Thank you to netgalley.co.uk for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for a free and honest review.
I thought this would be a light, fluffy book about a wedding but I'm glad I was wrong, this is an interesting mystery that would give Agatha Christie. My first book by Foley but it won't be my last. It was very well written and had me hooked for the first sentence.

A society type wedding held on a remote island off Ireland. What could possibly go wrong?

The story is told from several different characters, including the bride, groom, best man and bridesmaid. I lost count of how many others, there were too many. Even though each chapter tells you who it is easy to forget and then you have to check back. Also the time line skipped back and forth and it completely broke the flow of the book.

I liked the idea of the story but found it wanting. Too many coincidences and an unsatisfactory ending.

I requested this book through NetGalley UK and it is by a British Author so I expect British English spelling. Careen is US English and not used in the UK, we use Career. Careen means something else, to run a vessel aground to clean the hull.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for my ARC in return for an honest review.

This is a wonderfully atmospheric murder mystery set on a haunted treacherous island. I really enjoyed this book and I got pulled into the mystery and the lives of the characters.

It begins on the wedding night when the guests hear a scream, the ushers set out to find what caused the cream. Then we get sent back to the day before the wedding and then the day of with little parts of the wedding night throughout until we get to the wedding night and all is revealed.

The writing was really good and it helped pull you into the story and the lives of the people. The atmosphere was ominous with a storm and power cuts making the island seem more haunted than it is. I loved the setting and how the guests were basically trapped on an island together. It reminded me a little of Agatha Christie and a little of the game Cluedo which are two things I like.

As well as the different timelines, we follow 5 different character POVs. And then get an extra POV towards the end.

The POVs we see are;
Aoife: the Wedding Planner
Johnno: the Best Man
Jules: the Bride
Hannah: the Plus one
Olivia: the bridesmaid

All these 5 characters have motive which I thought was interesting. They also have secrets, lies and jealousy among other things giving them motive. They are all also seemingly connected to the murderer which was interesting and I did guess a few of the things that were revealed about the characters. However I didn't guess who the murderer was until I was shown which in hindsight I can now see the signs that point at the murderer but I didn't whilst I was reading.

I'd say the majority of characters are not likeable but the mystery and the secrets keep you reading to find out what happened. The amount of secrets and questions in this book is what kept me reading because I wanted to know what happened to each character and it leads you in multiple directions as everyone is a suspect.

Overall it was a murder mystery that was ominous and atmospheric. I really enjoyed the mystery of it all and I would highly recommend it to mystery lovers or those who want to try reading a mystery.

I really enjoyed the Hunting Party by Lucy Foley so I could not wait to read The Guest List and I was not disappointed. The book is set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland on the weekend of the wedding of celebrity couple of the moment: Jules Keegan and Will Slater. The dangerous mixture of drink and drugs, old relationships reunited and high jinx by the guys from the boarding school provides quite enough suspects even though it is close to the end of the book before we discover who has been killed. In the end, there is an unexpected but very satisfying twist that rewards the reader with a sense of justice.

What a read! This book is an absolute cracker! Full of unlikeable, entitled and self-obsessed characters, I really couldn't guess 'whodunnit'. In hindsight all of the clues were there but this book is so intricately woven that you would have to be a super sleuth to pick up on them. A flawless read for me.

I was very keen to read The Guest List, having read all the rave reviews for Lucy Foley's previous murder mystery, The Hunting Party.
It is a classic "locked room" murder mystery, the room being a small island off the west coast of Ireland. The author ramps up the tension very nicely using different narrative voices to describe the events of barely two days. She gives vital backstories in a way that does not interrupt the flow of the main plot but which provides important insights into the characters of all the key players many of whom are not very pleasant. Nothing is irrelevant.
This was a quick read into the wee small hours, because I was so hooked that I couldn't put the book down until it was finished. I shall now read The Hunting Party and look out for Foley's next book.
With many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me a copy of the book in exchange for this review.

