I love murder mystery novels, so when I kept seeing The Guest List by Lucy Foley pop up all over Bookstagram, I was excited to check out a new author. Foley's books have been compared to Ruth Ware's, and because I liked a few of Ware's novels, I had high hopes for The Guest List. Unfortunately, I walked away quite disappointed. Minor spoilers to follow.
The premise of the book is an intriguing one—a well-known online magazine publisher, Jules, and a reality TV star, Will, are getting married on a remote and spooky island off the coast of Ireland. We know right away that someone at this wedding winds up dead, but the mystery is who and how.
The first word I'd use to describe this novel is jumpy. First, it jumps back and forth in time from the night of the wedding (when everything goes wrong) to the time leading up to the wedding, where the tension builds steadily among the ensemble of characters. Second, it jumps around in narration from character to character—I can remember six different points of view off the top of my head.
I don't automatically dislike multiple points of view, but my issue with the changing perspectives here is that the writing gets repetitive. I felt like when I returned to a certain character, the author would feel the need to re-establish how that person is feeling and what they're thinking, and it can sometimes feel like things aren't really moving forward because of that repetition.
I do really dig the cover though.
Don't go in expecting likable characters. Again, this isn't always a dealbreaker for me. I love antiheroes and consume plenty of media wherein every last character is loathsome. I found one character in this book to be likable, but it was because that character was the most fully formed of the lot. For the most part, these characters were more like vague outlines of people with a few details sprinkled in to fill out their past and motivations. With a larger cast of characters, it's more difficult for every character to be fully realized, but that's why the narrative style here doesn't really work for me. By letting all of them talk, we don't get full enough pictures of anyone.
While the atmospheric detail of the craggy (and potentially haunted?) island is well written, even that gets bogged down by the too-obvious and too-frequent foreshadowing of the impending tragedy—except it's not even really foreshadowing because we already know something terrible is going to happen to someone.
My biggest issue with this book is that it suffers from too many coincidences. Some of the smaller plot twists are more predictable than others, but the thing is, there are too many big revelations of information, which leads to too many people having motive for murder. Before the victim is slain, I counted five separate characters with motive. I know you have to throw the reader off the scent a little, but what are the actual chances that five people out of a small group could have five separate motives for killing the same person?
If you're on the hunt for a new mystery read, The Guest List wouldn't be my first recommendation, but if you’re looking for an easy-listen audiobook while you do laundry on the weekend, it’s not bad. If plot-driven mysteries are your thing, Ruth Ware gives you more bang for your buck. If you want to dive deep into the characters in a mystery, Tana French is the absolute queen. She's the best mystery writer working today, in my opinion.
I gave The Guest List 2/5 stars on Goodreads. I really wanted to like it more, but all of the pieces just didn't add up for me. Have you read The Guest List? Tell me what you thought in the comments!