I loved the premise for this book, there is nothing better than a locked room mystery. I did find myself getting confused with the number of characters and found the switching of POV a little jarring. I would have preferred each chapter to be from a different POV, to help with the flow.

Nevertheless we were kept guessing right until the end. The tension built until the final reveal and left me feeling entertained.

With thanks to netgalley for allowing me to review this book.

The launch party sounded good and I was pleased when I received my copy. However I could t get into this book. I didn't care much for the characters and the main character Penelope just got on my nerves.

It’s hard to know who to trust when you are among strangers in such a remote setting. But Penelope is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, if she lives long enough to see it through! This takes the locked room concept to a whole new level.

I was completely sold on the premise of the book, the characters however were another matter. They were introduced very quickly, and it took me longer than necessary to remember who they all were. The ghost town effect of the hotel was just the right of strange & unsettling, but the explanation of where the staff all went to was wrapped up too quickly, like an afterthought near the end as the story was running out of steam.

It was passable as a bit of escapism for a few hours, but not something that I would return to for multiple readings.

Note: The Golden Age fan in me was expecting a locked room and got a closed circle. It's a good mystery but I was expecting some more tricky and a riddle to solve.
That said it's entertaining, solid, and well plotted.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I really did not know what to expect from The Launch Party as it is a locked door mystery type of book set in a hotel on the moon but once I started reading it I thoroughly enjoyed it. It had great twists and turns throughout and a satisfying ending.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bonnier Books UK for my ARC.

I Loved this thriller! With a close hotel scenario and an unforgettable setting for the thriller, what was there not to like? The reveal was a bit frustrating as it was hard to predict but didn't spoil the book for me.

The Launch Party had a good premise with our characters being stuck in a hotel after a murder, and not only that but stuck on the moon! Unfortunately this fell a little bit flat as it felt a bit drawn out at parts but rushed at others, particularly towards the end. There’s a couple things missing an explanation - like why the staff disappeared, why everyone was being tracked and if there really was any plans to film everything. As well as the ending missing some logistics for the how to its “why”. Overall a good read and a nice twist on the locked room mystery but just didn’t have enough suspense as I would have liked for the thrilling setting!!

I was never much into thrillers growing up...no real reason, I just wasn't. I haven't read the classics, the Christies and Doyles and so on. But I have been trying to stretch myself in more recent years and try some of the more recent works, and I'm enjoying them very much.

This is a very clever twist on a locked room mystery...the characters literally cannot go anywhere without killing themselves, but they have a huge luxury hotel to roam around and enjoy themselves in. Being a sci fi geek, I was a bit distracted by the lack of certain details ... how did they produce gravity on the shuttle or in the hotel, for one? ... but once I made an effort to ignore them, I was absorbed by the story.

There's a touch of Poirot in the idea of a vacationing detective being caught up in a mystery, but then the whole thing is an homage to Christie, mostly to Orient Express. I would have liked to have more time in the other's POV...we were almost always in Penelope's head, and it made it harder to get to know the other characters. But that's a minor thing when the mystery is this clever.

I enjoyed this very much and I'll be looking out for more by Lauren. She fooled me this time, but next time around I'll definitely solve the mystery first! (*I almost certainly won't.)

(Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review)

I actually really enjoyed this book. The traditional locked room mystery but with its fun twist of being in space added an extra layer which made it interesting and unique. The plot was well thought out with twists and turns (most I couldn’t see coming) as well as being fast-paced and easy to read.

There are a lot of characters who we get introduced to quickly so it was a little confusing to identify them all to begin with. But as the book goes on, it became easier to tell who was who and get to know the characters. The ending did get wrapped up pretty quickly but apart from that, I had a great time reading this book.

Thanks to Bonnier Books UK for an ARC.

This was a very Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery set in the most unlikely of places: the first hotel on the moon. The plot kept me guessing and everything was well brought together in the end.

This one was thrilling from start to finish.

Murders on the moon, limited suspects, and they're completely isolated up there. What more could you want?

It was exciting and thrilling and damn near impossible to figure out. You didn't know who to trust, everyone had their own secrets to hide and everyone was a suspect.

It kept me guessing right to the end and I found it highly enjoyable. The characters were great and written well, the mystery was intriguing, the setting of a luxury hotel on the moon was unique.

Really enjoyable read.

I love a cracking murder mystery set in space. After all, it’s the ultimate locked room murder mystery, as no one is able to sprint outside and simply jump into a car/bus/train/plane and flee the scene where all the bloodletting is taking place. So no time has to be spent inventing elaborate reasons why prospective victims can’t leave.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. While there are several minor shifts of viewpoint – which in my view weren’t necessary and rather diluted the force of the main protagonist – most of the narrative is in third-person viewpoint of Penelope, a police detective taking a leave of absence. Though she spends a lot of time battling her phobias, as she decided to enter the competition to challenge her fears. And then is confronted with the fact that she actually wins a place to fly to the Moon. Her character is interesting and at the beginning of the book, I felt there was a lot of potential for a superb protagonist – but unfortunately Forry decided to have ten people in the initial party. And given that she wanted each one to have a significant role, in my opinion that’s too many to be able to provide the nuanced characterisation that would have made this murder mystery really shine.

