Great premise, clever games and plot, but somewhat let down by the amount of times I had to go back and check things that had been confusingly laid out.

I think the book does character study beautiful and while the start was very slow it did pace better halfway through.

I love a good murder mystery, and I love a good read, so a murder mystery set in a writer’s retreat full of famous authors sounded ideal!

Six thriller authors have been invited to the remote house of anonymous author J.R. Alastor to take part in a writer’s retreat. Featuring dinner games and writing tips, this was an opportunity not to be missed. But when a writer goes missing, the authors realise the stakes may be higher than they expected…

It’s taken me a little while to write this review after reading it and I was initially unsure why. I think ultimately, although I absolutely love the premise, this book missed the mark for me in some areas which was disappointing. We are introduced to a lot of points of view at once, with each chapter having a different narrator, out of the six authors, one housekeeper and a mysterious narrator who is not revealed until the end. This felt like a bit of an overload to begin with, and I found it hard to keep track of the characters and work out who was who, and what each person’s relationship was to each other. They are all written quite similarly as well which made this job even harder. The characters remained my issue throughout – the plot works well to keep you guessing who the perpetrator could be – in fact, we’d gotten down to the last two and I still hadn’t really guessed! It does this by sacrificing any empathy you have for the characters though – I didn’t really feel that I was rooting for anyone by the end.

The plot starts well, with a game before dinner which sets a somewhat darker tone on the proceedings. However, I found the games a little confusing. We seemed to go from zero to one hundred very quickly, whereas I would have preferred a slower pace where we could introduce some more normal events of the writing retreat before the twists started to be revealed. Although the ending did tie things together, it did rely quite heavily on tell-not-show, where one character monologues a lot of events that the reader wouldn’t have been able to work out or guess to make the plot make sense.

Overall, You Are Fatally Invited didn’t quite hit the mark for me sadly, it was a great premise but had some pitfalls trying to create a twisting narrative. Thank you to Netgalley & Random House UK, Transworld Publishers and Bantam for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was definitely an interesting one, it was very fast paced, but in some ways too fast because it switched character POV so often that you didn't get much time to properly get to know them well. Of course there were a few more central characters that you got more of, but I still found it a bit hard to get a grasp on how I really felt about them. The book definitely did what it intended by you never knowing what character you could trust, or what was really happening, it sort of left my head spinning a little bit. The last 100 pages were definitely where it all really started to come together and I did find myself wanting to get to the end and to finally know the answers. And I can honestly say I didn't see the twists coming. I didn't guess the outcome which is what a writer of a book like this wants so it was successful in that. It's a good read, I think other readers will really enjoy it. I think for me the jump in POV so often just got a bit confusing but other people will love that. A good read, solid 3 stars.

A murderous retreat. Mila is invited by a mysterious benefactor to be administrator on an island get-together for authors. Creepy things happen and people get knocked down like skittles. On the plus side, the food is good! A fun read with lots of red herrings.

Maybe because I was expecting an easy, Agatha Christie style read over Christmas but this wasn't really for me.
Certainly well written, I found I really needed to concentrate of whose perspective the story was being told from in each chapter which, for me, detracted from the story line somewhat.
I was a superb plot but I just found it a bit hard work. Sorry!

You Are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego is a thrilling and wickedly clever murder mystery that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. When Mila del Angél, a former aspiring writer, is hired by the renowned and enigmatic J. R. Alastor to host a writing retreat at his remote Maine manor, she seizes the opportunity, especially since she has an ax to grind with one of the guests. The retreat’s guest list is a perfect mix of thriller authors—each a master of suspense, deceit, and mayhem.

What starts as a week of trope-fueled games and riddles takes a dark turn when one of the authors is found dead, but not the one Mila had planned to murder. Trapped on the island with a storm cutting them off from the outside world, the remaining guests must navigate a series of deadly twists, with the body count rising and the killer knowing every trick in the book.

Pliego’s fast-paced narrative is full of blood, gore, and spine-tingling suspense. Even the quieter moments pulse with tension as Mila races to outwit a killer who’s rewriting the rules. With locked-room mysteries, shifting allegiances, and shocking revelations, this book is a must-read for fans of dark thrillers and twisted games. It’s a captivating ride from start to finish.

Read more at The Secret. Book Review.

