The Guest List by Lucy Foley (4/5)

The novel, The Guest List by Lucy Foley is an intriguing read that falls into the categories of Sci-Fi, Romance, Young-Adult, and Mystery. The book takes place on a distant Irish island, where a wedding is planned to occur between a famous movie star named Will Slater who is known for his charm and good looks, and his fiance Jules Keegan. After Jules and Will are on the island, Jules receives a mysterious letter from an anonymous person saying Will is untrustworthy, and that Jules shouldn’t marry him. After everyone arrives, tension rises between the guests. They discover deep and dark secrets about each other, all leading back to the handsome, charming, and seemingly cunning Will. Once the wedding has started, the lights mysteriously go out, and Will finds himself alone in the dark, facing many people with a terrible grudge against him. This book explores many thematic concepts such as the power of trust, and hatred. The novel is able to portray the feelings of all the characters, with the use of a first person point of view, but switch characters after each chapter, helping the reader to understand the viewpoints/feelings of all the main characters in the story. This story kept me entertained throughout the whole read. Its constant switch of viewpoints, followed up with the rising tension building up throughout the novel kept me on my toes, and my eyes glued to the paper. However, this book was a bit slow paced, as it is around 380 pages, and it took about 300 pages for the main conflict of the story to arise. This caused some of the in-between parts to feel like a drag, but the author still managed to keep it interesting with new information about the characters. I would recommend this book for anyone looking for a longer sized book and enjoys a thorough and well thought out plot. Also, this book is great for any mystery lovers as it always keeps you guessing, never knowing what outcome may occur. Furthermore, the thematic concepts presented in this book can be a good lesson for us to learn. The grudges in this book eventually lead to murder, which can help us to realize that there are better ways to settle topics than jumping to extreme solutions.