I’ve not read from this author before but was intrigued by the synopsis. It took a little while to get into the style of writing and get engaged with the main character Alex but I was curious as to where it was going to go but the ending was a non ending - pretty disappointing.

Thanks to netgalley for providing an ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I immediately became a fan of Emma Cline when I read The Girls a few years ago, so I jumped at the chance to read THE GUEST when I saw it as an ARC on @netgalley.

In THE GUEST you essentially follow Alex, our main character, who you know nothing about. We aren’t told about her past, how we got to where we are, her plans or thoughts and feelings. Written in third person, you are told about her mind-numbing pill binges, her relationships with older men and are shown character through her actions.

Saying this, I feel like I know her. She’s living in a world of privilege with Simon (50) when her façade temporarily breaks, and Simon sees her for the fun-loving 22 year old she is. She’s kicked out and we follow Alex on an adventure where she continually becomes THE GUEST in people’s lives. Never permanent, never grounded, always floating, and grasping at any chance to be taken care of, like she was with Simon.

At 22, I would describe Alex as naïve but worldly. She uses her youth and looks to manipulate men into doing what she needs them to do, to survive. To let her stay the night, to break into houses for shelter, to save her from risk and female companions who may see through her.

Emma Cline’s writing is addictive. Even though we might not like her characters or we find them unappealing, they’re so morish. This is evident in THE GUEST and in The Girls – which I highly recommend you read as well.

4 stars

Set over a seemingly endless summer, we are in the world of Alex, an outsider who has managed to convince most people around her that she belongs there.

She is sharp, clever, and at times brutal, all in an attempt to maintain her lies and her position, constantly trying to outmanoeuvre the world around her. Hers is a fascinating perspective to follow, and we as the audience are often unsure how much we can even trust her ourselves.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Very cleverly written this was an extremely engaging read. It took you on quite an exploration into Alex’s mind. At times her behaviour was extreme. I was constantly anxious about what would happen next and it kept me thinking all the time about what she was doing. Alex was an exceptionally disturbed person and by her actions her life was a constant waterfall of disasters. Finding herself in complicated situations throughout and unable to function properly in many situations with her life unfolding all around her leaving a trail of disasters.
A great read.

After my long-term love of The Girls, this book had a lot to live up to, and it definitely did. The heat of the novel comes off of every page, making it a compulsive read about a girl finding herself and her place in the world while pretending to be someone else entirely. It's smart, sultry and subtle, with moments of darkness that add to a captivating mood. Set on an aspirational backdrop - beautiful, rich people at their Hamptons hideaway home - it's the perfect summer read for people who want a page turner with unexpected depth.

The Guest is the first book I have read by Emma Cline. The story begins by us meeting Alex who is on a beach with Simon.- the guy she has met and has been staying with for the last few days.
Alex is a troubled young girl who has run away from her problems and likes to pretend they don't exist.

When her and Simon argue and she has to leave she decides to stick around for a bit until his party on 4th July. She then hangs on to a coupe of people before meeting Jack a younger kid. They find a lost dog for a day and then lose it again. They go to the beach and chill in a summer house until the day of the party. I didn't actually think the end was the end. I carried on flicking thinking there was another chapter or something that gives us closure or explains what happens/happened as I'm sadly lost as to what message they were trying to send out.

The writing style and flow was really good and I carried on reading as I thought some things would be explained like Alex's past or why she was how she was or even what happened to any of the characters and her and Simon but unfortunately nothing was answered which was a shame as I did like the actual writing and things that were said, but plot wise this wasn't for me.

This was my first book from this author and after reading it, I will be picking up he rback catalogue. The reason for the 3 stars was mainly because I feel like I have read this, or something very similar to this before. But I still enjoyed watching the destructive manner in which the main character gets through the week. She is very unlikeable for sure, taking advantage of an underage boy and throwing away people as soon as they become useless to her, but it was a bit of fun and I enjoyed watchign the story unfold.

Alex is an outsider on the run. As she jolts from one place to another, the hole she digs gets deeper, and the more she runs, the messier her life gets. Emma Cline does a great job at building the tension as the story progresses. At the beginning, I was really intrigued by Alex and the life she left behind. However, by the end, I don’t feel like I know a whole lot more. I really enjoyed the tone of the book but I feel like an opportunity was missed to create a bigger impact.

