A writer's retreat with a twist! I'm a fan of the gripping locked-room mysteries and this one did not disappoint. I could not put this one down! Very suspenseful read!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 rounded up

The mysterious and successful J.R. Alastor has kept their identity a secret for years. When J.R. invites 6 thriller authors to a week long retreat on a private island, the invitees jump at the chance to work and learn with the renowned author. But upon arriving at the private manor and meeting their stand in host, Mila, the authors soon discover something else is going on. Mila has games and riddles lined up and guests soon begin to disappear. When one turns up dead, even Mila is questioning Alastor's identity and motives. With the body count rising, who will make it off the island alive?

I went into it with some pretty high expectations after lot of positive early reviews. However, it did fall a little flat for me. The locked door, Clue vibes storyline was exciting but the story did drag a bit. There are many characters to keep track of and the narrative is told by a few of them, changing POVs with the chapters. I started out reading the physical book and was struggling to keep going. Then I switched to audiobook and enjoyed it more. The audiobook is done with a full cast and what was a slow burn reading, kept me more interested with the audio. It wasn't a bad book at all, just didn't thrill quite like I was expecting it to. Some twists I figured out early on and others were a surprise. This is the debut novel for Pliego and it was a solid one. I will be looking for her future reads as she develops as a writer!

Lively characters and great location description with a powerful lead up to the unexpected conclusion.

You Are Fatally Invited is a twisted story with damaged characters, I would compare to Agatha Christie's, And Then There Was None which will find you racing to the end to figure out all the sordid mysteries and hidden agendas.

As authors arrive on a secluded island, fortunate enough to have been graced with an invitation by the recluse author J.R. Alastor, whom no one has ever met, the feeling is that of the television show in the eighties called Fantasy Island. All six of the famous authors seem to try and one up each other as to their relationship with their host. They are met by the hostess or party planner for the weekend, Mila del Angel, herself a former unpublished want to be writer.

She knows what is expected of her and she too has a hidden agenda, but as she explains what this weekend's writer's retreat will accomplish and the games which will be played the main concern of the guests is when they will finally meet the mysterious Alastor.

Unfortunately, immediately things begin to go wrong when the next morning one of the writer's goes missing. At first, they think perhaps they had gone for a hike, but to everyone's horror that seems to not be the case.

Mila who only communicates with Alastor via her watch gets no response from him. When she decides to look at the camera footage from the previous night, hours seem to be missing.

She soon begins to realize there is something else going on, something sinister. And when she announces the first game to be played by the authors, they too begin to see something is amiss. For all intents and purposes the "clues" to this game hit too close to home for each one of them and is about something they have hidden from their past.

When a second body is discovered they all decide they need to get off this island and Mila who feels she is being set up agrees. But with a storm coming up, that might not be possible.

As the writers begin to turn on each other and new games are added daily, they realize someone is taking great pleasure at scaring and killing them. Unfortunately, Mila looks to be the main suspect. What they don't know is Mila herself has never met Alastor in person. Could one of them be the killer?

You Are Fatally Invited cordially invites YOU, the reader to try and figure out who the killer is and what past secrets for some reason are expected to be exposed. The cost of losing one of the games? Well, perhaps their life! You will be holding your breath to see who makes it to the end and finally discover all those sordid, shocking secrets!

Thank you #NetGalley #BantamBooks #AndePiegro #YouAreFatallyInvited

A remote island.
A famous writer who no one knows the identity of is host.
A group or thriller writers with deep secrets.
A deadly game of clue.
Of course this all adds up as a twisty thriller.
Loved this one!
4.5 stars rounded down

I was really excited for this but, I’m sad to say, it did not live up to the hype.

All of the characters seemed either empty or annoying. I feel like I’m supposed to care about them, but I don’t see why.

I did enjoy the layer of those attempting to organize the game being trapped in it. But then some of the feelings in each POV felt repetitive and gave me the feeling that the book could have been shorter. I did like the order of the POVs with what was happening in the plot, but the writing and characters made it a chore to read.

DNF’d at 50%

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring myself to finish it.

This was a strong closed circle thriller with Agatha Christie vibes and an overall good who-dunnit mystery. I felt like the pacing was pretty even and I really wanted to give it ago due to the different posts I have seen about this book. Overall, it was a good, solid mystery and I look forward to more from Ande Pliego! 3.5 rounded up

Thank you to @netgalley and @andepliegowrites for my ARC of You Are Fatally Invited.

You Are Fatally Invited is about a group of authors invited to a deadly writing retreat with the mysterious J.R. Alastor and event planner, Mila, who holds a grudge against one of the authors. Soon after, one of the guests turns up dead and all the others have to do to survive, is confess to their crimes, but no one is talking.

I read Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None for the first time in sixth grade and have been searching mystery books for that same feeling ever since. I've never found it. Until Now.

This is it. This the one!

You Are Fatally Invited is very much And Then There Were None meets Clue (which I also love!) and it has solidified Ande Pliego as an auto-buy author for me. I seriously cannot recommend this book enough!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion!

This book was absolutely wild, I thought I knew the answer to the mystery like five different times, and was consistently wrong every time. That being said, it was such a suspenseful and fun read! I adored the (mostly) happy ending, more thriller novels like this, please!