This book is an interesting plot and storyline with compelling characters. Enjoyed reading the book although it took me a while to get into the story

This fell flatter than a pancake. Sadly, IMO most of this is due to mediocre writing. The plot is seriously, if not ludicrously convoluted, the characters are all insufferable cardboard cut-outs that don't even come close to resembling anything remotely person-like, and what's worse, they're boring as hell. But what kills this baby dead is the writing. Everything is overwritten to within an inch of its life. There's no room for atmosphere or flow or even just air to breathe, everything is buried under an avalanche of stilted, lifeless, over-explaining prose that is trying so hard you can feel its muscles strain. The author just doesn't know when to let up, everything is always that little bit over the top... and it gets annoying very, very fast.
People rarely just speak; instead, they forever "coo" and "harp", they "probe", "huff", "rasp" "prescribe" and "bumble some excuse" or other. Breaths trip. Someone "gesture[s] with his chin to the far end" of a room. Speaking of rooms, no-one can simply walk into one, instead heels are forever sinking "into the luscious cream-and-navy carpet", unless they "graze the woven carpet", for no discernible reason except to be wordy for wordiness' sake. The prose is as purple as a jar of grape Gatorade: "my smile faded with his footsteps as I stared through one of the glass cases, sinking into the stirred waters of my musing."
"A growl curled in my throat", yeah well, a little honeyed tea might help with that. Some dude wrote a YA thriller "that had ripped my soul out through my rib cage last year" (ouch), which, apparently, counts as a compliment. (Also, glad we apparently finally managed to pinpoint the location of the human soul.) "A chill bit into the back of my skull", ouch again (skulls don't have it easy in this book anyway: "a thought scraped its fingernails bloody at the back of my skull", or, when an alarm clock goes off, its "shrieking grated against my skull, scraping my brain raw.").
Triple ouch or just occupational hazard? You judge: "I hoped [getting published] stung like a paper cut slitting your throat." Some paper cut, I guess...
For some reason, we're apparently supposed to feel for this character and their histrionics, which basically tells you all you need to know about the author's handling of her characters. Then again, throwing hissy fits is just the go-to reaction for these people; they can't just dislike the idea of a beach picnic in the cold, they need to be colorful: "A flare of annoyance shot through me at Alastor sentencing us to the outdoors in late October." Dude, you're not being "sentenced" to anything. You're just supposed to have a meal outside. Keep it down with the annoyance flare until you actually need one, okay?

This is an author very much in love with her own writing. Sadly, it doesn't feel like she was thinking very hard about what she was saying; some things don't even make that much sense: Alastor's mansion "had gone through extensive renovations, and now, the media called it the height of luxury. Not that any journalists had ever actually been here." So, um, how would they know about the "height of luxury" thing? And, "the media"??
Someone feels their "thoughts slipping like slimy fish out of [their] hands", which I imagine is an unpleasant thing to experience, but not as bad as feeling "[your] gut shrivel[ing] like an aged cherry.". There's also apparently some magic trickery of perception at work, undoing basic physics: "Our forms swam in the mirror of the blackened window, distorted shapes moving a second behind." A second behind?!? How is that even possible?? And how does it not make you want to run screaming from the room?
Someone wanders the nightly halls in search of some water because "I wasn't about to drink from the tap like an animal." Which is not only the most flimsy excuse for a "reason" to get a certain scene in motion, it doesn't even make sense, as of all the animals I've known in my lifetime, none were able or willing to manipulate the tap, instead settling for a nice bowl on the floor.

I also found it hilarious that six totally famous mystery writers stuck on an island OF COURSE talk about nothing but their respective books, or, in some cases, book, singular. Like, if you put Stephen King in a room with Dean Koontz and Stephen Graham Jones and Ramsey Campbell, would they spend the next hours holding forth on their latest novels and nothing else? Personally I like to think that they'd basically chat about everything BUT their books; anything else would be rather cringe-y, especially if their shop-talk turned out as inane as the one in this book ("I have always wondered how you [...] craft such graphic imagery. [...] What is your source of inspiration?"). But of course the characters in this thing are all one-dimensional clichés who happen to somehow have written a bestseller, so that's the one thing they talk about.
Which makes sense, I guess, because they're only ever called "the authors". It's the authors do this and the authors do that, "I guided the authors" here and "I directed the authors" there. They're not people. They're certainly not individuals. They're the authors, or rather, some ancient Technicolor cliché of persons who have written a book. (Fun fact: the concept of ARCs has not made it into Ms Pliego's world, as evidenced by one of "the authors" coming across their host's latest work: "'Ro, look. It's Alastor's book on writing. It's releasing next week. But it's here.'" Wow. Really.)

