You are fatally invited

Confess the crimes, survive the tropes.

I was a huge fan of this book! I am obsessed with the cover it drew me in from the very beginning. The retreat on the island/lock door mystery genre is hard to do. I have read a lot of books that use this trope. It is a tale as old as time and I think Ande Pliego does a fantastic job of making this classic sorry line one of her own. The narrative is interictally woven in between multiply POVs and insert of the of author J. R. Alastor new released book. This book gives a nod to the murder mystery genre fabulous clichés, Clue, and Agatha Christie. This book is creepy and full of unreliable narrators. I enjoyed following the Six thriller authors, all masters of deceit, misdirection, and mayhem and seeing if they would confess their sins. The stormy remote island is the perfect setting for this writer’s retreat. I have been searching for a hot new take on the locked room murder mystery trope, and this was exactly what I needed to quench that thirst. This book was a little spookier than I normally allow myself to read but I thoroughly enjoyed it and all the games the host had to offer. Who will remain at the end? And who is J. R. Alastor? This book was a 5-star read for me. The only critique I have is that the beginning is a little confusing with all the characters and I think that a character list at the beginning of the book would help a lot. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you, Net Galley, the author, and the publisher, for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I have to start by saying that You Are Fatally Invited is the first thriller I’ve ever given a perfect five-star rating. I began reading this book during a particularly busy period and could only manage a couple of chapters each day. However, once I reached the halfway point, I couldn’t put it down.
The plot follows J.R. Alastor, a famous but anonymous thriller author, and Mila, a former aspiring writer, who invite six other thriller authors to a writing retreat at a secluded manor on a remote island. But the invitation isn’t just about writing. Alastor plans to expose their deepest secrets, while Mila has a far more sinister goal: she’s determined that one of the authors will not make it off the island alive. To bring the truth to light, they set up a series of games and riddles, all based on familiar thriller tropes. Things take a deadly turn when one of the authors is murdered—though not the person Mila had intended. This book features all the classic thriller elements: a remote location, a group of suspects, a night of games, revenge, locked rooms, and dinner parties with hidden motives. The setting was perfectly eerie, and I enjoyed the different perspectives from all the characters. I couldn’t stop reading until I found out who was responsible for the murder, and I was genuinely surprised by the ending. This is one of the best thrillers I’ve read, and Ande Pliego deserves credit for an impressive debut novel. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing - Ballantine for the ARC.

This one was a little hard for me to finish. I didn't particularly care for the characters, I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe I just wanted more to be explained in the beginning. The ending wasn't too bad, but it was still hard for me to get through. I honestly don't have too much to say about this one, I don't plan on publishing an online review for it.

𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: You Are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego
𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: Mystery/Suspense
𝐏𝐮𝐛 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞: February 11, 2025

🔪 Quest for Revenge
🤫 Dark Secrets + Lies
🔏 Themed Writer's Retreat
❓️ "Whodunit?"
📍 Maine

✨️ 3.5/5

📖 A murder mystery set on a secluded Maine island, where the guests are thriller authors harboring dark secrets? Sounds good to me!

💭 If you like the board game "Clue," then I believe you'll enjoy this one! It started pretty slow, but once it picked up, it made for a truly entertaining locked room murder mystery! As the mysterious host picks them off one by one and the group's number dwindles, the stakes become higher, their dark secrets are uncovered, and the writers descend into utter chaos.

✨️ 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘈𝘳𝘦 𝘍𝘢𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘐𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 is a must-read for fans of whodunit and twisty murder mysteries! Comparable to Agatha Christie!

Thank You Netgalley for the E-ARC. I purchased the audio because FULL CAST! This is such a fun mystery. A whole island full of writers, what more could we ask for. Ok so they all have a trunk full of secrets and someone is killing them all off because of it. This would make the best Book club book. I loved it, I had fun, and honestly this would still be just as good as a re-read.

"Sealing a cast of guilty characters in a house and forcing them to fight for their lives is a brilliant way to discover who has changed, and who hasnt."


