Thank you St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for sending an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Bachelorette Party is told from a dual timeline but most of the story is told from the present. A group of friends attend a yoga retreat Bachelorette Party on an island associated with where four women went missing prior. One of the characters has suspicions about what may have happened and attends in hopes of finding out more.

I enjoyed this book and it was a well-paced, easy read. Some twists were predictable but some took really took me by surprise. It felt like there were some gaps and subplots that could have been elaborated on more. There wasn’t much depth to the characters, but with so many characters involved it would have been impossible for there to be depth to all. Overall, I enjoyed the story.

Thriller that held my attention. I did guess the endIng twist. It was pretty gory and I wasn’t expecting that but it was good.

Thank you NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

Scream meets The Guest List in this atmospheric, looked room thriller. It follows two different timelines of two different women on the same island. Both go there with friends for a bachelorette party that quickly turns into a nightmare.

I really enjoyed The Resting Place and The Lost Village so I was excited to dive into this book as well. Unfortunately it didn’t give me that same on the edge of my seat feeling I was expecting. I figured out the whodunnit way too quickly and was a bit disappointed by that as well. There were also very similar names between the women of past and present that had me scrolling back in confusion to the beginning of the current chapter to figure out which point of view I was reading.
3.5 stars rounded up.

On an island in the archipelagos in the Baltic, four friends would meet up every year to catch up. One year, all four women disappeared. When Tessa, a former true crime podcaster who became persona non grata after her podcast was associated with a horrific incident, is given the opportunity to attend her oldest friend's bachelorette party on the island, she musters up the courage to go. The island is now home to a yoga retreat and the party is able to get great pricing for an exclusive stay before it actually opens. Tessa thinks this could be the chance to find out what really happened and get her life back together.

The story is mainly told in two different timelines - one right around the time of the trip the women took before they disappeared and one from the bachelorette party's timeframe. There are a couple of other times mingled in to help with some explanations. While the opening immediately lets you know that the missing women were killed, what happened is slowly unraveled while the bachelorette party is slowly finding themselves in harm's way. The secluded island is a creepy setting, especially knowing what happened ten years prior. I really enjoyed the slow unraveling of the stories as it really added to the suspense. The author did an amazing job of making the tension that Tess felt be experienced by the reader.

When this book started I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about it. There were alot of characters to follow, which I thought would make it difficult to read. But wow was I wrong. It didn’t take long to get into the characters heads and follow along while being completely involved and curious about everything that was happening. While I thought I had the ending figured out, I was wrong.
The title made it seem like it was going to be a cutiesy thriller, but NOPE. Gore. It was great. I very much enjoyed this read.
Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s press for the ARC!!!

Not a favorite of mine, but a quick and solid thriller that plays on classic tropes. I sped through this pretty quickly, and really appreciated how it embraces the genre conventions. The pacing is quite zippy, with short chapters and plenty of mini-cliffhangers that kept me turning the pages - something I always love in thriller novels!

I did find the plot to be a little too straightforward. While it may be because I'm familiar with the genre, nothing felt all that surprising. From Caroline's disappearance to the killers' identities, it all just felt like it was following a pre-determined path. I can't say I was surprised by anything that happened, which is a bit disappointing for a thriller.

The characters also didn't stand out. In a thriller or horror, that's usually fine, so I don't hold too much against the book for this. But the supporting cast didn't have much to differentiate them from one another (I couldn't tell you the difference between Caroline and Natalie, for example, or Linnea and Evelina, except for the way they're used in the plot. Even Tessa and Matilda felt a little too similar to me - both younger sisters struggling to figure out who they are in the wake of a recent life development, going to the island with friends to attempt to sort it out. That sort of thing can be made to feel intentional, but I never got that sense in the text itself. And these similarities made the back and forth between their POVs a little confusing at times.

Overall, definitely not bad. This is the sort of thriller I'd recommend to someone looking for something quick and zippy, maybe for a poolside read or during October for a spooky season vibe. Just didn't quite reach the highs I was hoping for - though I do think it would be a very fun Halloween movie!

The synopsis drew me in but unfortunately this one just fell flat for me 🥲
I did appreciate the dual timeline but honestly the 2012 flashbacks didn’t provide much helpful insight. This wasn’t bad by any means, it just didn’t capture my attention and I feel like I wasn’t really invested in finding out the truth.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free eARC. I’m not sure what made me request this - probably the fact that it just. Kept. Popping. Up. on Netgalley. It’s a decent thriller, but I ended up having some of the same issues I had with With a Vengeance, ironically!