This book was a ride and a half! A single mistake during a dinner gathering leads to the elderly gentleman she has been residing with abruptly sending her off to the train station with a ticket to return to the city. Despite her limited means, Alex possesses a talent for understanding the wishes of those around her, prompting her to choose to remain on the island. She moves about like a specter, silently wandering through the exclusive realm of gated driveways and scorching sand dunes, leaving behind a trail of chaos and ruin.

I really enjoyed reading this book and I finished it in 2 days. It kept me engaged throughout and I couldn't put it down. I'm not surprised at all at its success.

I enjoyed this book at first, as it paints a grimly fascinating picture of the very rich. But I quickly got bored as the book never seems to go anywhere, and Alex isn't a sufficiently interesting character for us to care about her very much. Rather tedious I'm afraid, and not a book I would recommend.

I adored The Girls by Emma Cline, and enjoyed her short story collection Daddy which I read a few years ago, so I was excited to read her new novel.

In The Guest we follow Alex, a bit of a grifter/drifter who runs away and manages to persuade an older man, Simon, to take her in and let her live at his holiday home. Unsurprisingly this doesn't end well for Alex, who eventually gets kicked out. Convinced Simon will take her back, she spends a week finding people she can exploit for food and shelter.

I really enjoyed the time I had since Alex's mind! Her personality and life is so different to mine, it was a fun experience trying to understand how she chooses and justifies the way she lives her life. It reminded me of Lucky by Marissa Stapley which I really enjoyed for that reason.

Her behaviour did get stale towards the end though and I finished the book feeling dissatisfied.

The Guest is about a troubled young prostitute travelling around the Hamptons and trying to avoid a pimp who she owes money. It starts well but then becomes rather repetitious never seeming to go anywhere. It's not a book for me I'm afraid.

This book! I had a ball of anxiety in my stomach every time I picked it up. Tense, atmospheric and very readable.

Alex owes money everywhere, she leaves her apartment in the city with rent outstanding , she has no real friends or family and finds refuge in an older man's summer home in Long Island. After a brief interlude , things sour and Alex has nowhere to go. She decides to wait it out a week and return to her lover at his end of Summer party, she is sure things will be ok by then and she can resume her life with him, wear the clothes he buys her and do the things he asks of her. The book follows Alex over the week. She has little to no money, no help but a determination to wait out the week.

This was a really fear inducing read. I didn't particularly like the main character and yet I found myself on her side. Cline writes with a great balance of starkness and vividness. The excessive wealth, the beaches, the people, the desperation.

I can't say I enjoyed reading it but I was captivated. Skillfully told and it evoked many emotions but not entirely sure I would recommend either. A taut, tense quite stressful read., well written and quite depressing.

Alex is ‘dismissed‘ as the girlfriend of a wealthy older guy on Long Island and is running from something in her past.

Meh, I had such high hopes for this. I thought it would be very clever, but there was only the old glimmer. It was fairly gripping in places, but you never really fully got in the head of the MC. The ending just really wound me up; it felt lazy to me, like the author had run out of steam. Very frustrating.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

Another depressingly empty entry into what passes for contemporary fiction these days. Is everyone really a drug-addicted, damaged, amoral loser, having empty sex with passing strangers? Or do authors just think that's what society is like? Does the world need any more descriptions of what it feels like to get high, have sex, or vomit? Are these the parts of human experience that authors think are the most interesting things to write about?

Sometimes I wonder if it's age that makes me so depressed about the current state of "literature", but I honestly don't think it is. I might have been titillated by a book like this when I was thirteen, though it's too sordid to be titillating really. But by eighteen I'm sure I'd have found this foul-mouthed, storyless litany of drugs, sex and amorality just as tedious as I do now. Abandoned at 28%

I absolutely loved The Girls so was excited to get stuck into Emma Cline’s new book.

The Guest follows Alex, a young woman who is dating (if you can call it that) a much older, rich man. He takes her out to the beach but when something happens between the pair she is forced out of his home and his life and has to get by on her own.