What Forry manages to magnificently achieve is a really disturbing and increasingly creepy setting. The Hotel Artemis is the first luxury hotel set on the Moon and I enjoyed the descriptions of the layout, the décor and the building sense of panic as the body count grows and no one knows whodunit. I also enjoyed the plot. Though yes, if you really drill down, there are unrealistic elements, like the reason why all the staff abandoned their posts after having been so intensively trained for their first guests, for example. But I was happy to suspend my disbelief, as I felt other aspects were done well.

I loved the ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ tune playing on a constant loop until their adventure is nearly at an end. I also liked the real shock at the murders. We’re never allowed to forget that the victims’ lives had been cut short and their deaths are a tragedy – as well as a frightening reminder that a killer is roaming around the luxury hotel. The panic and outbreaks of squabbling are well depicted. While the pacing around the denouement is a bit swift after the long build-up, overall I think it’s well handled and I particularly enjoyed the Epilogue, which is a lovely, humorous touch.

I enjoyed this entertaining murder mystery – I just wish Forry had cut down her guest list going to the Moon, because with more depth in the characterisation, this murder mystery could have been outstanding. While I obtained an arc of The Launch Party from the publishers via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
8/10

Welcome to the chance of a lifetime – a fortnight in the brand sparkly new state-of-the-art hotel ON THE MOON. Yes that’s right, a lunar experience!! Just ten lucky people win the chance to this all expenses paid trip!! Would you enter this amazing opportunity???

Ridley Scott’s Alien may have claimed that In Space No One Can Hear You Scream but at Hotel Artemis, it’s a little different. A scream is a potentially welcome reprieve from the Fly Me To The Moon muzak pumping on through the hotel’s corridors. Don’t get me wrong, a bit of Ol’ Blue Eyes is lovely but on constant repeat might even grate this music lover…

The discovery of a body is not what the prize winners expected … or did they?!? Given the lack of hotel staff, one of them had to be guilty right? It’s not like a random stranger could just sneak onto the moon, into Hotel Artemis and wreak havoc!!!

I got thrown in to meet all ten characters quite quickly which to start with was a little confusing trying to remember who everyone was but as I settled into this interstellar thriller, they became more familiar. Spending considerable time with Detective Penelope (not Penny) Strand gave the tracking of the culprit a level of authenticity. She applied her experience (despite being on a break) of interviewing and crime scene processing to try to solve the murders in space.

The story frequently jumps between the guests’ various perspectives. This give the book pace and kept my thumb tapping my kindle. Just as I settle in to the mindset of a particular prize winner’s thoughts, I’d hit a bit of a cliffhanger and Forry whipped me off to see someone else!

Forry has taken the locked room murder mystery concept and sent it into space. This gives it an extra sense of creepiness as even though the location was essentially a hotel, there is the gentle reminders that this is no ordinary hotel. The whole rescue ship being 3 days away adds to the remoteness. The Launch Party is a chilling take on this classic crime trope and this crime fiction lover loved it!

I thoroughly enjoyed this story and it reignited my love of this genre once again, I had been in a bit of a reading slump before this!

Thanks for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Take a dollop of ‘And Then There Were None’, a pinch of ‘Murder On The Orient Express’ & a drizzle of ‘Big Brother’ pop it all in a rocket, send it off to space and wait. This book paid homage to the locked room mystery, golden age crime novels & fast forwards to an time not long from now when we’ll book holidays on the moon. But people with secrets in small spaces can’t play happy families for long..
4.5 stars

The Launch Party is an entertaining mystery set on the moon! A collection of 10 very different people are off to the first ever Hotel on the Moon – Hotel Artemis – having all won a competition. But when they get there, there’s no one to greet them, and seemingly no staff. Then one of the guests is murdered, and suddenly it becomes a real possibility that one of the ten competition winners may have killed them…

This book does a great job of making you feel incredibly claustrophobic and tense. Just the thought of being somewhere like the Moon, where if you step outside your hotel you WILL die, with nowhere else to escape to, makes me feel quite sick. I certainly wouldn’t be entering this competition, but it makes for an enjoyable story!

It’s a locked room-style story without ANY chance of someone having wandered in off the street. The people in that hotel – whether there’s anyone lurking there that they don’t expect – are the only people that could have committed the crime in question, and that means plenty of distrust, paranoia and panic!

The characters in The Launch Party are entertaining enough, though I never felt like I really cared enough about any of them and I got a bit confused as to who was who (they sometimes get referred to by their first names when we’ve mostly heard them called their surname, for example) which I struggled with a little. We get to know Penelope, a Detective taking a break from the Met, the best as we see her trying to find out who committed the murder and try to bring some sense of normality to this very bizarre situation.

