William Morrow and NetGalley as the gifted copy!

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for the ARC of this work. Darby Kane is great at writing a compelling and complicated thriller. An engagement party goes awry for former college friends with too many secrets. I appreciated that not every character was painfully unlikeable which is common in some thrillers. I personally wasn’t a fan of one point with the ending. I wouldn’t have minded a redemption arc for a certain character. But the twist was clever. Solid thriller!

Really excited about this book. It was an Absolutely phenomenal read. High will recommend to others to pick up as soon as it is released.

I could not put this book down and read it in one sitting! I love whodunnits this was a good one. I couldn’t predict where it was going and enjoyed the ride.

Thank you netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for my honest review.