What follows is a hazy, sun-soaked few days where Alex grifts her way through the day by attaching herself to different vulnerable people and then ditching them and moving on as soon as she can.

That’s about all I can say to describe it really, it’s very much one of those ‘not much plot, mostly vibes’ books but I really enjoyed it. It transports you right there to the beach with Alex and in an uncomfortable sort of way you can’t help but root for her.

as you would expect from the writer of the girls (which i loved), at a sentence level this book was exquisite. alex was a great character, difficult and relatable at the same time. however it didn't quite all hang together for me - i appreciate a book that doesn't spoon-feed the reader but the ambiguities were too frequent for my taste.

A couple of years ago, Emma Cline caught my attention with The Girls, a novel I had mixed feelings about, but that left me excited to see what the author would end up writing next. Flash forward to today, we are served her second novel, which I reacted to rather similarly (in a good way, I guess?)

The Guest is a surprisingly minimalistic story about Alex, a twenty-two year old woman who has recently been kicked out by her Long Island high society lover at the end of summer after embarrassing him at a party and is now out on the road, trying to both leave the past behind while also still desperately clinging to it. She's determined to sneak back into his life this upcoming weekend, so all she's got to do is spend five days doing something else.

It feels like a nice literary development while also showing what Cline is best at writing. There are certain elements that feel reminiscent of her previous novel: the unlikeable protagonist for example. Alex is troublesome, manipulative and feels like a modern day version of a character that Joan Didion would write about, or maybe someone that Jack Kerouac would introduce you to. There's an uncompromising American flair to the settings she depicts as well, with the quiet suburban scenes hinting at some sort of glamour and filth hidden behind courtesies and parties.

The novel thrives from keeping the reader at arm's length. When we open the book, Alex is there – all of a sudden and all consuming. And while we closely stick to her and her actions for the rest of the novel, we also never quite get to know her, seeing the young woman just like the people she meets along the way – a mystery. It creates a strange kind of atmosphere, because we're not really rooting for her as she manipulates and tricks her way through the world, but it's also fascinating to watch her create her own reality, since we quickly learn that she's not only lying to others, but to herself as well.

So more than an actual plot, Cline sells us an atmosphere with this literary effort. I was surprised by how quickly I read this, actually. The prose flows smoothly and there's a mesmerising quality to this whole thing, despite it not really making a lasting impression on me. In a way, it felt like an escape, just like the one Alex was trying to make.

The guest is a slow burn psychological thriller told in the third person. It follows an unlikeable M/C (morally grey is an understatement!) who uses her guile and manipulative skills to exploit those around her in an attempt to improve her situation. The summer vibes and the location and atmosphere would make this a great holiday read however if you’re not a fan of ambiguous endings this may not be for you. Overall this feels fresh and unique, I expected a thriller but I would be more inclined to classify this as contemporary/literary fiction.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random house publishing for the opportunity to read this advanced copy

The Guest follows Alex, a 22-year-old woman residing in New York City, whose life is spiralling out of control - a predicament that might be well-deserved. Alex has been exploiting those around her to such an extent that she has finally depleted her supply of willing benefactors. Now, she finds herself kicked out of Simon's residence, an older man she had been involved with, and left with nowhere to stay. But she thinks that, if she can just survive until the date of Simon's annual Labor Day party (a week later), she will be able to win him back...

Throughout the course of a week, we follow Alex as she aimlessly roams the city streets, desperately hoping to find someone to exploit for financial support, shelter, or a fleeting thrill. Her cunning, shamelessness, and desperation create a captivating narrative, even though in some ways it might seem that not much 'happens'. Personally, I found myself completely engrossed in Alex's lifestyle of manipulating and leeching off others to fulfil her desires.

The story is skillfully narrated in the third person, offering a somewhat detached perspective on Alex's character. But, as observers, we are exposed to her often shocking actions. Alex lacks likability but her captivating nature as a character made the book a swift and enthralling read. I would have eagerly delved deeper into Alex's story had there been more to explore.

While the ending wasn't what I expected, the book left a lasting impression that lingered in my thoughts long after I turned the final page.