The Guest List by Lucy
Foley
About the book : On a remote island,
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.
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.
About the author : Lucy Foley is the
No.1 Sunday Times and Irish Times bestselling author of The Hunting Party and
three other novels. A trip to Connemara, from where half of Lucy’s family hail,
on the west coast of Ireland sparked the idea for her latest book. Struck by
the wild, rugged beauty of the islands off its shores –the perfect setting for
a wedding, yet dangerously cut-off – Lucy began to plot a new murder mystery.
An island with no escape, old friends and family reuniting, emotions running
high. What could possibly go wrong? And so The Guest List came to life.
Previously a fiction editor in the publishing
industry, Lucy now writes full time. Her novels have been translated into
nineteen languages.
My Take:
It’s the grand wedding
of Jules, who owns the famous online magazine ‘The download’, and Will Slater,
a celebrity in himself, who stars in the reality show ‘Survive the night’, at Inis
an Amplora, or Cormorant Island, several miles off the Connemara coastline. The
entire island, with the 150 somethings guests, will witness one of the most
royal Irish weddings in the history of the island. The festivities spread out
over the weekend see guests from the past and the present of the couple –
especially the boys who went to the famous boys boarding school Trevellyans,
with Will.
A murder is committed
on the night of the wedding, just after the wedding cake is cut, as the entire
wedding party gets drowned in darkness, thanks to the wind storm soaring across
the island.
Who is it?
Olivia, Jules half-sister
and bridesmaid; Charlie, Jule’s best friend and master of ceremonies; Johnno,
Will’s best man; Hannah, Charlie’s insecure wife; Aoife, the wedding planner;
Freddy, Aoife’s husband; Angus, Duncan, Pete, Femi – the gang from Trevellyans.
Each has a dark secret,
and each one has a motive.
The story keeps
changing the point of view from one person to the other with each chapter, and
the story shuttles between the past and the present – past being before the
murder and present being after it. The flow of the story is amazingly smooth. The
story keeps its grip on the reader right from the beginning and never loses
it. Rather, the grip tightens as it progresses, and we are gasping for breath as
we reach the end, desperate to find out the who’s and why’s. The end is
twisted, quite unexpected, and yet very convincing and interesting. Even though
each character is so different from the other, every character stays true to
its own self, consistently. The descriptions of the island are so realistic,
the story feels like a beautiful movie. Full of thrill and intrigue, this is
one of the best suspense thrillers I have read in a long time.
I am giving half a star
less for the book cover. Such a beautiful book demands an equally intriguing cover.
A dilapidated castle on a lush green island, with some traces of blood would
probably have made a more interesting one.
So overall, a must-read.
I rate it 4.5 stars.
