The Guest List by Lucy Foley is a classic whodunit with a twist. It’s set on the rugged, bleak and peat-bog landscape of a recently reinhabited island off the coast of Connemara. The guests have assembled for the celebrity wedding of the year (Will Slater and Julia Keegan). But someone intends to spoil the party.
A scream of terror
The story starts on the wedding night. The marquee lights flicker and go out. Then a scream of terror. As a reader we’re hooked. But then the timeline shifts and we are transported back to the day before when the guests arrive.
A clever trick
This was the seventh book pick from our local book club and we particularly enjoyed how each chapter was told from one character’s perspective. There was a sense of unpeeling the layers as the story jumps backwards and forwards between the build up to the wedding and the event itself.
The story is unusual in the fact you don’t know who has actually been killed for a long time. In our book club there were those who did guess the victim much earlier than others. And some who didn’t know until the body was discovered. Similarly, the killer isn’t obvious. As in all good whodunits, there are lots of suspects. Plenty of people with a grudge. Some of us solved the mystery and some of us didn’t.
The main players are:
- The Wedding Planner – Aoife (restored the island’s crumbling, half-ruined folly into an elegant ten-bedroom property). This is the first wedding she’s hosted on the island and it’s a coup to snag such a high profile couple
- The Plus-One – Hannah (The Bride’s best-friend’s wife)
- The Bride – Jules (Ambitious owner of the online magazine The Download)
- The Best Man – Johnno (The Groom’s private-school chum)
- The Bridesmaid – Olivia (The Bride’s emotional younger half-sister)
Other characters include:
- The Groom (Will Slater, reality survival TV star)
- The Groom’s Upper-Class School Friends
- The Bride’s Divorced Parents
- The Wedding Planner’s Husband
- The Best Friend
- The Groom’s Father
Who do you really like?
We all agreed that plenty of the characters (including The Bride) were thoroughly unlikeable and there were very few you had empathy towards. For some there was a resolution. But for many characters, they are in a worse place at the end of the story than they were at the beginning.
Overall opinion
This was our book club’s favourite novel to date. It was well-written with a strong cast of characters. Foley certainly captured the menacing pack mentality of The Groom’s privileged school friends. And to introduce The Plus-One character of Hannah, as the name suggests, who was often overlooked or seen as unimportant was very clever. The author expertly tapped into that insecurity or unsettled feeling we have all had at times in knowing that you’re simply making up the numbers.
There was an acknowledgement that if you enjoy fast-paced thrillers then The Guest List might not be for you. The enjoyment in this novel is the build-up. In not exactly knowing what’s going to happen and to whom. For some, the ending might come too fast but it’s definitely one to read.
The Guest List is the fifth novel by Lucy Foley who writes both historical fiction and mystery thrillers.