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A review by jpaulthunders77
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
2.0
The twists, especially the last two, were predictable. For me, if that's the case, I would be a bit disappointed. Let me just explain how I somehow stitched the events together. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Once Will's secrets started percolating, starting from Johnno's career sabotage, the bullying of this 'Loner' boy, I had this weird feeling—something screaming inside my gut (by the way, the reason why I'm fat is because I have this massive gut to listen to haha)—that Aoife was related to this boy whom they 'accidentally' killed. Why, you might ask?
a. Because first of all, when the revelations occurred, she barely appeared on page. Now this was one of the author's technique to hide the bomb and throw it to us later in the end, but I managed to catch that bomb and detonate it lol.
b. The way Aoife overreacted when people went near the graveyard. I was like, 'oh, this bitch is hiding something'. I don't know how to explain it, it just cropped up inside my head. Surprisingly, I was right. Her brother's name was on one of the graves.
It was also easy to predict that this 'Steven' whom Olivia dated was Will and that she was the one who wrote the note. I've seen this type of techniques on Korean thrillers.
But I might give Lucy Foley some claps for writing distinct voices for her POV characters. I mean, two POVS are hard to nail, what more 5 or 6? Good job! I also like how she wove the secrets and baggage of the characters as the story progressed towards the ending. Speaking of ending, what was that? It felt rushed and unsatisfying. I would have appreciated if there had been additional chapters for introspection and resolution.
Not the worst I've ever read but this one would not go down to my best reads. I would read her other works—see if I could like her as an author.
Spoiler
From the start, I already knew that Will was the dead body. Like hello, he's the only one who had no solo POV till the near end. That seemed fishy to me.Once Will's secrets started percolating, starting from Johnno's career sabotage, the bullying of this 'Loner' boy, I had this weird feeling—something screaming inside my gut (by the way, the reason why I'm fat is because I have this massive gut to listen to haha)—that Aoife was related to this boy whom they 'accidentally' killed. Why, you might ask?
a. Because first of all, when the revelations occurred, she barely appeared on page. Now this was one of the author's technique to hide the bomb and throw it to us later in the end, but I managed to catch that bomb and detonate it lol.
b. The way Aoife overreacted when people went near the graveyard. I was like, 'oh, this bitch is hiding something'. I don't know how to explain it, it just cropped up inside my head. Surprisingly, I was right. Her brother's name was on one of the graves.
It was also easy to predict that this 'Steven' whom Olivia dated was Will and that she was the one who wrote the note. I've seen this type of techniques on Korean thrillers.
But I might give Lucy Foley some claps for writing distinct voices for her POV characters. I mean, two POVS are hard to nail, what more 5 or 6? Good job! I also like how she wove the secrets and baggage of the characters as the story progressed towards the ending. Speaking of ending, what was that? It felt rushed and unsatisfying. I would have appreciated if there had been additional chapters for introspection and resolution.
Not the worst I've ever read but this one would not go down to my best reads. I would read her other works—see if I could like her as an author.