Recommendation: The Guest List by Lucy Foley

“‘A furiously twisty thriller” — Clare Mackintosh.

“The stage is set for the marriages of Jules Keegan and Will Slater. The setting is spectacular, the planning meticulous, the atmosphere alive with nostalgia as the guests toast to the most golden of couples.

Yet, under the cloak of happiness, dark secrets begin to spill and old grudges surface. And the wedding cake has barely been cut when someone is found dead.

As a storm unleashes its fury on the island, everyone is trapped — and the killer circulates amongst the guests.

It starts with a party. It’ll end in murder.”

Last year, I was part of the influencer activities for The Hunting Party; Lucy Foley’s debut novel. It was an absolute hit with readers, bloggers, press and booksellers alike. It was a kind of thriller I hadn’t read before; a modern take on the Agatha Christie style, locked-room murder-mysteries. In my opinion, Foley is responsible for bringing this sub-category of crime fiction back into the modern mind. A group of thirty-something friends travelled together for a long overdue get together for New Years Eve, at Loch Corrin — a lodge far away from civilisation in the Scottish Highlands.

Shortly after the release of The Hunting Party, Lucy began promotion for her second novel and I knew I had to get my hands on it. The Guest List; a wedding, set on a remote island, known to locals as Inis an Amplóra, or simply Cormorant Island to the townies, several miles off the Irish Connemara coastline — in the middle of the Atlantic. Whilst Foley favours the group settings in isolated locations, the two novels couldn’t be more exciting and both had me ripping through the pages as fast as I could.

Some might say that Lucy Foley’s penchant for the modern whodunnits in isolation might be a tight niche to write into, but she does it so bloody well I don’t think it will ever matter. As we meet the guests of the Jules Keegan and Will Slater wedding, we also meet Aoife and Freddy; the wedding planner and chef, who live on Inis an Amplóra year round. This is their first wedding on the island and they’re both eager to make an impression their guests will never forget.

Stars of the wedding, Jules Keegan and Will Slater are no stranger to the spotlight. Jules is a business woman extraordinaire, taking her blog to a full online magazine with just a team of thirty. Will, is the central actor on a TV show called Survive The Night. If only they knew how appropriate the latter might later come to be.

Their guests are just as intriguing and they all have secrets of their own...

Charlie and Hannah — Charlie used to be Jules’ best friend. But what now? And why can’t Hannah seem to get a moment alone with her husband on their one child-free weekend away?

Olivia — Jules’ little sister who, much to Jules’ distaste, is having a nightmare of her own. Olivia can do what she wants, Jules thinks, as long as she doesn’t ruin her big day.

Femi, Duncan, Angus, Peter and Johnno — All old boarding school friends of Will’s. Trevellyan’s school and the way the boys behaved there in their younger years is repeatedly referred to as Lord of The Flies, but of course none of the trouble ever landed on Will’s doorstep — not with his father as Headmaster of the school. At least, that’s what everyone thinks. But Johnno knows different.

Pair these characters, further outnumbered by rambunctious, rowdy wedding guests with a storm coming in from the sea and secrets in abundance and it’ll have to be a miracle if everything goes according to plan. With a black Cormorant drying its wings out on the cliff edge — a harbinger of death and misfortune — we know some guests will not last the night. Even though Jules has taken great joy in replacing carriages with ‘boats at midnight’.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed The Guest List. I fell into a very comfortable place with it early on, and I think that comes from having read The Hunting party and this format being so similar. her fast paced chapters and consistent switching of narratives and time stamps had my head spinning in all of the right ways; I was just as panicked about the murder as the wedding guests. The book only slowed just as Foley was about to unmask the killer; tantalising readers with her slow reveal having us all put off bedtime and say “just one more chapter…”

In this novel, not only does Lucy Foley prove her prowess with the locked-room mystery, she also expertly creates the ominous shroud of atmosphere around the island, cloaking her guests in the creepiest foreshadowing.

For fans of:

• Agatha Christie, Murder on The Orient Express
• Lucy Foley, The Hunting Party
• Ruth Ware, The Turn of The Key
• Rachel Howzell Hall, They All Fall Down
• T.M. Logan, The Holiday