I really liked this book! It was full of tense moments and the story seemed to flow very naturally! The characters were believable and I enjoyed reading it a lot.

The Hunting Party is an absolutely thrilling novel, set in the wild Scottish Highlands. A group of friends are staying at the Lodge for New Year's Eve, their annual group celebration. But beneath the drinking and laughter and reminiscing, a darkness is spreading. One of them ends up dead, and while the heavy snow is blocking anyone from entering, it is also stopping anyone from leaving, including the killer.

I absolutely loved this book. Creating a host of characters so in-depth and enticing is an incredible feat, and each one of these characters were so well-written. We have 5 POVs - Emma, Miranda, and Katie, three of the friends, and Heather and Doug, two of the staff members at the Lodge. All of them have rich histories and motivations, secrets and truths, and Foley has managed to bring all of them to life.

This is a cautionary tale of old friends, of how a shared history can also mean a complete lack of secrets and growth. How many of us have changed over the years, met new people, friends and partners, only for our old friends to come out with a "do you remember when?" tale at the most inopportune moment? No matter how much you want to put the past behind you, there is always someone who can't wait to bring it up again.

The Hunting Party is an absolute triumph, and a genuine pleasure to read.

This debut novel from Lucy Foley is very cleverly constructed; not only is the identity of the murderer withheld until the end, but also that of the victim. This means that, as a reader, you are constantly looking for clues and jumping on every single red herring with enthusiasm! It's fun and engaging and certainly keeps you turning the pages.

The setting, a remote hunting lodge in Scotland cut off by the snow, lends itself to this Agatha Christie-style mystery. With no-one able to arrive or leave, including the police, the victim and murderer have to be one of the guests at the hunting lodge or the few staff members who have chosen to live in this extreme location. The narrative switches between the characters, an effective device that allows for the different secrets to be revealed.

The only thing I struggled with was the fact that nearly all the characters were pretty awful people. Mostly Oxford alumni (they are a group of old university friends), they all seem so smug and pleased with themselves, which doesn't make them appealing. As a reader, it was hard to care about them as potential victims.

However, it's a lively and engaging read and I look forward to reading more by this author.

Friends since University at Oxford a group head off for a New Years Eve break together. Every year they arrange something different for the New Year celebrations and this year its been organised by Emma who is the partner of one of the group. She's booked them all a break at a remote and exclusive hunting lodge. Surrounded by natural beauty and miles from anywhere its the perfect location for everything to go horribly wrong.
Cleverly written the remote and beautiful surroundings are easily depicted and its apparent from the outset that someone was murdered but not who, why and who the perpetrator was.
From the opening pages I was drawn into this book by Lucy Foley. Told alternately by different members of the group it flowed easily, moving between events before and after the murder seamlessly, keeping my interest and intrigue from start to finish.
The closeness of the group was well written as were the characters. As the booze flowed and the snow fell, underlying feelings of resentment came to the surface and it became apparent that the close friends didn't really know each other as well as they thought they did.

A taut and enjoyable thriller told via five points of view.

The story centres on a group of old friends from uni, having a New Years Eve party in the Highlands. The threads of friendship are pretty frayed, and tension builds quickly. Of course, someone ends up dead.

The choice to frame the group as an often unlikeable and very privileged group (Oxford, London, fancy jobs...) could have been risky, but Foley does manage to make the reader empathise with most of them (a couple of the male characters seem irredeemable from the moment they're introduced, which didn't bother me too much as the book centres around the women in the group - unsurprising given the audience for thrillers is mostly women.)

Something I did find troubling was that the only named character who could be easily identified as not being white (Samira, whose daughter is named Priya) is also the only integral female character not to have point of view chapters. This despite us being told again and again that she's a member of this Inner Circle. We're only told about her, not by her, so her role in the group is often overlooked. Maybe this is a smart move by Foley, showing us how the group is unknowingly rejecting her after her becoming a mother, but I'd have liked to have had her perspective. Without it, there's a gap.

Overall this is an enjoyable page turner that weaves different points of view and time frames quite effortlessly, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a decent thriller.