We begin with four women on a remote island. They’re best friends who get together every year on an island in an archipelago (I was unclear if they *always* went to Isle Blind, or that just happened to be the location of the moment). They don’t tell anyone where they’re going, and disconnect for a couple of days. Except this time they didn’t come back. We see things play out - Matilda is pregnant but doesn’t want to tell the others, and there’s some weird undercurrent of tension. It ends when all 4 of them are murdered…by someone Matilda seems to recognize, although we don’t know who.

Then we’ve flashed forward 10 years and are following Tessa, a disgraced podcaster. There’s a lot that’s told rather than shown about her story, given that when we meet her, she’s already fallen from grace. I wished we’d gotten a little more on her backstory, but she agrees to go on this bachelorette weekend for her old friend Annaliese because it’s taking place on Isle Blind, which is where the four women “went missing” (no one ever found their bodies). In an even greater bit of luck, the woman running things on the island is none other than Matilda's sister Irene. Tessa’s hoping she can get enough detail to reopen the case and make herself relevant again (and perhaps get un-canceled).

The trip feels like your standard wellness retreat fare, but Tessa is convinced something isn’t right. For one, chef Adam just seems a little too intense. Then the “in case of emergency” dinghy goes missing. Then one of the other girls seemingly disappears. She left a note, but Tessa can’t imagine she would have slept through the woman leaving on a damn boat. Plus there’s the standard frenemy stuff (that’s really reminiscent of the trio of women on the girls’ trip on this season of White Lotus).

There’s a lot going on here, and we ultimately have two mysteries - what happened in the past, and how it connects to the present (where Tessa is correct that something ain’t right). It’s hard to explain too much about what didn’t work for me without giving everything away. Suffice it to say that when we get to the big unraveling, I felt unmoved and annoyed!

I kind of feel like we were stuck with the wrong narrator here. Tessa isn’t meaningfully connected to the original 4 women (other than her interest in true crime), and she’s basically a tertiary friend at the bachelorette weekend to boot. I think we might have been better served with truly rotating narrators (we do get some flashbacks to 2012 and the original 4 as the story unfolds). It ends up feeling more surface-level than I think Sten intended. Honestly I also would have enjoyed a more straightforward examination of friendships and tensions if this were just a regular bachelorette party, murder mystery not included.

I was really drawn to the premise of this book—it had all the elements I love: a locked-room-style mystery set on an isolated island, a gripping murder, and a story that kept me on my toes. One of the things I appreciated most was how the author dropped clever, misleading clues. Just when I thought I had everything figured out, a new twist would throw me off track. It kept me guessing until the very end, which I loved.

That said, I struggled to connect with the characters. While the mystery itself was well-executed, I found it hard to relate to the people involved or feel like I truly understood their motivations. I would have liked a bit more depth or insight into who they were beneath the surface.

Overall, it’s a fun, twisty read that delivers on suspense and atmosphere, even if the emotional connection to the characters fell a little flat for me.

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Synopsis: each year for friends Mead on a remote island off the coast of Sweden as they have been doing since childhood. They are the only ones who know its location. Ten years later Tessa has been engrossed in the story of the four friends who disappeared. She is now invited to a Bachelorette party for her best friend which is set to be on that very island where those four friends disappeared.
My thoughts: I enjoyed this book very much. I liked the dual POV bringing us between 2022 and 2012. There was much suspense and it was well paced. Like many suspense novels I thought I knew what was happening but was I in for a twist. This held my attention and I wanted to find out what happened to the girls.
Read this if you like locked door mysteries with some thrills!
Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this Arc in exchange for my honest review !

On a remote island off the coast of Sweden four friends go missing and are presumed dead. 10 years later the island has been transformed into a yoga retrea and Anneliese is having her bachelorette party there befoe the resort opens to the public. Tessa is one of Anneliese's best friends from school and is in a downward spiral after her famous podcast got shut down. Tessa is hopeing that this weekend will restart her career if she can find out what happened to the Nacka Four. It so happens that the owner Irene, is the older sister of one the missing girls. The more Tessa tries to figure out what happened ten years ago, she has a strange feeling that something else is going on Baltic Vinyasa. This was a fast paced read that will keep you on your toes til the very end. I would lke to thank both NetGalley and Minotaur Books for letting me read an advanced copy of this book.

