Author: Lucy Foley · Published: 2020 · Genre: Mystery, Thriller
The Guest List is a closed-circle murder mystery set at a wedding on a remote Irish island, and its biggest strength is momentum: short chapters, rotating narrators and a gathering storm make it very hard to put down. Its biggest weakness is depth. Most characters are types rather than people, several narrators sound alike, and the twists matter more than the people they happen to. Read it as a holiday or weekend thriller, especially if you like updated Agatha Christie.
What it’s about
Jules Keegan, the driven founder of a London magazine, is marrying Will Slater, the handsome star of a television survival show. For a glamorous, carefully planned wedding they have chosen a restored folly on a small island off the west coast of Ireland, reachable only by boat.
The story moves between two times. On the wedding night, during the reception, the lights fail, a storm hits, and a body is found, though we are not told whose. In the hours and day before, we follow the wedding party through five narrators: Jules; her younger half-sister Olivia, the withdrawn bridesmaid; Hannah, the wife of Jules’s close friend Charlie; Johnno, Will’s best man; and Aoife, the wedding planner who runs the island venue with her husband. Each of them is hiding something, and each has a reason to resent someone else. Will’s old boarding-school friends, serving as ushers, add drunken pranks and ugly memories.
What’s great
- Setting. Foley first planned a Greek island and moved the story to Ireland after visiting Inishbofin, off Connemara. The wind, bog, cliffs and isolation give the book a strong gothic atmosphere, and the storm turns the island into a true closed circle.
- Structure. Opening with a discovered body but hiding the victim is an effective hook. You read trying to work out both who died and who is responsible, and the alternating timelines keep both questions alive.
- Pace. Chapters are short and often end on a small revelation. It is a fast, easy read, and the solution pulls most of the threads together.
- Social bite. The novel is good on the cruelty of privileged men who never outgrew their school selves, and on the strain of staging a perfect wedding for an audience.
What’s weak
The characters are thin. The bride is mostly brittle, the ushers are interchangeable, and some narrators have such similar voices that it is easy to forget who is speaking. Foley also has narrators avoid thinking about their own secrets until the plot needs them revealed, which can feel like a trick on the reader rather than a puzzle.
The twists are stacked high. The final revelations surprise, but they depend on backstory delivered late, so attentive readers have limited chances to solve it fairly. Some reviews, including a mixed one from Publishers Weekly, praised the setting but were cooler on the twists. If you have read Foley’s previous thriller, The Hunting Party, you will also recognize the formula of multiple narrators and a hidden victim.
Who should read it
Read it if you like quick, atmospheric thrillers with a closed circle of suspects, or if you enjoy Ruth Ware. Readers looking for complex characters or elegant fair-play detection will be less satisfied.
Rating: 3.5/5
Image credits — In-article images: Photo by Francesco Dondi on Unsplash.