I enjoyed this one - although the big reveal wasn't entirely unexpected...I do like a remote setting, and potential menace at every turn. Would recommend.

Fantastic book which I read over two days. I was totally absorbed by the story and didn't guess the ending at all. A perfect book to read over the Christmas/New Year period- pity it's August! Highly recommended.

Had me gripped from the beginning! Twists and turns galore and a few red herrings. There was several time throughout the book when I though “right, I know who did what!” Then I would start doubting myself and change my mind but I was right.

I can’t really say much more without giving anything away, but I really enjoyed this!

Not quite 5 star due to some inconsistencies in the story.

4.5 stars

This is the first book I've read by this author and really will not be my last.

I enjoyed the story I love the setting the snowy highlands, the plot everything was so good.

A bunch of friends celebrating the New Year in a remote place in Scotland.
on the stroke of midnight, a body is found. But who done it. This book kept me guessing all the way through. kept me turning the pages So many twists and turns and when I thought I have a clue who I thought was the murder BAM I was so wrong.
Once I started this book I couldn't put it down. I had to keep turning the pages to see what would happen next.

While it is not a novel concept to have a murder that can only have been committed by one of a trapped group (very Agatha Christie country house), it is very well done here again. I loved to hate most of this group of friends who gathered in a remote holiday lodge for New Year's Eve; with their unsuitable clothes and monied backgrounds. Although we know there has been a murder from the beginning, we don't know the victim or the murderer until the very end. It does take a long time for people's backgrounds to emerge, and there are a few enormous revelations, some of which are a bit far fetched, hence only 4 stars. I would definitely look out for another crime book by Lucy Foley.

An atmospheric mystery from Lucy Foley. Told from the perspective of each character individually. I found that I really did not enjoy the particular writing style and, for me, this detracted from the tale itself. Many have likened this work to a traditional murder mystery - I would disagree as, again for me, this read very much like crime noir from the start. However, I do enjoy this author's work and, whilst this was certainly different, the tale is a compulsive one and there really is little option but to keep turning those pages! A good read but with some reservations.

I think that the premise of the book is excellent; a group of friends from university meet up for an annual New Years Eve holiday, only this year one of them ends up dead.

The book moves along at a steady pace and it very quickly becomes clear that the friends are all moving in different directions. One couple have a young child, one couple are experiencing marital problems, one man has a new girlfriend who is trying to become part of the group, one character is a single career woman with a secret. To add to the tension, this year they are holidaying in a remote part of Scotland that becomes becomes even more isolated when the snow sets in. Add in a site manager with hermit like tendencies, a gamekeeper with a violent past, two other guests who don’t conform to society norms, couple this with urban myths about local resentment and there’s a lot of potential candidates for the murdered person (this is kept a secret for much of the book) and the murderer.

However, because the story is told from the viewpoint of so many of these characters, this tension was somewhat diluted. It also means that the characters are pretty two dimensional. It’s an enjoyable read even though I did guess the victim and the murderer quite a way before the end of the book. I felt could have been a really great read and the culprit less easily identifiable if the tension between the group of friends had been explored in a more nuanced way. .

My thanks go to the publishers and net galley for an advanced copy in return for an honest review. (Review to be updated on Good Reads January 2019)

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK (publisher) for this ARC of The Hunting Party.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed this book. Having recently started - and abandoned - a similar sounding ARC by a better known author, also about a remote hotel in the Scottish highlands, I was already on a downer when I realised this was a similar vein.

However I was intrigued from the start by this band of Oxford Uni alumni out for their annual get-together, in a remote hunting lodge. None of the group were particularly likeable, as neither were the Staff characters too, but to no loss to my enjoyment of the book. Not every novel needs a heroine.

The fallen victim is not fully revealed for most of the book, as too the killer. But the tension builds nicely as the author switches between before and after, by just a couple of days, before revealing what happened at the end. No major surprises but lots of questions and possibilities kept me guessing all the way. An easy four stars.

*Contains a descriptive passage about deer killing, which may need glossing over for some.

