I'll read any Lucy Foley. She's incredibly good at taking a single space and making it a whole world, full of atmosphere, tension and a feeling of being trapped. In this case it's a hotel where the past is coming back to bite. I often struggle with shifting POVs but it worked here to create more suspense. The writing here is sharp, giving you a trail to follow while never being sure where it's going. Definitely recommend.

Offering suspense and drama Midnight Feast is a multiple course meal for the imagination.

The characters were good, well written and well thought out. The divide between the locals and the tourists was well written and played out well in the story.

The folk lore was interesting and woven through the events and the location.

Overall a good story that kept me reading over a few nights.

Grab this book for a bedside table read, snacks are optional.

Another excellent thriller by Lucy Foley.
It is opening day of the Manor, in Dorset, the pride and joy of Francesca. It is a luxury retreat, full of new age rituals, luxuries and pampering.
Everyone is busy getting things ready. Is is a whirlwind of activity and of people. Francesca is in charge and looking stunning, as usual. She, her employees and her guests are the voices of the story and they, in turn, paint this picture where details arise slowly. They all act strangely. Why? And who are they? A body is found and little by little, a dark and uncomfortable past is brought back in the middle of what should have been a wonderful day. Why? Because nothing is what it seems and no one is what they seem. And secrets cannot always be buried for ever.
This is a dark and slow roast of a thriller, with touches of mystery and imaginary creatures meeting in the woods. Dark secrets as well that return to haunt those who have done wrong. And, as in other Lucy Foley's books, this real talent for taking the reader along in the story, create some discomfort and lead us to wrong conclusions and to many questions, right until the end.
It is one of those books you can't put down.

One of the things I enjoy with Lucy Foleys books is that there’s a sense of fun about them. In ‘The Midnight Feast’ she continually takes aim at the whole ‘New age’ industry, especially through the incredibly annoying Francesca. There’s crystal pouches, while linen, and even a foragers tasting menu amongst the delights to be enjoyed. Guests post pictures on the ‘gram while enjoying the infinity pool.

There’s something of ‘The wicker man’ meets ‘The birds’ about this, a spooky folklore that you aren’t sure still exists. It’s a great setting, with suspicious locals and hints of paganism. Definitely atmospheric and shady.

I wanted a fun, zippy read and that’s what I got with this book, as I have with every other Lucy Foley title. Some of the reveals were a bit more plausible than others, and a couple of them were well signposted, but there were plenty I didn’t see coming.

Another enjoyable and hugely entertaining twisty thriller from an author who is in complete control of her particular brand of storytelling. If you liked her previous books, you’ll love this too.

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley – 4.5 stars

This is a fantastic mystery thriller with twists that hold me whole weekend to get through it. And so I did. All what I want to say is The Birds??
Go ahead with this book and try to figure out what’s there! You will enjoy it!

Publisher: HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction | HarperCollins
Pages: 416

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Lucy Foley has done it again! Her books are one of the things I look forward to every year, and The Midnight Feast is the perfect Summer thriller. Secrets of the past, people masking their identities, the town's myths, and a hip new hotel in Dorset with a cult-leader like owner turn out to be the perfect combination!

‘The Midnight feast’ by Lucy Foley, took me a while to settle into the story and to read. However, Foley has once again does a good job at presenting a multi-POV in weaving of the future, past and present narratives. Set at an exclusive country-side ‘resort’, “The Manor” on the coast of England on their opening weekend, we join a group of staff, guests and locals to celebrate. Is anyone who they seem? And should anyone “go down into the woods today” … you’ll have to read to find out more.

Not Foley’s best book, and I didn’t race through it or get as hooked as quickly as I did with her earlier novels. Nevertheless, it will be a good summer read for any thriller fans - 3.5 rounded to 4.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book!! I was really looking forward to this one but I wasn’t totally gripped!! It was a bit unbelievable for my liking! I finished it as I was invested enough to want to know what happened at the end but overall I was a little disappointed.

"The Birds are like nature. And nature always finds a way."