Which brings us to the author's idea of writing itself, as in, the process of putting words on paper. If you listened to Ms Pliego, you'd be forgiven to think that this is something utterly special, a quasi-religious act of creating only to be mastered by the chosen few (just a reminder, we're talking about mystery writers here. People writing tomes about killer lawyers and stuff titled "An Ecology of Scars" and producing paragraphs like the following: "Horror had slit her vocal cords. Blood splashed a constellation of darkness onto the pale marble, drowning the starlight through the window like a black hole." To which another writer offers some very insightful thoughts: "I think the quality of your writing holds a lot of promise. [...] Your command over the language speaks beyond the words themselves."). So if you write yourself, and you come across another writer, it's like two unicorns crossing paths, a moment that's insufferably beautiful as well as totally magic... well, at least in the author's worldview:
"But here I was, finally talking to a real author -- one of the first I'd ever met in person. And another writer knows that nothing about writing is, in fact, silly -- or perhaps the whole thing is. That dreaming up people and worlds is perhaps the silliest, most beautiful thing a human can do." But don't stop there: if writing is "your thing", "if it's something that feels like a part of you, like you come alive when you write -- then just because you're not writing now doesn't mean you're not a writer."
You know, this kind of reasoning might be perfectly applicable to a cheater or a serial killer, but as for creating art, be it making music or painting or writing stories, I'm tempted to ask how in the world you consider yourself an artist if you're not making art. No-one can seriously expect to be called a chef if they don't cook, nor a farmer if they don't farm. But somehow just thinking about maybe possibly creating stuff sometime in the future is equivalent to being an artist? Please.
(But of course the one would-be writer can't be blamed for not writing, because, you know, how can you possibly write anything when you're all alone?!? "I should be able to brainstorm and commiserate with other writers, dissect emotion and words and get at the heart of the story. Hell, I should have been invited to a writing retreat just like this one." Yes, totally. Nobody can expect you to write a book on your own, it's much too lonely. Good grief...)

The fetishizing of authordom extends to the writer's implements as well, especially that holy grail, the one thing no self-respecting writer can do without, The Notebook. Lots of attention is given to The Writer's Notebook. "A writer's notebook was their mind on paper, and I itched to thumb through his" (ew). "Nearly every writer had one, a cemetery for stray thoughts and scraps of dialogue which may or may not be resurrected in a story." A cemetery?? For thoughts? So they, um, rest in peace and don't come back? Another character (!) covets those notebooks as well, if only to "[p]eel apart his thoughts and everything that made him a bestseller."

Apart from the weird perspective on the writing craft, there is some kind of murder mystery going on, and riddles and stuff, and towards the end things finally let loose and turn totally bonkers, but I gave up long before that. This book needed some serious editing. It also needed several units of personality injected into its characters, and some humor would have been nice as well -- the novel takes itself and its concept MUCH too seriously. Really too bad. It could and should have been a lot more fun

Firstly I’d like to say thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Wow! What a way to end the year!!

I think this was such a good book. I loved the concept and the plot! There were a huge range of characters, all unique and with secrets and mysteries surrounding them. It was so interesting seeing how the different mysteries unravelled, showing how everything was linked together.

There were so many twists that had me gasping and my jaw was firmly dropped. It had me constantly guessing throughout and I still didn’t get it right but it was so fun trying!

I just think this was so cleverly done and very gripping and I really really enjoyed it! I honestly have no complaints!

This was a thrilling murder mystery! It did remind me of Clue with how the invited writers had never met their host before heading off to his private island for a writer's retreat as they are all very successful writes (including the mysterious host) and also have some pretty dark secrets. Those secrets end up being the death of some and it gets all nice and twisty with the reader not being able to tell (at least not me!) who might be trustworthy as the body count rises! And while there are devious games being played, I did enjoy them and their creativity. Plans within plans and so many ulterior motives, plus a few taking advantage of the chaos to get their own brands of revenge make this story very hard to put down cause you can't guess what happens next!

I do like Mila, who is the main narrator though it does switch it up to keep things interesting. Be sure to pay attention to the headings for which character is telling the story! And there are a couple other characters (I won't say who though) that you can pretty safely root for (though there are thieves and even a murderer on the island though not so surprising as people end up dead!)

So, I great locked room clue thriller mystery with a bunch of mystery thriller writers as the victims! I enjoyed it and would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read and review this book!