Of course, because the story is set on the Moon, it crosses over into sci-fi realms, but I don;t think the science side of it is believable – but as with many mystery/ thriller stories, you have to suspend your disbelief to really get into it, and this is no different. You need to accept that some parts just won’t add up, but the story is entertaining and very easy to read, making this a great holiday novel – if you like your holidays with some added anxiety thrown in for good measure! 😄 Ultimately, it’s a really fun read and I enjoyed it.

A mystery set in the first hotel to open its doors on the moon. When I saw the blurb, I knew I had to read the story. I adore intriguing blurbs almost as much as I love mysteries, so diving into The Launching Party as soon as I could get my hands on it was a no-brainer. And I’m really glad I did.

In many ways—apart from the setting—this is a classic closed-circle murder mystery. We are introduced to a group of ten people who don’t know each other but find themselves in a situation where they have to spend time together in a location they can’t leave. When they discover that they are literally the only people in the vast hotel they are surprised and upset. Their feelings transform into fear when one of them is discovered dead in a scene that was obviously created to disturb and scare. Who can be trusted? Who is hiding what and why? Because even before the murder takes place it is clear that all of them have some sort of issue that may or may not be relevant to what happens next.

I’m not going to list and describe each of the ten guests here. One of them, Penelope Strand, is a police officer and as such automatically falls into the role of trying to find out what happened, although she struggles with some issues of her own.

I loved how the story developed. How the atmosphere changed after the first murder and became even more fraught after a second victim is discovered worked really well. As did the changing loyalties between these people. The mystery captured me early on and held me in its grip right until the final pages.

Having said that, the setup of this story raised one or two questions as well.

For starters, I have to wonder about the logistics involved in getting the people who were at the centre of this mystery all in this location. I’m also not sure the scenario where the group of ten ended up in the hotel on their own, without any staff available, made complete sense. Given the scope of the venture and the amount of money involved, I would expect a stunt like this to be (next to) impossible to pull off.

Do I mind? Did it upset me while I was reading the conclusion?

The short answer is no. While I was reading it didn’t even occur to me that there might be a plausibility issue; that thought only came to me after I finished the book. And even when the thought did cross my mind, it was quickly followed by the realisation that I’d just read a mystery set in the first hotel on the moon and I decided that if I could accept the setting without question, maybe I should show the solution the same generosity. 😊

I feel I should also mention that this story is told from multiple points of view and that it wasn’t always immediately clear when the point of view changed. This may or may not be because I read an ARC rather than the final e-book version, though.

When push comes to shove, what we have here is a closed circle mystery, much in keeping with the genre’s tradition. I’m not sure if the reader is given all the clues they need to solve the mystery before the investigator does, but I wasn’t left with any unanswered question when the story ended. What’s more, I thoroughly enjoyed my reading journey while the investigation was going on. It seems to me that the author allowed for the possibility of more mysteries set in Hotel Artemis and if she writes those, I will definitely read them.

I was excited to read this book as the premise sounded different from your run of the mill murder mystery. Ten people have been chosen to spend two weeks on a brand new luxury hotel on the moon. When they arrive, they realise that they’re totally alone. The staff that are meant to be there are mysteriously absent. Then one of the group is found dead in what looks like a murder.

There are quite a lot of characters in the story and it took me a little while to remember who was who. I didn’t really warm to any of them but I still wanted to find out whodunnit and what was going on. For me, the characters weren’t quite developed enough and felt a bit cliched

Initially, I got into the story really quickly and was gripped by it. However, about halfway through it seemed to slow down a bit for me. There was a lot of rushing around the hotel, with all the characters being furtive, and it seemed to make the plot complicated for no real reason. The ending was alright but I was a bit underwhelmed.

I like the idea for the story and the setting of the hotel on the moon is good. I think the plot lost its way a bit and wasn’t as thrilling as it could have been. Nonetheless, it was a good enough read.

Thanks to Bonnier Books UK and NetGalley for my copy in exchange for a review.

So I went into this one not really knowing what to expect, other than it’s all about a trip to the moon. Just imagine being one of the first tourists to go to the moon. Would you do it? This group of 10 strangers do it - and what a mistake to make!

Billed as an Agatha Christie story - but in space, this one had me guessing all throughout. And I can tell you that I was coming up with some pretty out there theories (one may even involve another moon-based conspiracy theory!)

I will admit that there were parts where the pacing felt a bit sluggish, but this one had me desperate to find the truth (and I was way off!) You definitely feel the claustrophobia and isolation with this one as the bodies mount up, and the mystery deepens.

Thanks to NetGalley, the team at Bonnier Books/Zaffre and the author for the opportunity to read this review copy.

A locked room mystery, set on the moon with a cast of unlikeable characters - sometimes I love to hate people in books but not this time. An interesting premise but I struggled with the implausibility of it.