Francesca Meadows has returned home to the English coast, turning her family estate into The Manor, an exclusive and very pricey retreat for those looking to recuperate in the countryside in luxury. It's the opening weekend and Francesca has spared no expense, with the festivities ending in a midnight feast on the summer solstice. She needs to be careful though, because she's made many enemies and some of them will be there.

By the end of the solstice, the building will be in flames, the guests all strung out and a body will have been found at the bottom of a cliff. Who has died? Was it an accident that happened during the debauchery? Or was it something more sinister? And is there anything truth to the rumours of a group called 'The Birds' meeting in the forest, dispensing their own forms of justice?

The story is told from multiple viewpoints: Francesca, her husband Own, staff member, Eddie and Bella, a guest. All of them have secrets they don't want the others to know about. All of them have their own agendas in being at The Manor.

I feel like Lucy Foley is by now an old hand at locked-room mysteries but unfortunately, this one fell a bit flat for me. I recently read and loved 'The Guest List', and there the victim is also not revealed until the end but in this book, I guessed immediately who'd been killed.

The twists were lukewarm and half-baked – I didn't care as much about them as I would have liked and they all kind of came tumbling out at the end together, whereas I think they could have been laid out more carefully. I was also missing the kind of tension that Foley usually excels at building up, but I was never on the edge of my seat.

'The Midnight Feast' is interesting but ultimately lacks the gut-punch twists and intriguing characters a good locked-room mystery has.

opening weekend at The Manor, a luxurious hotel/Mansion on the Dorset Coast with cabins, a pool, tennis courts, etc. Its a place for the filthy rich to be seen. Francesca, the owner has spared no expense, but she isn't exactly who she proclaims to be... On the morning after The Solstice celebration, a body is found, but who is it and what exactly happened at The Manor that night? Oh and The Manor is in flames...

Told through multiple Povs this unfurls perfectly. The twists were u predictable and fantastic. There is also the dual timeline through diary entries that really add to the story by showing us glimpses to the shadowy past. Oh and sprinkle in some local folklore and some woods. Loved it. I didn't struggle to get into it a bit but once I got going I couldn't put it down.

A great story with so many opportunities to work out what is going on but do you really know. This was gripping from start to finish.

Another highly anticipated Lucy Foley read. A huge part of reading this that I enjoyed was the multiple POV which helped with grabbing the reader’s attention and keeps you on your toes (especially with the change in timelines!)

A good, solid & enthralling read!

Thanks Netgalley for the ARC of this book!

I have enjoyed Lucy Foley’s books but this one not as much. The book kept going backwards and forwards and in the middle, I found that annoying, so many books are written this way at the moment.
The luxury hotel has its grand opening and the locals are not happy at the changes Francesca Meadows has made to her grandfather’s mansion that she has inherited. She also has plans to expand into the ancient woods and land to build guest cabins. The story goes back to when Francesca was a teenager and the problems she created with local holidaymakers and villagers. It has repercussions on her opening. Throw in ancient legends surrounding the woods and strange birds.
I enjoyed the book more towards the end when the different strands of the timelines are brought together and I realised who everyone was.

Dramatic and thrilling! this is one of those stories that keeps you on your toes and keeps you guessing as to how things played out!! The issue I had with the earlier part of the story was that it was just a little too 'bitty' and kept chopping and changing from characters to timelines, so that I couldn't really get a good grasp on the central characters!! What I did enjoy was how it all played out in the end and am very glad I stuck with it!

Set around The Manor, in Dorset, a new luxury resort, we are introduced to the owner and a number of locals and visitors alike, and tension starts to build! The locals haven't taken kindly to the construction of the resort, and then the dark secrets start to be revealed about the goings on in the past and how that connects to the present.

I really enjoyed the dark and creepy vibes throughout and watching the secrets of the past being revealed!

Another brilliant read from Lucy Foley! I loved the pagan themes in this book and it was really spooky at times.
You will be kept guessing until the very end and as always, plenty of shocking twists and turns throughout!

A cracking read. As ever, a great read from this author. Thank you @netgalley for the opportunity to read and review. Look forward to the next.