I was drawn to this book because the blurb sounded so intriguing: "(A) writer’s retreat hosted on a private island turns lethal when one of the authors is found murdered in this twisty locked room mystery".

A murder-mystery on a private island?? Yes, please!

I was not disappointed.

Ande Pliego definitely did her homework; I would suggest that it might have involved maps and pages of notes of the multiple timelines in order to weave the intricate story that she did. In a genre that can sometimes be overshadowed by the giants like Christie or Chandler or even Higgiins-Clark, Pliego did an standout job of keeping the murder-mystery bar unrealistically high with this book.

I was impressed at how much thought went into this, and how Pliego used technology bringing a modern edge to the genre. The premise is not far-fetched in the slightest, and as I had to dip in and out of the book myself, I took great delight in checking in to see what the characters were up to.

If there is humour, it is acerbic and wry. Every fear is frought, every doubt is a new worry and the emotions are raw. The characters are three dimensional in a way that, without knowing how, I instictively loved or hated or trusted them instantly.

Pliego allowed the characters to do their own talking by switching between the narractives; each character getting a chapter to allow the reader to follow them like a shadow. Interestingly, there are a couple of chapters voiced by anonymous characters, which was a delightful twist on the format. Pliego has a distinctive voice and, through that, her confidence shone.

Although I started out trying to figure out who the killer (or killers) was, I eventually just gave up and let the story unfold before me. Mainly because Ande Pliego was very meticulous about not revealing anything, any clue or any hint, before she was ready to. The reveals (of which there are a few) were perfectly timed and Pliego wrote them in such a way that I never felt like I was being patronised. I discovered along with the characters in this chaos ballet and it all somehow felt more immersive than a standard mystery; as though I was there with them all along.

This was a great, fun read and I enjoyed getting to experience the story told by a truly talented writer whose passion and vision lead me into a fantastic and intriguing mystery.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group/Ballantine/Bantam for sharing this well-written locked-room mystery’s digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

I love a good closed room murder mystery where I want to try to work out the story before it unfolds. I remember reading Agatha Christie’s book set on an island with ten people and this is a modern day equivalent. The writing is good and the tension is cleverly crafted, however I did get confused as to who was narrating each chapter as their ‘voices’ all sounded similar to the point where I had to flick back to the beginning of the chapter to understand whose pov was being expressed. Overall I enjoyed reading this book.

The premise to this book intrigued me from the start. Six writers invited to a writing retreat on a private island. However I found it hard to keep track of who was who. All the characters told lies and had 'something' in their past they wanted to hide. I found that there was too much information. I also skipped a lot just to get to the end (that probably didn't help) as I had, quite literally, given up. Not for me I am afraid.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK for the advance copy of this book.

4.5 stars

I absolutely loved ‘You are fatally invited’. I found the plot to this book brilliant that kept me entertained from the very beginning. This thriller/mystery theme had me shocked and guessing throughout the entire book, and the twists I believed I guessed right were actually wrong which I love!
The story involves thriller authors invited to a retreat on a private island by another thriller writer. The book consisted of multiple POVs giving us an insight into the experience and involvement of multiple characters. The details in this story were so well thought of, it was just so good.
This book is due to be released on the 13th of February 2025 and I highly recommend this read.

"Perhaps you, reading this, had an inciting incident— a moment when your voice was silenced— and taking pen to paper is your way of saying I will not be silent again. Or perhaps writing is how you can tell a story uninterrupted."

J.R. Alastor is a legendary mystery writer his books are sold worldwide but no one knows his real name. He has invited six authors to an exclusive murder mystery retreat on his private island. A week-long retreat of trope-filled games but it soon takes a sinister turn when one of the writers is found dead.

I thought the first half of this book was great the second half was fantastic! I enjoyed the multiple povs it helped to get to know all the characters and their backgrounds. Fast-paced with twists I didn't see coming which is always the best.

If you love a locked room mystery this is one to pick up in 2025. A fantastic debut novel!

This modern day spin on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Was None is an incredible debut by Ande Peliego. We follow writers who are sent to an island for a themed retreat held by the renowned JR Alastor and to put it simply through challenges and trials (which they are not always aware of) the authors are killed off, one by one.

