Book Review Wednesday: The Guest List by Lucy Foley

During quarantine, I resigned up for Book of the Month club because I had been reading a lot and wanted to hold an actual book. I also love the fact that Book of the Month has pre-releases so sometimes I can get books before they are released.

I think this is exactly the case with The Guest List by Lucy Foley. When I signed up in April, this is the book I chose to receive and had been waiting for the right time to read it. Well, I finally finished it last week and well, I loved it. 

Publisher's Summary:

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?

My Thoughts:

The summary of the book was pretty vague which in a way, had only intrigued me more. The first thing I noticed was that there were a lot of characters and a lot of different points of view. We start out with who can I only assume are wedding guests, finding a body so we know where we are going to end up.

We then launch into the true core of the story, a wedding is happening on a remote island and people have secrets. The best man has a secret, the bride, the wedding guest, and the maid of honor. There is so much happening but the story isn't hard to follow.

There are a few things happening: the bride is being told, anonymously, that she shouldn't marry her fiancee. The best man finds out a secret and can hardly contain himself, the maid of honor is going through her own issues and is hiding something that won't be revealed until the end, and the wedding guest is trying to hold her marriage together while away from the children.

We also get some insight from the wedding planner who seems very strange and when you find out why it's pretty jaw-dropping. The entire story takes place over the course of 24 hours and it is a jam-packed day, to say the least.

There's sexual assault, lies, scams, and multiple reveals that all point to one horrible person. The reveal, the multiple reveals are truly bombs and I didn't see any of them coming. It was a true murder mystery in that there were multiple suspects, multiple victims, multiple ways the stories could've gone. 

I've seen people say that The Guest List is overrated but I think this is one of the least overrated books I've ever read.

Have you read The Guest List yet?

xoxo

B