i'm a lil sensitive soul and i find it hard reading books about people making bad decisions, bc i'm a baby! this is a book about a woman making a lot of different choices, making very smart choices to support herself, and i couldn;t look away

Alex's life of luxury has been hard won. She wasn't born to the designer handbags and expensive clothes but she's done well, exploiting her looks and the weakness older men have for pretty young things. Along the way she's left a trail of destruction - friends who don't want to know her, roommates she's left after they couldn't take her careless approach to paying the bills, and a man whom she robbed of a significant chunk of money. But that's OK. She's staying at a beautiful house on the beach with a wealthy older man and not a care in the world - until she dents his car and behaves badly and he sticks her in a taxi and sends her back to the city.

The trouble is, going back to NYC isn't an option. She has a few hundred dollars to her name and a shoulder bag of clothes and valuables. She's sure that Simon - the rich guy - will change his mind and have her back. If she can just find a way to survive until his house party at the weekend, for sure he'll realise what he's missing. So, she sets out to get by until the weekend.

If you're an opportunistic liar with low morals, apparently you can pass a few days without spending much money. And that's what Alex does. The book feels like a dazed and dysfunctional dream of a not quite real world. We watch Alex pass herself off as part of a group of young city folk out for the weekend, then as a friend of a family whose account she can charge meals and drinks to. She picks up a younger man and hides out in his ex-girlfriend's pool house. All whilst she waits for her chance to get back to where she wants to be - at the side of a rich man.

Unsympathetic heroes and heroines make for interesting plots. We want her to be OK whilst simultaneously wondering how she's going to fall. Because surely she will.

It's a strange book, but a good one. I'm not 100% sure I 'got' the ending but this book is always a journey more than a destination.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for my copy.

She can certainly write. Gripping, like The Girls. Main criticism is that is the episides can appear rather repetitive, as if written with a Netflix series in mind. Very good though.

I loved "The Girls" by Emma Cline so when I saw "The Guest" I jumped at reading it. I was lucky enough to received an advanced copy and this is my honest review.

Books like this will settle into my bones over the following days, my brain wandering and mulling over parts for the next week.

It's refreshing to read a book that doesn't spoon feed you motivations and every living thought of the main character. Nothing much actually happens in Emma's books but the beauty is in the unsaid.

The Guest follows Alex, and from what we gather, she's a 22 year old escort with nothing to her name. Alex gets by on goodwill of others, and often, manipulation of the situation. We know very little about her but somehow want her to succeed, finding frustration in her self-destructive endeavours.

The only disappointment I had was in the ending. It felt like there was some unspoken twist here because it ended so abruptly. Netherless, I enjoyed it and look forward to more from the author.

Unfortunately I kept hitting a wall with this book. I found the premise really interesting but I just couldn’t click with the way it was written. I didn’t care about the character and I’m a very character driven reader. Maybe it’s her aimlessness and the way it’s portrayed, I don’t know. 2/5 stars wouldn’t recommend

This was definitely not a book for rme. I could not relate to the main character , Alex finding her totally unpleasant and living in a topsy turvy world The construction of the story and the writing was good but at the end I was still looking for the rest of the story. It was almost as though it ended mid sentence. I failed to know what had happened after the car crash and was certainly left up in the air.. Maybe this is a book for young adults who may relate to Alex and her strange behaviour more than an older person could..

‘The Guest’ is a clever piece of writing. Emma Cline allows the reader to understand just how detached from reality Alex is through the style of this novel. Reliant on heavy duty painkillers washed down with any alcoholic drink on offer, Alex survives by attaching herself to older, wealthy men and, at 22, has stayed safe … so far. She’s learnt the tricks of her trade well; Cline explains that girls like Alex ‘had vacated some major part of themselves, ready to be moved in any suggested direction; it didn’t matter, really, who approached them.’ But she’s made a big mistake in ripping off former lover, Dom, and he’s trying to track her down.
When she displeases current catch, Simon, which results in a train ticket back to wherever she came from, she convinces herself that she’ll win him back by crashing his forthcoming Labor Day party. Meanwhile, she does what she’s always done – compromises herself from one scrounge to the next. Once the reader becomes familiar with Alex’s mindset, the title says it all: Alex is no more a guest in any of the places she visits than a stray dog would be, but her self-delusion makes her one.
Alex is a pragmatist. We can admire her stoicism whilst disliking her ethics. Completely alone, she persuades herself that, ‘Nothing terrible had happened … nothing insurmountable – this had just been a brief dream, a rip in the ordinary fabric …’. However, of course, amongst those just as dysfunctional as she but protected by their wealth, she will always be on the outside looking in. Whilst Cline leaves us with unanswered questions, there will be no doubt as to what happens next.
My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Vintage for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

That a book that features such vapid, unpleasant people trapped in a nihilistic life is so compulsively readable is a compliment to the author. From the outset we meet an unrealisable petty thief, sometime sex worker, drug using and generally sponging woman Alex. Having ripped off one boy friend she hitches her future to an appalling older man who exchanges blow jobs for expensive handbags before slinging her out. After that every person she meets comes from a carnival of horrors- none, even a pathetic mentally unstable boy, engages our sympathy. The ending is inconclusive but leaves the reader with the idea that the merry go round of ghouls will keep spinning. Alex, an extremely attractive young woman will never take any responsibility for herself or her actions and will continue to cadge and live among those whose wealth corrupts everything around them.

This is a great premise which never really pays off. Cline builds tension effectively and protagonist Alex is compelling in a car crash way. The plot meanders, which I was prepared to put down to Alex’s aimless personality, but ultimately none of confrontations it’s been building towards happen and the ending is deeply unsatisfying.