This book reminded me of The Guest List by Lucy Foley. It also gave And Then There Were None vibes.

This was an incredible twisty thriller- many of the twists I did not see coming. This would be a perfect beach read.

There are also moments of dry humor injected into the story that I really enjoyed.

I felt the characters were very relatable and the dual timeline kept me on my toes.

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for an Advanced copy.

This is my first read from this author, it was a quick and easy read. I loved the turns it took at the end of the book.

I found it hard to like some of the characters and at times it did fall flat for me.

3.5 ⭐️

This is not as strong as Sten's previous books but I still read it in two days.

The story pulls you in and doesn't let go, I think in part due to short chapters that leave you wanting more. Even though I lamely guessed the who-dun-it of it all, I was still surprised by the reveal and found myself flipping back to find the puzzle pieces and put them together.

However, I thought Tessa wasn't fully fleshed out and her motivation's were selfish and half-baked, especiallyyyy when her recent past is revealed. The plot works out because of her strange reasoning but I wish there had been more thought or effort behind it.

In the end, I enjoyed the book and would def recommend it to friends.

I love a thriller set on a remote island where a group of childhood friends gather, so this book was really calling out to me. I whipped through it in about a day, partially because it caught and kept my attention and partially because it was very easy to read. To be honest, the plot and setting and characters weren’t that different from anything I’ve read before, but there were twists and I was surprised a few times. The main character is smart and likeable and doesn’t make idiotic choices when faced with danger. There’s a scene where some characters are walking through the dark and the tension had me totally on edge; I felt fully immersed in the terror of it. Bad things happen to the characters but the ending isn’t totally devastating or hopeless. I guessed a few little reveals throughout the plot but I did not guess the ending. Overall it was a solid thriller that I enjoyed reading, but it wasn’t a stand out book for me.

This is my first book by this Author and I really enjoyed it! I requested the book mainly based on the title (which prompted me to read the description) and this is my type of thriller. I love a friend group, a vacation and DRAMA. This would make a great beach read! Definitely recommend bringing this one on your summer vacation!

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for an Advanced copy.

3.5 stars

I loved The Guest List so when this was recommended as similar but darker, I wanted to read it. I have said this before in reviews but this is why I would never go to a remote getaway. Someone always dies or has their life changed forever and you are stuck on a scary island with no help. That and someone always wants to take the phones so people can really connect and you can pry my phone and kobo out of my cold dead hands.

Tessa's podcast may be gone, but her need to solve true crime stories is not and the story of the four girls who went missing on the island is not something she can pass up, even if her life is a mess. So she travels with her sister to catch up with friends and investigate a decade old mystery - only to put all of their lives at risk.

Maybe it is the split timeline or just the characters, but I didn't love this the way I loved The Guest List. It has a stronger plot but I found it a little slow in places and hard to connect with the story/women - although I did like their realistic relationships, just not them. But it is a quick read and a decent locked room thriller. Plenty of twists where you think you have it worked out, then the other timeline makes you think again.

This does lean more horror/descriptive in the gore than mystery/thriller if you are not into that. Not super dark, but certainly not a cozy mystery. Some predictable storylines but I read a lot of mystery so that isn't unusual. It did keep me guessing longer than usual.

Just wrapped up The Bachelorette Party by Camilla Sten and honestly... it was a decent ride. Definitely had that locked-room thriller vibe with a fun “what is really going on here?” energy. The setting was super atmospheric—creepy cabin in the woods during a bachelorette party gone wrong? Yes, please.

That said, it didn’t fully stick the landing for me. The characters felt a little surface-level at times, and while there were some twists, none of them totally blew my mind. I kept reading because I wanted to know how it would all shake out, but I wasn’t gripped the way I hoped to be.

Still, it was a quick, entertaining read—perfect if you’re in the mood for some light suspense and drama with a side of wilderness paranoia.

It had an interesting fast start (by which I mean the prologue) and then fell kinda flat for me for a half of the book and then gained speed and thrill again. I couldn't really connect with the characters, but it was interesting to follow their stories both past and present.

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Thanks to NetGalley and St.Martin's Press for providing me with this free eARC in exchange for my honest review!

I liked the concept of the story but overall just didn’t like the characters at all and it just fell flat for me
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me