A really good read. Totally gripping story. Kept me riveted right to the end. Definately an author to watch out for.

Not a book one can put down, until the end. We get all the characters' points of view, meaning that just as you think you know 'who did it' you don't!!

Would recommend to anyone who wants a 'good read'; and it would also be good as a dramatisation.

Fantastic Highland setting, and people are not always what they seem

I've just finished this exhilarating read. A group of "hooray Henry" type Londoners meet up for their annual New Year's Eve holiday. They've all been friends since Oxford University with the exceptions of Mark's girlfriend, Emma and Nick's partner, Bo. As always there's a leader of the pack, in this case it's always been one half of glamour couple, Miranda. Her husband Julien looks like he's up to something. Miranda seems on eggshells and is very loud and bullying. What secrets are this group hiding? Whose body has been found and what happened? They're snowed in when all the drama happen, with staff Heather and Drew - who both have their own secrets. So many secrets in one place, plenty of red herrings, and intakes of breath. Much of it, I didn't see coming. A great read.

EVERYONE’S INVITED.
EVERYONE’S A SUSPECT.

In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather for New Year.

The beautiful one
The golden couple
The volatile one
The new parents
The quiet one
The city boy
The outsider

The victim.

Not an accident – a murder among friends.

Every year a bunch of old friends, who all went to university together, and have stayed good friends since, go away for the New Year celebrations and this year they've chosen the remote Scottish highlands. They all have very different personalities and some think they're better than the others and don't hide the fact either, some of them have secrets to hide and one of the group ends up dead, but which one is it, who is the perpetrator and why would they kill someone they claim to be friends with, you'll have to read it to find out!

The story is told over two timelines, spanning the New Year period and from the perspectives of various characters, which makes it seem a very busy book, although the chapters are short which helps the reader keep up with the story. The plot is a very Agatha Christie whodunnit style read with plenty of twists along the way to keep the readers attention, which I really enjoyed and the setting gives it that eerie feeling which makes it more intriguing. It's a great debut novel and I'm looking forward to reading her second book, The Guest List, which is released in February.

I'd like to thank HarperCollins UK and Netgalley for the auto approval, I will post my review on Amazon and Goodreads.

The Hunting Party is an enjoyable mystery about a group of seven friends who spend New Year's Eve in the Scottish Highlands at a hunting lodge.

One winds up dead changing all of their lives forever. At the same time, a serial killer is on the loose, the lodge is cant be reach as in snowstorm, and some of the guests have lost their minds! A bit Agatha Christie-esque

A thoroughly enjoyable read.

Thank you - we featured The Hunting Party on Caboodle (website and newsletter) in 2019! We look forward to working with you in 2020.

A smart, page turner with an unexpected twist. I thought I'd solved it, but I was so wrong! A great novel for this time of year.

The scene setting in this traditional Christie style ‘Manor House murder’ style is good, the locale of the wintry Highlands is evocative, but my issues were that, for me, as a reader I didn’t care for not knowing the identity of the killer or the victim, and it was hard to latch on to any character as none of them had personalities I particularly liked or enjoyed,

It was good, but not great. And I wished it would be. I will definitely check out Foley’s next book as I have a feeling I will really like her work as it evolves, and if the characters she populated with it are more to my tastes.

This is the debut crime novel by Lucy Foley and it was excellent. I was privileged to receive this from the publisher, HarperCollins UK as a ‘wish’ and was totally enthralled from start to finish.

Nine friends decide to go away for New Year to a remote place in the Scottish Highlands. Emma and Mark, Giles and Samira with their baby Priya, Miranda and Julian, Bo and Nick, and Katie who is the only one without a partner. The trip, organised by Emma who is the newest to the group, isn’t quite where some of the individuals wanted to end up but the party begins on the train journey.

The friendships are from Oxford University days and continued to their current London and New York jobs. As with any group of people there are relationships and inter-relationships and it doesn’t take long for the cracks to show. There are hidden jealousies, resentments and secrets and as the story develops the twists and turns keep coming with utter precision.

The story is narrated by Katie, Miranda and Emma along with the two hosts of ‘The Lodge’ Doug and Heather and goes from before and after the ‘murder’ as the snow hits the highlands so that nobody can leave or even fly in to assist.

The author keeps even the person murdered hidden throughout and the finale is delivered with precision and brilliance so that I found I should have seen it coming, but didn’t.

Many thanks to NetGalley, HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction and Lucy Foley for granting my wish for my honest review.

Brilliant read and highly recommended.

A group of friends are snowed in Scotland, but one is murdered. The narrative is told by several members of the group and the 2 staff at the retreat. Although the author makes it clear who is narrating, it is disjointed as the story jumps back and forth in the time frame.

Foley does keep the reader guessing til near the end. Most of the characters are unpleasant especially the victim so I didn't care who the murderer was. Had I not read it in one sitting on a flight I might have given up.

This book was enjoyable enough, but there were too many unnecessary characters (it seemed clear to me from the outset that the married couple and the gay couple would have no real role to speak of), and the red herrings were far too red to blend in with the normal herrings. There was also too many first-world problems, particularly with regard to clothes and shoes, and the characters were all so unpleasant that, actually, by the time the victim and murderer were revealed, I cared not a jot about their fate.

That said, the book's structure was very interesting, and Foley is clearly a good writer. These things combined brought a possible one-star rating up to a pretty decent three stars.