I would like to start with things I particularly liked:
- The twists were great, they added to the story and weren’t completely illogical like some murder mysteries use. I didn’t feel like this book was dependent of twists to give the reader any feelings. While they did add to the tension and questions I had, suspense was still built throughout with the dialogue and actions.
- The alternating POVs really helped for a successful execution of telling this story. We weren’t confined to one persons perspective and this meant more questions could be asked. I think it worked particularly well here because as the reader we are attempting to comb each person for clues, and we won’t know until further into the book wether our suspicions are right or not.
- The character motivations were something that I was really into and something I had many questions about. I thought the motivations were written well for each character.

I had fun reading about our crew of characters. In the beginning it was a little difficult to differentiate characters that weren’t brought up as much but the more I read the more the characters took shape in my head and I could clearly envision them. It took a couple chapter to get into but after that I was full absorbed, in fact I was up till 5am finishing the book simply because I needed to know how it ended! And I was not disappointed. I don’t want to spoil the ending but I will say I felt satisfied with how it ended, I wasn’t questioning how it was even possible or feeling as thought it was anticlimactic and I thought it worked well.

Overall this was a great read and I would definitely recommend you check it out if you like multiple POVs, characters trying to work out who the mole is and surprising twists.

Really enjoyed this read, perfect thriller for cosying up on the sofa during the holidays.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sharing this book with me for my honest review.

J.R. Alastor is a famous thriller writer, but he always write anonymously. He has never attended book signings etc and no one knows what he actually looks like. So, when six thriller writers are invited to on writer retreat on a secluded island, they jump at the chance to go and meet him. But when they get there, instead meeting the famous writer they meet Mila who is an event planner. Who has planned a set of games. But Mila is hiding something. She has set up the games seeking revenge and that in the end someone dies. But she gets a surprise when the wrong person is found dead, and the others are in a whole heap of danger.
If you like a good, locked room mystery on a secluded island this is for you. As this is a debut novel, I didn’t know what to expect. But I was pleasantly surprised that this is better than I thought. it was going to be, this is a complex thriller, with several points of view but gripping and tense in every game wondering what is going to happen next. This is also quite different to the other locked room mysteries of this type that I have read. I found it to be really good and will look forward to see that the author next endeavour in the future. 4 stars from me.

Ande Pliago: You Are Fatally Invited. This was an arc from NetGalley. Thank you for the opportunity! First the cover caught my eye (what a creative solution is that the fountain pen that takes up space in the middle of the book title and replaces the letter "i"), and then the blurb itself, so I was really looking forward to getting started! 🔎

I have to say that this simply was brilliant! The whole story, as it was, completely held my attention, my mind was constantly on this story, and whenever I could, I read further.

According to the story, a world-famous best-selling author, J.R. Alastor, whose true identity is shrouded in mystery, announces a course for writers, and the venue will be on his private island (Wolf Harbor Island), and only the best will be allowed to enter.

J.R. Alastor asks young Mila to organize the entire event. Eventually, six famous thriller writers join the circle, all excitedly awaiting the big meeting with the mysterious writer. (Rodrigo, Olivia, Fletcher, Cassandra, Violet and Ashton)

The plan is for the guests to spend a whole week away from everything and everyone. However, the writers soon find themselves in the middle of a murder and have no one to rely on but themselves...but who can they trust?

I highly recommend it, this book gets a ★★★★★ from me!

Revenge is a dish best served cold - and this book relies on that adage for its plot-line. Two people who have been desperately hurt in the past and have waited for their perpetrator to pay the final price for their earlier misdeeds - except, they are each acting individually and secretly and it is incredibly difficult to tell who is acting and murdering the guests.

A number of thriller writers are mysteriously invited to an island for a writing retreat. On the face of it, they don't appear to know each other or have any prior relationship to each other, except for them all being writers. However, they all lie, names and biographical details are changed and it becomes increasingly difficult to untangle a very complicated web as you read on. This story is told from a number of POV - sometimes chapters are clearly labelled as to which character is narrating, but at other times the 'speaker' is a cryptic name and, as a reader, you need to act like a detective to work out who you think might actually be revealing that information.

This was an incredible read - cleverly plotted with so many twists and turns. Just as I thought I had figured out a relationship or a motive for murder, the character then seemed to die. I had no idea who to trust or how the characters were linked. The murders are inventive and gory to say the least - this is more than a suspense thriller, bordering on horror at times!

The ending was tame, in my opinion. There were some final twists that I did not see coming - but after that it felt a little too neatly parcelled up. so much bloodshed and retribution was tidily laid to rest - exciting read all the same!