The Guest List by Lucy Foley

The Guest List by Lucy Foley.
Published 20th February 2020 by Harper Collins.
Read February 2020.

It's going to be the celebrity wedding of the year!

Fashion magazine proprietor Jules Keegan is marrying television survival expert Will Slater and anybody who is anybody would like an invitation to the spectacle, which will be taking place in a romantic folly on an island off the west coast of Ireland.

The guests attending this function may have a few axes to grind, and secrets they would prefer stayed hidden, but inevitably, past resentments rise to the surface once the festivities get under way - helped along by a liberal sprinkling of alcohol and the wildness of the storm that breaks during the ceremony.

One of these guests will not be leaving the island alive....

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I absolutely loved Lucy Foley's debut novel, The Hunting Party, with its wonderful modern take on an Agatha Christie murder mystery, so could not wait to get my hands on a copy of her second book, The Guest List.

If anything, The Guest List has even more of an Agatha Christie feel to it than The Hunting Party - by being set on an island with the guests trapped there during a storm - and this makes a wonderful setting for the murderous festivities to begin. It helps that the island has a dark past with plenty of ghosts lurking at the edge of your vision too!

Once again, our characters have dirty little secrets that they want to keep hidden. Being forced together in an unusual environment makes them behave in unguarded ways, that cause their lies to be called into question and suspicion to arise.

The whole story is so beautifully choreographed, like some sort of wild Irish dance that starts ever so slowly, but then builds in pace to an absolute frenzy at the climax - and this is reflected ever so cleverly in the weather, with the intensity of the storm building all the time in the background.

Although you know that one of the guests gets murdered at the very beginning, tantanlisingly, you don't become aware of who the victim actually is until very near the end. The story goes back and forth in time, exposing the secrets of the past, and ever so slowly revealing the circumstances around the murder on the wedding day. This is delicious, because all our main players have so much to hide that it is impossible to guess who has been killed and who might have struck the killing blow, until the wonderful twisty ending. There are red herrings and motives galore in these pages!

It is hard to say much more about this corker of a book without giving away spoilers, but suffice to say that The Guest List is even better than the brilliant The Hunting Party and I absolutely loved every suspenseful second of it. Lucy Foley is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors and I cannot wait to see what she comes up with next!

The Guest List is available on 20th February 2020 from your favourite retailer - and while you're at it, get a copy of The Hunting Party too!

Thank you to Lucy Foley and Harper Collins for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Tracey Fenton of Compulsive Readers for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

From the book cover:

A REMOTE ISLAND. AN INVITATION TO DIE FOR.

A gripping, twisty murder mystery thriller from the No.1 bestselling author of The Hunting Party.

‘Lucy Foley is really very clever’ Anthony Horowitz

‘A classic whodunnit’ Kate Mosse

‘Sharp and atmospheric and addictive’ Louise Candlish

‘A furiously twisty thriller’ Clare Mackintosh

‘Secrets and lies at every turn’ Sarah Pinborough

On an island off the windswept Irish coast, guests gather for the wedding of the year – the marriage of Jules Keegan and Will Slater.

Old friends.

Past grudges.

Happy families.

Hidden jealousies.

Thirteen guests.

One body.

The wedding cake has barely been cut when one of the guests is found dead. And as a storm unleashes its fury on the island, everyone is trapped.

All have a secret. All have a motive.

One guest won’t leave this wedding alive . . .

About the author:

Lucy Foley studied English Literature at Durham and UCL universities and worked for several years

as a fiction editor in the publishing industry, before leaving to write full-time.

The Hunting Party, an instant Sunday Times and Irish Times no.1 bestseller, was Lucy’s debut crime novel, inspired by a particularly remote spot in Scotland that fired her imagination. 

Lucy is also the author of three historical novels, which have been translated into sixteen languages. 

Her journalism has appeared in ES Magazine, Sunday Times Style, Grazia and more.