A very atmospheric and compelling read, set in the dark isolation of winter in the Scottish Highlands. A group of old university friends gathers to celebrate New Year's Eve in style at a hunting lodge. All of them appear to be quite unpleasant people, in different ways. We know at the outset that the celebrations have gone horribly wrong and someone has died, and it wasn't an accident. While the identity of the victim was quite clear early on for me, what keeps you turning the pages is wondering who the murderer is and what their motive was. And there are plenty of red herrings to keep you guessing!

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

I had to DNF this at the 50% mark. While the plot was suspenseful enough, I just had no appreciation for the characters. All the characters seemed to blend into one another, with no unique qualities to allow them to stand out. I also didn't enjoy the narrative being comprised 90% of flashbacks within flashbacks - it was highly confusing. This just wasn't the book for me.

You know that as soon as a book includes a group of friends those friendship are going to get tested and this was no exception. Spending New Years eve in a remote scottish lodge the friends soon have more to worry about that if the champagne will last the weekend.
This was an enjoyable read, despite the unlikeable characters. I enjoyed the setting and the 'locked room' atmosphere that was built up and felt it was an easy read.

The Hunting Party - Lucy Foley

I have to be honest and admit to not liking this novel, I'm not a big fan of the Agatha Christie-esque fiction. It really took me some going to finish it, I stopped and re-started it twice before reaching the finishing line.

Read for an honest review. Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction, HarperCollins

A group of friends who had met whilst at Oxford and their ‘other halves’ are off to Scotland on their annual New Year’s Eve gathering. They are staying in a lodge next to a loch with some stunning countryside and mountain scenery to behold.

There are the nine friends, Heather the manager, Doug the gamekeeper, two visitors from Iceland and Iain who also works on the estate but he’s due to go home before New Year’s Eve as he does not live on the estate itself.

Heather and Doug have pasts, reasons for coming to live up in this rather lovely but somewhat bleak place. The Icelandic couple are a little strange. As for the group of nine their secrets abound and they are coming to realise that actually they don’t have too much in common, or do they?

Whilst there a woman is found murdered by the gamekeeper. Once the body is discovered, it was clearly murder, the police are called but they are not able to get onto the Estate due to the snowfall.

This is not the usual detective – Police or amateur sleuths – story although Heather and Doug appear to be concerned, it is more on the level of keeping themselves and the guests safe. The story is told by several people all clearly indicated in the headers along with a date indicating when that person is recalling what they are talking about.

It is an intriguing story and one that is quite fraught with danger, yes, but also with the tension from the stories and relationships we learn about as we read. This is a story as much about the dynamics of those relationships as it is about solving the mystery of what happened. There is a killer is it a stranger or one of the characters?

The story draws you in, keeps you wondering and builds to a tense climax.

I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it especially to those who like a different slant to a murder mystery and enjoy a good, well written story.

Thanks

My thanks to HarperCollins via NetGalley for an eCopy of The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley.

I received an eARC of this novel from Harper Collins UK in return for an honest review.

This is a fascinating crime novel written from a number of characters’ POVs and with a split narrative using flashbacks. This mixture of different techniques makes the mystery so much bigger, and the novel so much more clever than if it was told with just one POV and all in the present tense.

The novel is focussed on a group of friends who travel up from London to the Highlands of Scotland to celebrate New Year, but not all of them will make the return journey!!

In addition to not knowing the identity of the murderer, the reader also doesn’t know who has actually been murdered until the end of the novel too! I didn’t realise this when I began reading the novel, but it’s an amazing twist which definitely makes the novel stand out among other crime novels. Using the split narrative mentioned above, and the flashbacks, we are kept guessing the whole way through the novel,

The characters in the novel are well developed. The group of friends from London are all different from each other and realistic to how a group who have been friends for so long and have seen so many periods of each others lives would be, and all are also quite dislikeable, which was fun! So the fact that we didn’t know who had been murdered didn’t bother me in the same way cause I didn’t care for any the possible victims that much!! But there was a nice contrast between the group of friends visiting the Highlands, and the people who already worked on the estate, and Foley used this contrast to create an intense atmosphere and to draw attention to some interesting debates about wealth and privilege.

The novel is made up of short chapters, which combined with the many character POVs and use of flashbacks made the novel quite quick to read, even with the almost 400 pages, and it was difficult to put down!!

I enjoyed the murder mystery element to the novel, not knowing and not being able to guess what was happening or what was going to happen next was really refreshing, and I couldn’t put the novel down once I started reading it!!!

Overall I loved this novel! It’s a fascinating mystery novel with a plot full of twists and turns that keep the reader guessing the whole time!

Dark and deadly murder mystery. I'm a sucker for a locked room who dunnit.
9 friends reunite in a secluded lodge for New Years Eve, inevitably snowed in, when tensions rise and someone dies.

I did feel like there was a little bit too much going on, and it was hard to keep track of the characters. But I enjoyed the setting, the location, and the mystery

Love books when chapters change and you get someone elses point of view. This book was suspenseful and I enjoyed it

Scotland always makes for a good story location. It has everything. It felt like the perfect setting for The Hunting Party.. This isnt what happens when you get old friends together for a trip away!
After a murder is discovered an investigation is launched - this is when we really get to know some of the characters. others felt like they were there to make up the numbers.
I found myself wishing I was reading this in paperback to flick back to re read things as there was alot going on but the last couple of wrapped the story up in a bow for me.