An invitation to a New Years Eve party on a remote Scottish island. Millie was excited at meeting up with an ex colleague, Nick, and thought his invite to a party would lead to something more romantic. After an eventful journey to the island, Millie is surprised to see another old colleague already in situ, but no sign of Nick. The assembled guests, along with their “hostess” are a mixed bag, with a fair few oddities amongst them. As events proceed, the invitation is not all it seems.

This book definitely has overtones of Ten Little Indians/And Then There Was None, a real Christie vibe. Sadly, that is where the comparison ends. The plot is a popular one, with several books recently using the same format, unfortunately this is not one of the best.

Thankfully it was a short story, as the continual repetition was annoying and used as a page filler. The plot was so good, unfortunately the writing let it down. A thorough edit to cut through the extraneous prose would do it justice.

Thank you NetGalley.

‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot’ etc etc and I think this is a book I’ll forget quickly I’m sorry to say. It’s going for the ‘And Then There We’re None’ vibe and if you’re going to follow in the footsteps of the Queen of Crime then you have to be as good or better and this is just an ok read but no more than that in my opinion.

Millie makes a long trek to the tiny Hebridian island of Osay for a new years eve party at the invitation of Nick. It starts quite well with disturbing discordant notes and undertones and the shock of a the fatal car accident near the ferry port and an odd, disparate assortment of guests but no Nick. On arrival at the island there is a similar odd vibe given by the squiffy, aged housekeeper, the large, neglected, jaded and down at heel baronial pile and most unsettling for Millie, a guest who she has hoped never to clap eyes on again.

There is certainly tension at the start as none can figure out why they’re there . A strange first night ensues and the story seems like it’s going to be quite entertaining as you contemplate the housekeepers less than edifying dinner!

However, it goes downhill in my view. It just touches the surface, it’s all veneer and little substance and this is especially true of the characters. Less about the birds Millie is so interested in and more on the dynamics please . The island atmosphere, bad weather, the isolation could’ve been exploited much more effectively and utilised to create more fear and suspense.

Some dialogue is just awful, it’s stilted and there’s very odd behaviour which doesn’t fit the circumstances. In fact, I begin to wonder if it’s a pastiche, if it’s tongue in cheek but I don’t think so. It’s casual at times in the “oh dear that’s another one dead, let’s have a nice cuppa tea and I’ll rummage around and find us a biscuit to give us some sustenance“ vein.

The killer is so easy to spot and the motivations are spurious to say the least. I think I’ve read too many of this type of book now and you have to be better than the average Joe to strike a chord.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Swift Press for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

A does-what-it-says-on-the-tin suspense story modelled on And Then There Were None but brought up do date for the modern reader.
After a lousy year, Millie is thrilled to get an email from her ex-colleague Nick inviting her to a New Year’s Eve party on a remote Scottish island. With nothing better to do and hoping for a spot of romance, she accepts his offer and takes the last ferry before the Hogmanay break to party island. But when she gets there, the ramshackle hotel looks less than festive, there’s no sign of Nick and the other guests don’t seem like the sort of people with whom she wants to see in the new year.
Sticking pretty close to the Agatha Christie format, the author cranks up the tension as the numbers drop. Through no fault of the writing, I guessed the denouement early on - I read way too many thrillers. But that didn't matter; I liked feeling smug at the end.
It was a quick, easy read that flowed well. I’d definitely read another book by this author.

Look, at this stage there are so many thrillers like this that I can't tell them apart. A group of people go somewhere, they're all shady AF, and one or more is bumped off, leaving them all paranoid and twitchy.

It's clearly a winning formula (thanks, Agatha Christie) because every month another one pops up - and I seem to be a sucker for them.

This one is set on a remote Scottish Island at New Year. Several people are invited to a small exclusive Hogmanay celebration, one is a killer, etc etc.

I loved the setting - the creepy remote island vibe was brilliant. The rest of it unfortunately fell flat for me, and I hated the ending. HATED IT. Sorry!

I found this book to be tense and full of mystery which kept me guessing throughout, with highly intriguing characters and plot

I requested this book as an Agatha Christie fan hoping it might be in the same style as Lucy Foley or similar authors. Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, its similarity to And Then There We’re None was just too much to ignore. I can’t imagine anyone who has read that book will have any trouble guessing the plot of Auld Acquaintance. I really only kept reading to check that this was the case - and it was! I even checked back to the information about the book to see if this was a “contemporary retelling”, it was all so similar.

The author does successfully create an atmosphere of disquiet and there were passages that were genuinely quite scary in places but I can’t rate this any higher as the book is - and I’m being generous here - “heavily influenced” by Christie’s novel.

I did enjoy this book and it is it the style of an Agatha Christie, with a group stranded on an island and dying one by one. It was easy reading and the style was fine, but the reveal was rather far fetched and I had guessed the guilty party/ies early on. I am somewhere between a 3 or 4 star review, but will plum for a 4.

An enjoyable read. Loved the setting on a remote Scottish island and also how the characters were so well considered and portrayed. Also loved how well the description of the house was woven in through the story so your vision of it developed along with the story. Was it an easily guessable ending? Yes, if you are a fan of Whodunnit fiction like Agatha Christie. Did that detract from the book? Not at all!

