Proper outdoor clothes are important in the book – one of the locals in this rugged Scottish Highland hideaway says that ‘the London guests all turned up wearing city people’s idea of rugged outdoor wear – Dubarry boots and Timberlands’. Shocking news that these are not proper bad-weather footwear.

The Hunting Party has an excellent setup: a group of 9 old friends are getting together for New Year, spending a few days in a luxury Lodge with great meals planned and a hunting trip included. The narrative is split between chapters following the group as they arrive and get going, and then ‘Now’ sections where it is obvious that someone has died, that the group has fallen apart, that there is high drama around. The narrative is split between various characters, some of it is in the first person and some in the third, and (oh why do writers do this?) it is in the present tense.




Lucy Foley keeps up the mystery for a long time – at first we just know someone is missing, then we find out the gender, then late on exactly who it is. (I think we were never in any doubt that someone has been murdered, so I won’t include that as secret-keeping.) Everyone has backstory, and secrets, and history with and without the others -and that includes (of course) the people who work at the luxury Lodge, and the two unexpected guests who have been booked in by mistake.

The houseparty is very well done, and very convincing (though obviously we wouldn’t all be ending it in violence): these people have been friends for a long time, maybe too long, maybe things are unravelling, maybe there are incidents in the past that weren’t actually forgiven. And at the same time the holiday sounds great: there are individual cabins, and then a giant central space with living-room and kitchen (and yes of course leather sofas and open fires) and then there is a sauna, and everywhere has huge windows and lovely views of countryside and loch. So that’s a great setup for a crime plot as people walk around meeting each other, peering in windows, spotting lights that shouldn’t be on. But I also kept thinking what a great trip it would be. The shooting party (deer-stalking) sounds awful. Of course all the guests go, vital to the tension and plot, but I found myself wondering how easy it would be to get out of it, what excuse I would have made to stay behind to lie on the sofa in front of the fire reading a detective story…

So a very entertaining read – some of the mysteries rather guessable, but I very much enjoyed the character interactions, the descriptions of the way friendships change, the dynamics when someone has a baby, the wild child who becomes less forgiveable and less charming as she gets older.

A highly entertaining crime book – one to take away with you when you plan a trip with friends. Or perhaps not…

The pictures are from the excellent House of Bruar website, purveyors of country clothes to the gentry.

Modern day Agatha Christie. ALL the ingredients are there!
Deserted Scottish estate. A group of 9 friends. The rich and the envious, the beautiful and the wannabes. Mysterious estate staff, extreme snow that delays the police when one of the party is found dead.
Keeping the reveal of the victim and the perpetrator right to the end, with a Hansel and Gretl trail of clues and red This herrings leading us all the way to the end, this is solid commercial mystery. Does exactly what you’d want and expect.

Absolute classic country house weekend murder.
Entitled and arrogant university friends meet every year for New Year's Eve, but this year there are more tensions and as the snow begins to fall in their remote Highland getaway, things unravel.
Told in different voices which I enjoyed this was as much a murder mystery as a story of old friendships.

This is one of the best, unique books I've read in a longtime. I'll be honest I read the first 15% on my Kindle and left it, and went onto something else. I hate leaving books so I went back to give it another go, and I finished it in two days, I was intrigued and pulled into the story.. I think that it must have been the mood I was in as sometimes this affects my reading enjoyment. The characters are all flawed, and to be honest not very likeable. This was intentional as I honestly could not guess until the end who the murderer was. There was also another unexpected surprise, I'll leave it here as I don't like to give plots or any hint as the ending when reviewing. The atmospheric setting was wonderful and added to the chilling storyline, it did my me chilly the descriptions were that good, I had to reach for a blanket. I'll be certainly looking for more books by this author. In fact I've just gone to look and this is her first crime novel which is certainly impressive. She's written other books and I'm going to check them out whilst waiting another crime novel, hopefully.

Although I really didn't enjoy this book in any shape or form, I can see its appeal for those who eagerly devour the current glut of domestic noir thrillers. Will be recommending to customers on this basis, but really not my bag- hackneyed storyline and simplistic characterisation.
Sorry.