Dual povs
Writing retreat
Locked room subgenre
Final girl vibes



Gives me hard knives out vibes and I'm so excited to see who j r alastor really is.


Olivia has the same line almost every chapter which makes me heavy eye roll everytime. I'm hoping that's intentional.

This book has everything I like in a murder mystery. It was in a writer’s retreat, not only that but it also has locked room murder mystery!
Here we have Mika who organizes a writer’s retreat in one of author’s private manor. The guest list is quite interesting but it’s more interesting when it turns out Mila got a murder planned of her own. When things don’t go as planned and she gets tangled up in the story she gotta find the real killer to save her skin. It was a fantastic read.

Thanks to Random House publishing and NetGalley for the eARC. these thoughts are my own!

A whirlwind of twists and deceits, You Are Fatally Invited takes the conventional locked-room mystery setup (a group of seemingly unrelated people stranded at an isolated location), and amps it up to the extreme sport version of a brain teaser. Sprinkling in tidbits about mystery fiction writing and thriller tropes, this is essentially a love letter to the genre.

As much as I appreciate its intricacy and ambition at packing as much red herring and plot twist as possible, it does start to resemble a convoluted mess rather than a calculated chaos—there are so many layers of who has hidden/twisted what information from whom, and who was where at certain moment, that by the end I was still left confused regarding some major plot points (even considering if the book has in fact made factual errors in its explanation).

It is always a fine line with mysteries, making the reader feels involved by providing reliable clues that could lead to reasonable deduction (which this novel has accomplished in some instances—I was glad to getting some of my guesses confirmed), yet still have enough misdirection in the mix so there remain surprises. In an effort to be unpredictable, You Are Fatally Invited has ever so slightly breach into confusion territory, where I was starting to question perhaps even the author has lost the plot in the name of thrills. Still, overall this is a very decent debut, and an atmospheric homage to the classic murder mystery framework. Would be curious to see where Ande Pliego will write next!

**This ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated!**

Two of my favorite things...Maine and locked room mysteries. I could even add a third..a phenomenal debut. Add all of those things together, and you have Ande Pliego's You Are Fatally Invited. Everything about this book just works, from the initial idea of bringing authors (all of whom are hiding secrets) together for a weeklong retreat to the premise that the killer might in fact be one of them. Every once in a while I find a debut author that I just have to know what they're writing next, because I have a feeling they might just become a new favorite author, and I'm definitely getting that vibe from You Are Fatally Invited!

BOOK: You Are Fatally Invited
AUTHOR: Ande Pliego
PUB DATE: February 11, 2025, by Bantam
PAGES: 371
RATING: 5 stars
GENRE: Murder Suspense/Thriller

A H U G E Thank You to NetGalley, Bantam, and the author for gifting me an advanced digital in exchange for my honest review!

QUICK & SPOILER-FREE REVIEW: This book was difficult to put down. It was intriguing, and I found it to be a great whodunnit murder mystery and even better than CLUE! If you’re looking for a terrific book that will keep you guessing until the end, be sure to pick this one up!

Elusive author J.R. Alastor invites a handful of mystery writers to an island for a retreat; however, they do not know the real reason they are there and how they are tied to each other. They are all keeping secrets, and J.R. is determined to shed some light on them, all the while maintaining their anonymity. Mila is the one who organized everything, but even she does not know what is happening when people start showing up missing every day; she also has her own ulterior motive. Can the remaining players make it off the island and discover Alastor’s true identity? The writing was unique because it also had pieces of J.R.’s work sprinkled throughout the story. The book was self aware and knew a plot twist was needed. I really enjoyed the Clue game and how it came into play.

I love locked room mysteries, especially ones that involve other writers with mastermind games afoot, but I couldn't connect with this one. I'm not sure if it was because of all the different whirling POV's or what, but I had difficulty settling into the characters and storyline. Unfortunately, this didn't work for me.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine for the ARC in exchange for my review.