It’s a bit barmy but really enjoyed it. Very much in the Agatha Christie style: remote island, invited motley group of guests, lack of host, creaky old house, important celebration, untimely end of guests as they are picked off one by one by the unseen hand of another. Great read to curl up one cold winter’s day by a roaring fire and just lose yourself and enjoy working out whodunnit.

NO SPOILERS

I have recently read a few books with a similar storyline: on a lonely island, a deserted lighthouse and an isolated ski lodge. I thought book would be the same, but no, I enjoyed the cat and mouse, twists and turns, full of red herrings novel but enjoyable plot and interesting characters. A short book, read in one sitting.

I would recommend this book

I give a 4 star rating.

I WANT TO THANK NETGALLEY FOR THE OPPORTUNITY OF READING AN ADVANCED COPY OF THIS BOOK FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.

A Rapid Spiral…
A New Years Eve Party on a remote Hebridean island, a weekend in a Gothic mansion, a cast of disparate characters and a deadly plot - a very well used and very successful premise for many such tales, so none the worse for that. The reader is drawn along with Millie who has decided, on balance, to accept the invitation to attend. Once on the island events spiral rapidly out of control, not everyone and not everything is as it seems and soon the bodies begin to pile. An enjoyable, swiftly moving and entertaining read which I certainly devoured in one sitting but, for me, both the storyline and the overly eccentric but thin characters were constantly teetering on the edge of farce and thus the potentially sublime menace of such a premise was completely lacking. Read for fun.

The book started with intrigue. Who and why has she been invited to this remote island. However the unreliable author didn't work for me and I didn't feel convinced of the plot. This book wasn't for me. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review this book.

Brilliant book. Remote location. Hidden past. Shady characters what more do you need? If you love this kind of plot you will adore this book!

Thanks for the opportunity to read this as an arc reader. I wasn’t sure where this was going to begin with - it had vibes of a murder mystery weekend type book. It had plenty of twists and turns and the outcome at the end was not what I was expecting. Not my normal genre to read but enjoyable all the same.

I just reviewed Auld Acquaintance by Sofia Slater. #AuldAcquaintance #NetGalley

Rating: 3.5/5

I decided to pick this up, because the accompanying blurb had suggested that it would appeal to fans of Ruth Ware or Lucy Foley - and I am a great admirer of the work that has been produced by both of those fine mystery writers. That said, I have read books based on similar claims in the past, only to end up being immensely disappointed. So, I began reading this debut novel from Sofia Slater with hope rather than with expectation. The verdict? Well, apart from belonging to the same genre, I can't really say that this particularly reminded me of the style of either of the two aforementioned authors - but nonetheless, the important thing is that I really did enjoy it!

The setting and premise is reminiscent of the world's best-selling mystery "And Then There Were None", except that here the isolated location is in the Hebrides, rather than an island off the Devon coast. It is something of a rite of passage for an author to pen a story based on Agatha Christie's classic tale - or perhaps even more than one. The formula has been adopted by so many wordsmiths over the years with varying degrees of success.

"Auld Acquaintance" is unlikely to go down in history as a classic in its own right - but it is great fun! With less than 300 pages it is a quick read that is well-paced throughout and written in a highly engaging and entertaining fashion. One of the most endearing aspects of "Auld Acquaintance" is that it doesn't try to take itself too seriously. There is nothing pretentious about this - it doffs its cap to the classic mysteries that have inspired it, but doesn't pretend to emulate them. There are also some wonderful tongue-in-cheek moments along the way that brought a smile of approval to my face. As for the mystery itself, seasoned readers of the genre are likely to work out who the culprit is well before they reach the official reveal, but that shouldn't detract from an enjoyable reading experience.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for supplying an ARC in return for an honest review.

This was a good idea for a set up, seemingly random strangers invited to a remote party who discover they all have connections. But am not sure the execution as good.
Whilst it was quite pacy and fun in parts, I couldn't quite get over just how unrealistic the characters responses were! I mean as soon as bodies started piling up in quite gruesome ways everyone still managed to put on nice clothes, discuss rationally what was happening, consider new relationships and enjoy a few drinks... whilst murdered corpses were lying around in rooms above their heads.
There was far too much internal wrangling and conversations over who the killer could be rather than actual action.
I did also kind of guess who was the culprit after the clues throughout the book and again their motive was a little far fetched. However, it was easy to read and reasonably enjoyable if not that groundbreaking after all.

Good book. Very much in the vein of Agatha Christie’s ‘Ten little Indians’.
Guests on an island being killed off one by one. But who did it? Read it and see!
Worth a read.

This was a gripping and compelling read that was full of suspense, mysetry and unpredictability. It left me feeling chilled on several occassions and I still think about it after finishing it. A very good read

Twisty!

I loved Auld Acquaintance. I found it very easy to read, great prose, and well developed characters. The story was Christie-esqu, set on a desolate island with characters with their own dark histories. But I love Christie and this made me enjoy it all the more.
I didn't guess whodunnit, cleverly woven hints at all the characters made sure of that.

Brill.

Thanks so much to Swift and to Netgalley for offering me the opportunity to read and review.

A swift, pacy, enjoyable thriller that was enjoyable but not massively surprising - not a bad thing!