Lucy Foley follows The Hunting Party with this even more hugely entertaining atmospheric murder mystery, a modern take on Agatha Christie, set on the wild and stormy Cormorant Island, off the west coast of Ireland. The golden celebrity couple, Julia 'Jules' Keegan, publisher of a successful online magazine, and the handsome Will Slater, rising star of TV show Survival, are getting married in style in front of their friends and family, an exclusive event being organised by wedding planner, Aoife and catered for by her husband, Freddy. However, it immediately becomes clear on a dark, wild and stormy wedding night of power cuts that something has gone desperately wrong, and in a narrative that goes back and forth in time, a distraught waitress speaks of seeing a body outside, which has the ushers setting out into the night to find out what has happened.

Foley provides the perspectives of a wide host of diverse characters, with their fears, secrets, lies and silences amidst the drink and drug fuelled wedding celebrations over which hang an ominous air of upcoming disaster, a feeling that is enhanced further by the island location with its haunted history, its ghosts of the dead, its treacherous terrain and the approaching storm. Jules is worrying about a anonymous note that warns her not to marry Will, her bridesmaid, her sister Olivia, is a fragile self harming wreck. The best man, Johnno, is desperate not to lose touch with Will, they have a shared past history that goes back to their school days. Hannah is the plus one, married to Charlie, the MC and best friend of the bride, they are a cash strapped couple, determined to make the most of their first opportunity for a long time to be away from their children and their humdrum lives. The ushers are a bunch of sneering, entitled, bullying and malicious ex-public schoolboys who have never grown up.

Foley skilfully reveals the past history of the characters, the grief, the losses, the simmering resentments and jealousies, the guilt, the secrets, the lies, a past that adds up to a bubbling cauldron full of motives to kill, and a present where the chickens of the past have finally come home to roost. Foley excels in writing a riveting locked room murder mystery, with the vibrant creation and development of larger than life characters, attending a strife ridden wedding in a location that is just perfect for the darkest of deeds to take place. A fabulous crime read that I recommend highly. Many thanks to HarperCollins for an ARC.

Set on a remote island for during a celebrity wedding this is a wonderful murder mystery.

The story is told from several points of view and spans both past and present to weave the narrative. Many of the characters have a dark secret or tragedy in their past and ultimately these come together in the present day.

The story is not simply a whodunnit, the story leaves the reveal of the victim until the closing chapters too and there are plenty of characters vying for the position of both killer and victim through the novel.

Thank you to HarperCollins and NetGalley for an advanced copy of The Guest List.

This was my first time reading Foley and it will not be my last. The Guest List is a wonderfully atmospheric murder mystery set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. The story is told through multiple POV and each character is beautifully fleshed out and helps to slowly put together the pieces of the story. Each POV is believable and flawed in their own way. The tension is built further by the timeline switching between the murder and the days leading up to it.

I would recommend this to anyone who wants to get lost in a mystery filled with twists and turns in a gothic setting.

4/5

Thank you! We included this on Caboodle (20 books to look out for in 2020), and will read and review on Pretty Books.

Wowzers. I was hooked from the start. A wedding on a remote Irish island only accessible by boat. Random public schoolboy hazing rituals brought up by a group of the guests. Isolation, peat bogs and a lot of guests with a lot of secrets a to a gripping tale. Told from various viewpoints the story is delightfully revealed until the end.

The book struggles a little to not become too rambling with its plot, and there are a few too many coincidental meetings among a small group of people, but this was an enjoyable read for a cold day by the fire. The setting is unusual and is suitably claustrophobic for a murder mystery and the characters interesting if a little one-dimensional. I will definitely look for other books by this author.

A quick, tense, atmospheric thriller with plenty of twists and turns, set against the backdrop of a luxe wedding on a picturesque Irish island. While the formula is well worn – show the body in the prologue then spend the rest of the book flitting between povs to work out whodunit, this is a well written psychological thriller that will keep you turning the pages. Very much enjoyed this.

As you would expect from Lucy Foley, a clever, well-structured novel that will keep you guessing to the end. I certainly won't be accepting any invitations to weddings on remote Irish islands in future!

I loved The Hunting Party but for me The Guest List was even better. It was packed full of tension and intrigue and really did leave me guessing right up until the very end.

Lucy Foley is like a modern day Agatha Christie!

She includes:
1. An unexplained death.
2. A cast of characters - and any one of them might be the perpetrator.
3. A remote location.
4. Action and dialogue in equal measure.