I loved The Girls by Emma Cline so was excited to read her new book. The Guest has a similar sense of foreboding and mystery that makes you race through the book to find out what happens.

In 'The Guest' we follow a young woman named Alex floating through life, latching onto different wealthy men to pass her time. We meet Alex as she is staying in the Hamptons with her latest lover.
Things quickly fall apart and Alex is left stranded with only a few of her belongings and a phone that doesn't work.

Something Emma Cline does so well is building tension. I felt somewhat uncomfortable throughout this whole book, always waiting for something bad to happen to Alex. Even though I think this book would've worked better as a short story I never felt bored while reading it.

Just a heads up, if open and ambiguous endings aren't your thing maybe give this one a miss, although I have to say that this sort of ending made sense for this sort of story.

All in all, an enjoyable reading experience but not a new favourite.

Thanks a lot to NetGalley and to the publisher, I really appreciate getting to read this ARC!

The Guest is a tense read which builds throughout, unfortunately I found the ending unsatisfying.
3 stars.

This was a gripping, gritty read that kept my interest, I found myself cringing at the main character Alex I felt like shaking her when she made foolish silly mistakes, she wasn’t the best grifter, she isa unlikable character I think author did a good in showing all the ugly sides we hide from ourselves and others in her. She was quite cruel at times and at times she sounded dirty so much so I wanted to wash my hair just thinking about her greasy locks
The writer plotted the book well and there was feeling of a big build up but that big build up never happens and that was a big let down ,the ending was bizarre and really spoiled the book for me. Maybe am just not smart enough to read to between the lines.

Overall I enjoyed this book, it was a good at The Girls in terms of writing structure and imagery, the plot being well paced and the characters unnerving but it lacked the finish for me hence three stars instead of four

Alex, a down-on-her-luck escort in her early twenties, is used to treading water in the area between acceptable and unacceptable, coasting on the fringes of American high society until something - she can't quite put her finger on what - goes irretrievably wrong. Overnight, she goes from being the almost-acceptable, carefully dressed and usually silent arm candy of a middle-aged man who might actually love her (sort of) to a homeless train wreck of a girl, stealing, popping pills and trying to avoid her ex-lover Dom who she robbed of his drugs and money in what she saw as a fair transaction - though he doesn't see it that way.

Like one of my other favourite stories of social downfall, Tama Janowitz's An Awkward Age (which also begins in the Hamptons - what the hell goes on there)? this is an addictive read that will have you alternately rooting and cringing for Alex while she scrabbles for something to fill the void. Different and more straightforwardly thriller-like than Cline's debut The Girls, The Guest is similarly satisfying.

What do you get when you cross an eery M. Night Shyamalan opening with the saturated filter and blazing mirage of Breaking Bad, and the unhinged characters of Spring Breakers? The Guest.

❛Who knew how the deer got in, considering the wall around the place. But they did.❜

This line overtly sums up the narrative of this novel. We witness Alex, a dark and distant, cold and coiled unlikable character swindle her way into situations that grow more and more volatile, all in the vain of survival. I say vain, because ironically she is the master of her own demise.

She walks the tight rope between luxury and poverty, slipping into a routine of layered deception, corralled by a lack of morality and self-value.

Alex is a guest to herself, as much as she is a drifter in the lives she encounters; housing the different persona’s she controls; a well-versed Machiavellian.

Emma Cline’s writing of the sea and the haloing bodies of water with it’s salty breath and the cool pockets of peace beneath the surface, felt like a character in itself.

A languid, engrossing and polarising novel.

As a massive fan of The Girls, I was so excited to read Emma Cline’s latest and it completely surpassed my expectations. Edgy, stylishly written and a very complicated/slightly annoying protagonist made The Guest unputdownable!
It’s the perfect holiday read for 2023.

Loved this unsettling book with a very unlikeable narrator, but I sort of wanted her to win and get all she wanted. Great book

Alex is broke and is living off other people. She has an older rich man who takes her to the summer house, but she displeases him and is left at the station. She then flounders around the island, scamming, lying and cheating to survive.
She isn’t a particularly likeable character but I was hoping that something would go right for her. Unfortunately she is one of those people that manages to turn around a good situation and make it bad.
It is a descriptive narration, there isn’t a Big Bang moment however the tale moves along nicely and finishes just as I was wondering where things were going. It is a interesting read - perhaps needs a little more plot to get me more enthusiastic.

Alex is 'The Guest'. She's a permanent drifter, part-time thief, opportunist, and low-level drug user. In order to ingratiate herself into people's lives, she's learned to become a chameleon. She's observed enough of human behaviour to manipulate others, 'And it was good to be someone else. To believe, even for half a moment, that the story was different.'

This summer Alex missteps, making an uncalculated move, and is sent packing from her luxurious summer vacation. But ever the optimistic, Alex refuses to believe that she's actually been 'dismissed'. Maybe if she can just last until Labor Day, everything will be ok? For the next six days, Alex drifts around a rarefied world of beach clubs and vacation homes of the rich; interacting with characters who often seem as troubled as herself, '...too much like Alex. Tolerated but not needed, not powerful.'

Emma Cline is a new author to me and I found her writing very engaging. The tone of this book shares the almost dream-like, half-drunk, and drugged life of Alex. The paragraphs too, highlight her drifting, opportunistic nature. Although throughout the book we get flashes of the difficult life Alex has led previously, there's not a lot of resolution to her problems. To that end, I found it difficult to rate. Ultimately, I still give it five stars as I really enjoyed the writing and overall journey of Alex. A great book.

I was hooked right from the beginning,this was my first emma cline book and it wont be my last.I was drawn to its main character alex even though she was a horrible person.Highly recommend.