I so wanted to like this one but it failed to completely reel me in. Lucy Foley’s known for her complex, winding crime stories and this is no exception. It’s told from multiple perspectives, shifting backwards and forwards in time. I could see this approach was meant to keep readers guessing but I frequently found the ornate structure and the array of slightly-stock characters close to dizzying. The underlying narrative is skilful enough - not for nothing is Foley so popular a crime writer - and the backstory presented in the form of a teenager’s diary featured a number of intriguing elements. But it also felt manipulative and, for me, far too slow moving.

The central storyline unfolds in the near future and revolves around the opening of a chic, upmarket resort, the kind that attracts wealthy devotees of micro-dosing and wellness culture – somewhere tailormade for the Gwyneth Paltrows of this world. But this new development has met with hostility from the locals, among them a sinister, ancient society known as “The Birds.” The resort itself is positively dripping with secrets and hidden agendas: from what happened in owner Francesca’s youth to questions surrounding her husband Owen’s origins, not to mention the real identity of Bella a guest who seems bizarrely fixated on Francesca. In addition, we get missing people from the past, delinquent teens from the surrounding area threatening to attack hotel guests; and a series of unsettling occurrences with a folk horror flavour. The material itself is more than promising but the way everything fitted together just didn’t convince me, I found the succession of plot twists and reveals a bit wearying. But it’s still a relatively accomplished murder mystery which will undoubtedly work well for Foley’s many fans.

I think The Midnight Feast might actually be the best book I've read by Lucy Foley. The setting is incredibly atmospheric. It's blazing hot, the solstice is approaching and the newly opened hotel on the grounds of the old manor house is completely booked out. What could be more fitting for a Lucy Foley novel than a remote location and a group/horde of incredibly disgustingly rich people? There are many POVs and almost everyone we meet has something to hide. I enjoyed reading it extremely, especially the ending is filled with plot twists, not all of which I saw coming.

I really enjoyed this, a well paced thriller with plenty of twists. I really liked the more folklore-ish aspects of The Birds which appear in the woods. Nice class distinctions and as is often the way in Lucy Foley novels, some truly unlikeable characters. Great strands of stories coming together well, some surprises along the way and a well crafted plot. Great thriller, would recommend.

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

The premise of this book was very promising, yet I am sorry to say that I didn't enjoy this as much as I had hoped. I had quite a few issues with this book. Firstly, the constant switching between timelines and POVs was confusing and left me constantly thinking "wait what is going on?". I think the extracts into the past could have worked well if they were better planned, but they seemed too abrupt and confusing. These insights into the past didn't always progress the plot in any way either, so I felt like many of them could have been left out as they felt unnecessary. I did enjoy reading the journal entries though, and I think these would have sufficed without all the other flashbacks.

The beginning was also slow and drawn-out; it took too long for the action to kick in and I found myself feeling bored for the first half of the book or so. Once it did get going though, I enjoyed it a lot more, and the last 25% was enjoyable, gripping and fast-paced. It is just a shame that the author couldn't have made the entire book as thrilling as the last quarter, as if they had this would have been a great book with a great plot. I felt we spent too much time on background details rather than focusing on the plot. I did think the author did a great job at describing this really beautiful, idyllic setting and contrasting it with this really dark, creepy atmosphere that surrounds the legend of "the birds".

There are also a few too many characters in this book. It got to the point that I was confused over who was who, and was having to keep notes on who each character was, what their job was or how they knew the other characters etc just to keep up. For example, there was no need to include so many staff members and delve so deeply into their lives. The plot could have proceeded in the exact same way but using half the characters. Pretty much all the characters (other than maybe Eddie) were also annoying and quite shallow as they didn't have any real personalities (Bella for example seemed to have no personality other than being driven by revenge).

This is a real shame as I really wanted to love this book! I've heard some great things about Lucy Foley's other books, but this one was overall very disappointing. I will still try and read some of her other books, as I do think this book had potential that was just unfulfilled, but I am sorry to say I would not recommend reading this particular book. I rated this 2 out of 5 stars. Thank you to Netgalley and Lucy Foley for this ARC.