First off, who doesn’t love an audiobook with a full cast of narrators, that really helped with know the different voices but there was just way to many characters to keep track of. I had to jump back and forth with the audiobook and the ebook just to try to keep track of the characters and that helped a little with the confusion. While I loved the similarities to Glass Onion: Knives Out and Clue, I just wasn’t blown away like I was expecting based on rave review that I saw prepublication.

****Many thanks to PRHaudio and Random House - Bantam for the #gifted copies!

I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have been struggling with reading this book. The story is kind of all over the place. There are a lot of characters POV's and motivations to try to remember and every time one POV starts to get interesting it switches to someone else. I cannot bring myself to keep pushing through it right now because it is so chaotic. I think it was trying to go for Clue and And Then There Were None Vibes but there was just too much going on. I will try to read this again in the future because I am not in the mood right now to parse through all of the chaos to see if there is more to the story itself. Soft DNFing at 18%.

I think this will be a popular one among avid mystery/thriller readers. A writing retreat that plays out like a game of Clue. It was exciting and fast-paced. If you are willing to suspend disbelief and just sit back and enjoy the crazy ride, you're going to love this book. It's wild, twisty, claustrophobic, and multi-POV. Short chapters make for a fast-paced read. I had a really fun time trying to piece the puzzle. It didn't have the emotional depth or thought-provoking themes that would make it a personal five-star favorite, but of course that's not the intention of the story. Definitely recommend if you're looking for an enjoyable thriller read.

I loved this one so much. The lockedroom, the mystery and the suspense were all superb. I did a tour review of this one so it’s on my IG

This book kept me hooked the entire time. I did not see the person being Alastor that was. It was like a big life version of clue and who don it. Everyone was always looking to each other as the one doing all the problems and the killings. People didn't know why others were ending up missing or found dead. There were puzzles that had to be figured out and that would lead them to know more about each other and figure out who was really behind everything. I really didn't see anyone getting out in the end or them turning the place around either, but there still seems to be some forms of secrets that are being held on to.

An exclusive invitation to a private manor brings six thriller writers together for what they believe is a writers’ retreat. Instead, they find themselves fighting for their lives through a series of challenges and classic tropes, completely isolated due to a terrible storm. And they haven’t even met their host, who no one has ever actually seen.

Then there’s Mila, hired by their mysterious host to run things. But she secretly has deadly intentions herself towards one of the guests. Suddenly, nothing is going as planned, and Mila is forced to wonder if maybe she’s in the same perilous position as the guests.

I loved this book. It has so many of my favorite things-isolated manor, mysterious host, guests with secrets from the past who are being picked off one by one and no one knows who is doing it…add in the Mila layer and I was completely sold. I would definitely recommend this book.

Loved loved loved loved this book. It was a fun and wild ride all the way until the end. My only complaint is that sometimes it got a little hard to follow, but whenever I felt like I was losing the thread on who was who the author brought it right back around. Highly recommend

This was a hard one to keep up with. There were lots of characters and the back and forth had me dizzy. It was very interesting and I didn’t see the ending coming at all but maybe because I was confused? Idk. Overall it was just ok

You Are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego // ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My most anticipated thriller of the year did not disappoint! You Are Fatally Invited is an absolute treat for fans of classic whodunits, blending elements of Clue, Agatha Christie’s works, and other iconic mystery thrillers into a deliciously deadly tale. It felt like a homage to the genre, packed with all the tropes we love—isolated setting, a cast of complex characters, and a killer picking them off one by one.

The premise is irresistible: anonymous yet legendary thriller author J.D. Alastor invites six fellow thriller writers to his private island for a writing retreat. But as the storm rolls in, so does the body count. With a killer determined to serve their own version of justice, the weekend turns into a deadly game of survival. Body after body, twist after twist, this book kept me on edge until its final jaw-dropping revelation—and wow, what an ending!

The setting—an eerie island off the coast of Maine—couldn’t have been more perfect, adding to the tension and isolation. The characters were richly developed, each with their own secrets and motivations, making them feel like more than just archetypes. However, with multiple perspectives and layers of intrigue, there were moments where the sheer amount of information became overwhelming, leading to a bit of confusion.

That said, Pliego masterfully maintains what a thriller is meant to be—thrilling. The pacing is excellent, keeping the suspense high and the pages turning. If you're a fan of classic murder mysteries with a modern twist, this one is a must-read!

A huge thank you to NetGalley, Ande Pliego, and Bantam for the advanced reader’s copy in exchange for my honest thoughts!

Thank you Random House, #partner for the advanced e-copy of You Are Fatally Invited in exchange for my honest review.

A locked-room murder mystery with a bunch of thriller writers…say no more! I couldn’t put this Clue-style read down! The twists, the tropes, the mixed media format – it all comes together for a fantastic read! It had a classic mystery style, which as a fan of Agatha Christie, I really appreciated!⁣ All the characters have such interesting pasts and that only adds to the suspense as you try to figure out just what is going on here. This one really kept me guessing all the way through and I loved every second of it!

I LOVED THIS BOOK!

I requested a copy of this on a whim, but I was not disappointed. This book is like if the Knives Out: Glass Onion meets misery meets the White Lotus, but what if they were all insufferable authors. Thriller authors. Murder thriller authors.

I will say, I was able to predict where this was headed from the second chapter, but it was so well written it didn't matter. I honestly was rooting for all the characters to die, but the ending was satisfactory. It was all great, perfect, 10/10. I will be forcing my friends to read this.