With Lucy Foley's murder mysteries the best thing is that you don't even know who is dead until the latter part of the book, so you are not only guessing who did it but who was the victim. It's like cluedo!

Lucy Foley focuses on developing her characters, and their back story, and as a result they feel authentic and you really get involved in their lives.

Like The Hunting Party, I was left guessing (and second guessing myself!) right up until the end. The plot is detailed and well thought out.

This book is only just being published but already I cannot wait for the next!!

The boat trip out to Inis Amploir, off the Irish coast, might have been enough to put some guests off, but it was the wedding of the year. Will Slater (television personality, if not yet a celebrity) was to marry Jules Keegan, online magazine publisher, in the ruined chapel on the island. The bride's sister, Olivia, would be her only bridesmaid and the wedding planner and chef are Aoife and her husband, Freddy. They gave a huge discount to get the couple to the island, but surely it would be worth it for the publicity?

The Master of Ceremonies is Charlie, best friend of the bride. Charlie's wife, Hannah, is just a mite suspicious about the closeness of Jules and Charlie, but she's honest enough to admit (if only to herself) that she's just a little bit smitten with Will. Once she's over her seasickness she's determined to enjoy herself even if she does realise that she and Charlie (he's a geography teacher) are perhaps not in the same financial bracket as the rest of the guests. Most of the guests seem to be from Will's schooldays: he was at Trevellyans, a minor public school which put me in mind of Gordonstoun. Boys would be made into men, no matter what the cost.

Will's father, who's at the wedding, was the headmaster of Trevellyans and he's suspicious of Will's best man, Johnno Briggs, whom he suspects of being a bad influence on his son. Johnno never really recovered from what happened whilst he was at Trevellyans and he's one of the few guests who hasn't made much of his life. He's also conscious that he virtually had to force himself on Will as his best man. It didn't help him to remember to bring his suit though.

I first encountered Lucy Foley when I read The Hunting Party: was that really a year ago? It still seems so fresh in my mind, but if The Guest List was to be anything like The Hunting Party then I was in for a treat. At first, I thought I might be in for much the same sort of treat: the settings might be dramatically different, but it's still 'a locked room' mystery, with a group of mismatched people cut off in a remote location, but I needn't have worried. Foley takes her wayward party guests off in a different direction and delivers a cracking story.

The characters are exceptional. They come off the page and worry you. There's a feeling of hidden menace in the group of Will's old school friends who are to be his ushers, which leaves you nervous. They might all have good jobs (Femi's a surgeon) but there's a pack mentality and a lack of social conscience which frightens. It certainly frightened poor Charlie when he went on the stag do: he's still not prepared to talk about what went on.

I'd planned on reading the book over four days: in the event, it only just crept into the second day, by dint of being finished at five in the morning. I had to find out what happened! I really didn't see the ending coming, but all the clues were there: I just didn't spot them. It was a really good read and Lucy Foley is now firmly on my 'must read everything by' list. I'd like to thank the publishers for letting Bookbag have a review copy.

Another success from Lucy Foley after the brilliant Hunting Party - a dark and twisty thriller full of well drawn out characters. A tense page turner full of beautiful prose

This is an easy to read murder mystery where a group of (mainly unlikeable) family and friends gather on a remote island for a wedding.
They’re a mixed bunch and the story is told from the perspective of each guest, bride, groom and wedding planner. Each given a chapter and I enjoyed the flow of the different characters.
The murder happens early on in the book and the resulting chapters unfurl the various characters and their personal stories and issues.

It kept me reading and for an easy to read, well concluded murder mystery, it does the trick.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to preview.

Another fantastic book from Lucy Foley. The action takes place over a few days on a small island just off the west coast of Ireland - very Agatha Christie. Initially this is not just a case of who done it, but also who was the victim and why. It becomes clear during the narrative from some half dozen of the characters that there is one particular person who has hurt a number of them, thus we can deduce the identity of the victim. However, the way in which the story unfolds is gripping and the perpetrator of the murder does come as a surprise. The rights and wrongs of private education are questioned, especially the gang mentality which is just as marked as in other parts of society. A real page turner.