The Guest List by Lucy Foley – Review

Published: June 2, 2020

Publisher: William Morrow

Series: Standalone

Genre: Mystery

Pages: 330 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 4.0/5.0 

Synopsis:

The bride ‧ The plus one ‧ The best man ‧ The wedding planner ‧ The bridesmaid ‧ The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

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Could a more flawed cast of character have been assembled? Barely. Just because a book has terribly flawed and largely unlikable characters doesn’t make it a bad book. In fact, I really liked The Guest List because so many characters could have been the murderer (or the person murdered). I kept changing who I thought died and who I thought could have committed the crime, which was actually really fun.

On a remote island off the Irish coast, the lovely, ambitious publisher Julia Keegan is about to marry the darkly handsome tv-star Will Slater. They’ve gathered those nearest and dearest to them to help them celebrate the big day – Will’s group of private school friends, Julia’s best (male) friend, and their dysfunctional families. As the story progresses the reader begins to see the rifts between the characters. Will’s private school friends are a bunch of drunk rich boys and his best mate Johnno is only his best mate because they share a dark secret. Julia’s best guy friend may not have always been just a friend and his wife doesn’t know. Julia’s sister has something going on – they think she’s just crazy and struggling over a recent breakup but there’s way more to it than that. Not everyone is quite what they seem at first glance.

The story begins a day or two prior to the wedding and the bridal party is arriving. They do all the usual things to prepare for a wedding – make sure suits and dresses are ready, have a rehearsal dinner, catch up, play a few innocent pranks, and have creepy cult-like drinking games with latin chanting. Just chillin’ with the boys, no big deal. By the end of the book I only felt sympathy for the ladies, all of them having had to deal with a tremendous bunch of jerks (understatement). The story does flip between the time leading up to the wedding and the point during the wedding festivities when the unnamed body is discovered. The two timelines converge at the end, leaving you with all the answers and then some. 

I totally enjoyed this and was fairly satisfied with how things ended. There was a semblance of justice, though I would have been pretty thrilled if someone else (or several someones) had been the murderer. I’d like to check out some of Lucy Foley’s other mysteries sometime – if you’ve read any others, let me know which one I should check out!