Thank you Ballantine and PRH audio for review copies, You are Fatally Invited is a fun twisty read, particularly excellent on audio for a multi voice, engaging performance. A group of authors who are so much more than who/what they seem, competing revenge plots that ensnare an unwitting but savvy main character, and a growing unease ala locked room tropes and a missing dead body... these are great plot devices that should work and in a lot of ways they do. Overall this is a fun read, engaging for the ideas and perfect for a deadly trapped on an island mystery. The moody setting is particularly well executed!

For me though at times the pacing, especially early on, lagged and I found myself sitting and trying to get more oriented to a story that in many ways was already in progress, I just needed a little more set up and character development at the start of the book. This often happens to me with multi character suspense reads, as a reader I often feel placed in the middle of the story without knowing the who/what/where of the plot and for me this is alienating, even if clues come together later. Slow burn works for me often but I need a hook, to be sucked into wanting to get to the reveals, the pay offs and I never quite got to the can't put this down, what will happen vibe.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Bantam for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! I loved this book and read it in one sitting. I could not put it down, I just had to know what was going to happen. I would definitely recommend this book.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance e-book.
This book was so good. I immediately went out and purchased a finish copy.. I look forward to reading more from this author in the future

3.5 ⭐️’s
When a reclusive author invites six additional thriller authors to a writer’s retreat on a remote island, all are not overjoyed to be there, but also don’t want to miss it. Mila has been hired by Alastor to help mastermind a week of games, riddles, puzzles and so much more. Mila has her own agenda for being there along with the six writers. All have secrets, and all they need to do is confess those secrets and they will live, but the rules seem to change abruptly and with a storm on the way and no way to get off the island, will any of them survive? A new twist to an old plot, only made this an OK read. Thank you to Bantam and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

I love a good locked door/stranded on a small island mystery. Six writers enthusiastically accept an invitation to a private island owned by a reclusive writer for an exclusive writers retreat. Horror writers all, they are not surprised to learn it is to have a mystery to solve at every dinner. What they don’t know is that their host and the hosts accomplice have some very troubling games waiting for the, Things start to go wrong pretty quickly. It becomes clear early on that Mila, the event coordinator, is there for her own revenge on the author who stole her book and published it as their own. She doesn’t know why Alastor wants to punish the rest of the authors and she doesn’t care.

Each of the characters is very well written. For a bunch of people who could come off as very similar, they are very distinguishable. Not just by the kind of horror or mysteries that they write. The fun of a story about writers is matching them to possible real life author you know. There is the young new writer, the old and well-published writer, with everything in between. We find out how each of the guests are connected bit by bit up until the very end. From the first night, they start getting picked off.

There are quite a few mysteries to solve. Which writer stole Mila’s book? Is one of the Alastor? If so, which one? Instead of answering any of them early on, more questions come from practically everywhere. My favorite clue is Clue. A personalized version including each of the people on the island. There’s a handy picture of the game board at the beginning of the book. This is where we find out that every single one of them has something to hide. Something big. So we have to figure out who is who because no one wants to admit what they have done right up front.

I just couldn’t put this one down. I read it in my comfy chair with very little interruption. I’m pretty proud to say I did figure some of them out. I had two characters completely backwards, though. It was so much fun that I just bought the book for my daughter.

I think that this is going to be a most talked about book this year. I've read a lot of similar books - private island with no escape and people are dwindling.... But this one spun together the story in a really interesting way that kept my attention. The multiple POVs, backgrounds, mystery, lies, twists & turns..... I should have kept a notebook on the suspects/characters & the storyline. Well put together. I look forward to the next book from this author.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC of Ande Pliego's 'You Are Fatally Invited'.
This is a twisty thriller that kept me guessing until the end. The author did a great job of making the island come alive. The various perspectives propelled the story along while weaving present-day and flashbacks of each character's back story.
4 stars, highly recommend!

I just finished You Are Fatally Invited, and this one took me by surprise. I give it 3.5 stars . At first, I thought it would be your typical ‘writers on a remote island, people start dying’ setup, but the twists got me good. I didn’t see everything coming, and trying to piece together who did what kept me on my toes. A little chaotic at times, but overall, a solid, well-executed thriller. Definitely recommend if you like books that keep you guessing!

Thank you Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for honest review !