Book Review for "The Guest List" by Lucy Foley

SYNOPSIS:

The bride ‧ The plus one ‧ The best man ‧ The wedding planner ‧ The bridesmaid ‧ The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

GENRE: Mystery, Thriller, Fiction, Crime, Suspense

RATING: 5/5 stars

“The rage is growing inside me, overtaking the shock and grief. I can feel it blossoming up behind my ribs. It’s almost a relief, how it obliterates every other feeling in its path.”

So, I am back with yet another book review for, this one veering away from my usual fantasy/adventure recommendations and book reviews and instead with it being a thriller novel. I haven't been able to get as much book reviews down as I would like to since I have been busy with school, and unable to actually read more than one book per month, but The Guest List was my February read, and oh boy was it worth it. This book is the kind of book that it takes a little bit to really get into it, but once you reach a certain spot, it's almost unputdownable, and you find yourself desperately turning to get to the next page. The beginning was a little slow for me, but that was mainly due to the author really setting up the characters, their backstory, the setting, and every important characteristics that makes a thriller book great.

"The Guest List" is a mystery-thriller that chronicles a wedding off the coast of Ireland, and the multiple events, characters, and backstories that ultimately leads to the murder of one of the guest. We have various main characters that the novel follows. The bride is a successful magazine publisher, who is a perfectionist, and is characterized as being cold and unemotional. She's the type of girl you love to hate, or hate to love. The groom is a rising reality TV star, described as being charismatic, well-liked, flirty and dazzling. Yin and Yang, if you may. In addition to that, in "The Guest List", we are introduced to other characters, leading to 5 different character POVs. There is the wedding planner, the plus one (the bride's best male friend's wife), the bridesmaid (the bride's sister), the best man (the groom's best friend), and the bride herself. At first when I first started this novel, I had no idea that there would be changing POVs, and once I came to that realization, I wasn't sure how I would like 5 different POVs in a novel. For a lot of books that I read, the most I could honestly handle is two different point of views, so to be exposed to five had me doubtful about whether or not I would really enjoy this novel. But the author crafts this novel in such a way that even with 5 different POVs you are never bored of any one character. You never really hate one character or are annoyed with their POV, and I found myself looking forward to what we will discover with each changing POV. With the changing POVs you get additional information that hints at what's to come as well as the possible motives behind the untimely death of one of the guest. While some people might get bogged down by the many POVs or get confused by it, I am probably one of the few who actually really enjoyed it and found it to be greatly refreshing.

This thriller is also very slow-building, another aspect that is expected in most mystery-thriller novels, but can easily lead readers to get bored since it is not quite as stimulating in the beginning, as one would see in fantasy novels, or romance novels for example. This is one of the many reasons why thriller books are my least read genre. A lot of times, it takes considerable effort for me to trudge through the slow developments, but with The Guest List, I found that there was never really a boring moment for me. In the past, I definitely would have been the type of person to quit it after the first few pages, but I trudged on, and was not disappointed. The tension that was built throughout the novel, and the added mystery of who was killed (this isn't revealed till close to the very end), and who is the murderer had me turning the pages frantically, desperate for answers.

The suspense was also well written, and I felt like the setting and the wedding venue really lent to that creepy, suspenseful atmosphere that you love to read about in mystery-thrillers. Each character had their own secret, their own lies, their own pettiness, jealousies and motivations that is slowly revealed to the reader. Each new information that was revealed (whether small or big) was somehow important, and served as a clue/foreshadowing to what would inevitably happen. While I was able to sleuth out most parts of the ending, the way it played out was still very dramatic and suspenseful that even if you figure out some parts of it, you still would not be disappointed by the outcome. Without revealing too much about the characters and what goes down amongst them, as I feel it is best to almost go in blind, I really enjoyed this book. It was enthralling, suspenseful, and riveting. All the markings of a great thriller.

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