This time, we share the viewpoints of Jules, her younger sister and bridesmaid Olivia, best man Johnno, plus-one Hannah and wedding planner Aoife, and Foley does well distinguishing them all – in The Hunting Party, most of the characters were just variants of the ‘unpleasant entitled 30-something’, but the wedding dynamic offers more room to diversify and the opportunity is seized. This novel retains the same novel point of view and time elements, letting the reader into the thoughts of multiple characters at different points, and taking place in both the run-up to the murder and its immediate aftermath. There’s a lot of love in the reading community for Hannah, by far the most sympathetic character, and I share it (although I’d have loved to have seen more of Jules and Will’s fathers too – they’re very underserved). But who has died, and who is responsible? However, as guests start to mingle, old resentments, jealousies and untold secrets begin to surface, and the night ends with a murder on the island. The ambitious magazine publisher Jules is getting married to the charming TV star Will, and they’ve invited old friends and family along for the occasion. The Guest List sees a number of people gather on an island off the coast of Ireland to celebrate a wedding. Most of this book is a tense, engaging thriller, but it falls short at the last hurdle. It certainly is better, but it still retains (to a lesser extent) the unnecessary structure issues that reduce the story’s impact.

I then learned that Foley had written a second book, The Guest List, which was far better received, and I was impressed enough to go and check it out. The book showed a lot of potential and was generally engaging, but it suffered from a number of strange structural choices that took me out of it. I recently read Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party, a novel take on the crime genre, and found it a middling experience.

Book review the guest list