#harpercollinsuk #lucyfoley #thehuntingparty #netgalley

A group of University friends regroup for their annual New Year celebrations in the remote Scottish wilderness. Apart from the group there is only the host, a game keeper, a come and go handy man and two Icelandic guests present.

A body is found after the celebrations and we have not only a who-done-it, but a 'who did die' with the victim and the culprit well hidden until the closing pages

I enjoyed the book and the story which is revealed in first person narratives by several of the characters. A few times, I lost which character's viewpoint I was reading but this didn't matter too much to the narrative since it was rarely different points of view and simply a novel way to move the story forwards.

I could not put this book down.
I live in the Highlands and reading about Inverness and Fort William had me trying to guess the location of this lodge.....
I also identified with the alien feeling that people like me gave during the harsh winters here.
The story if murder and who did it really gripped me.
Well done Ms. Foley.

I shall read your next book. Linda.

4 stars from me

The Hunting Party is a fabulous debut and I had the pleasure of reading it from within a remote cottage in the Welsh countryside (not quite the Scottish highlands in the snow but close enough!).

I enjoyed the playful elements of the story which I agree could easily be likened to an olden days whodunnit but for me the star of the show was the relationships between the friends and the uncomfortable tensions contained within them. Incredibly well observed and well told.

Great debut and I look forward to more by this author.



Synopsis: The Hunting Party is the author’s first crime novel and is described as combining elements of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (HarperCollins) and The Secret History (Penguin) by Donna Tartt.

The novel follows a a tight-knit group of Oxford university alumni as they celebrate New Year’s Eve in the wilderness of the Loch Corrin Estate in Scotland. A HarperFiction spokesperson said: “In these wild, white climes the group reminisce, go deer stalking, and hide friendship-destroying secrets, secrets that set a razor-sharp sequence of events in motion, culminating with a broken body in the snow.”

Lucy Foley's novel, The Hunting Party, is set in a holiday house in a very remote part of Scotland where a group of friends gather to enjoy a New Year break well away from their normal busy London lives. When the weather closes in cracks soon appear in what they all assumed are lifelong friendships. Mutual trust turns to suspicion when tragedy strikes and they find themselves cut off entirely from the outside world. Foley's plot continues to thicken like the ever- falling snow but the twists and turns are never predictable. Enjoy the read as you try to piece together the jigsaw.

A brilliant thriller. The story follows the ill-fated New Year's Eve celebrations of a group of old university friends and how the journey of their lives ended up at this point.
A real page turner and a must read.

Like a modern take on an Agatha Christie plot: a party in a remote location cut off by snow, a group of friends with hidden tensions and stresses, sinister co-guests and troubled staff... all ending in murder. With red herrings galore and a cast of unlikable characters, this is all about the twists and revelations. Compulsively entertaining: 4 deliciously trashy stars!

I really tried to like this book; it has the most awesome blurb and exciting setting, which I felt could have been used to even greater effect. However, my strong dislike for the characters sapped the enjoyment away for me. I've been on a reading spree, reading a book or so a day lately, but The Hunting Party took a week to finish. At around three quarters of the way through I started wanting to skim through and just find the answers,.

For me, the characters really lacked any sort of spark. I hated most of them. They all seemed absolutely obsessed with their Oxford educations, even decades later, to the extent that it actually distracted from my enjoyment of the book. They were pompous, middle-class, and I recall at one stage one of them was outright unsympathetic towards their hubby from a less fortunate background. It frustrated me quite a lot that the most likeable and intriguing individuals - Bo and Nick, Heather and Doug - aren't really given enough airtime.

It is a sign of Foley's great skill that she is able to craft so many characters and fit them together with realistic lives and backstories. Sadly, I just think that this realism was taken a little too far. Like these characters, we all have our secrets, our vices.

Hiding both the murderer AND the victim was a stroke of genius. If you can get find something to like about the narrators, or don't mind hating most of a novel's cast, then you will genuinely adore this book. It's for this reason I've given it 3 stars instead of lower. Looking past my problems with the group of friends on this holiday that ends with murder, there is a intriguing winter story told here.

Thank you to Netgalley, Lucy Foley and Harper Collins for the opportunity to read this novel.