We make lifetime friendships and within them, we offer comradeship, camaraderie, loyalty and love. You’ll find all of these in this story and then you’ll discover what happens when loyalty and love turns to deceit and betrayal.
Atmospheric, dark and intimidating - the characters come together for New Year in the wilds of Scotland. The weather turns and they become snowed in together and cut off. Here begins the testing of their friendships.
I loved how the story went between the present day and the past one or two days - leading the reader on but never giving away the identities of victim or perpetrator of the crime.
The story is wrapped up beautifully with the epilogue and I turned the last page with an expulsion of breath I wasn’t even aware I was holding! An excellent read.

Lucy Foley’s “The Hunting Party” is an excellent claustrophobic psychological thriller that questions how well people really know each other.
Nine entitled friends travel to the Scottish Highlands for a New Year’s Celebration where a tragedy occurs. The story is told in two timelines, events leading up to the disappearance of one of the guests, narrated in the first person by three of the female guests, and the aftermath, again in the first person, by the female caretaker of the Highland Lodge. At intervals, we also learn, in a third person narrative, about the estate’s gamekeeper, a man with a hidden past.
The story is full of red-herrings and misdirection and the author cleverly hides the identity, and even the gender, of the missing guest, a technique that is only very rarely apparent to the reader - there were a couple of occasions where I thought, “wouldn’t it have been more natural for the character to say the name”, but they were few and far between and did not spoil my enjoyment of the story.
There are few, if any, likeable characters in the novel and even the best of them have some darkness in their past that affects their actions but that is not a criticism - they all rang true, and it is fun to piece together what is really behind the unreliable narrators. Apparently optioned for TV, the story would make an excellent miniseries.

"The Hunting Party" - and what a phenomenal title this is! - introduces us to a group of thirty - something close friends from Oxford University, who, after their degrees, stayed in touch and made it a tradition to spend time together. This time they gather over the New Year period at a secluded lodge in Scottish Highlands. On New Year's Day though, the manager of the estate and the gamekeeper discover that one of the guests is missing and is then found dead. It quickly becomes clear that it was not an accident, that a murder has been committed. The place is closed off the world because of the snowstorms, the police can't arrive and there is a killer among the guests - what's going to happen now? Are they save?

I've been keeping seeing "The Hunting Party" everywhere, guys, everywhere, and well, yes, this whole hype made me desperate to read this book. Add to this the brilliant, chilling premise and I thought, yes, it's going to be THIS read. Yes, I'm rather careful with books being advertised in such a way because I am always scared that they're not going to live up to my expectations, as I think that you can expect something really amazing from them but as lately I've been rather lucky and so I started to read this book without any trepidation.
And I kept reading, kept reading and reading, finished the book and thought, and? Is this it? Where is the wow? Sadly, it didn't take me by surprise. Sadly, I didn't love it as much as I thought I'm going to. There were all the signals it could be a brilliant read. The setting for example, could you imagine a better setting for a psychological thriller than this remote and desolate exclusive hunting lodge, snowed in, next to a loch somewhere deep in Scottish Highlands? Brilliant, no? Also the way it was written, starting with the information that one of the guest has been found murdered, and then going back and forth over the few days revealing all the facts, interactions and dynamics between the characters should make it tense and on the edge, don't you think? But then came the characters, and as this story was very character - driven they were the make or break of the book. For me, unfortunately, the break. In the end I simply couldn't care less who's been murdered and why because all of them somehow deserved this fate and they simply wasn't worth saving. We have Emma, a relative newbie to the group and hence desperate to prove that she deserves to be their friend, to fit in, Mark's girlfriend, and who has organized the trip this time. Mark turns out to be a little on the aggressive side - not that he's aggressive towards Emma but there is this dark side to him. Miranda is the most beautiful, the most attention seeking, the most popular among the group, though she's also probably the most spoiled and unpleasant but together with Julian, the good looking and successful one they seem to make the perfect power couple. Samira and Giles are married and arrive with their 6 - months - old daughter Priya, though you can't tell more about them, to be honest, except that they seem to not coping too well with being newly parents. Nick has been in a long - term relationship with Bo, who has a history of being a drug - addict. And the only single among them, the power London lawyer Katie, who's hiding a secret and has been Miranda's best friend since schooldays, but recently they don't see each other too often. There is also the addiction of the other guest at the lodge, two Icelanders, and of course we have Heather, the manager, with her own dramas and traumas, and Doug, the gamekeeper, an ex - marine, suffering from PTSD. Interesting group, no? Well, not so. And between the partying, hunting, drinking and drugs it quickly becomes clear that perhaps they aren't as close - knit as we were supposed to think, and more and more secrets and lies come to light. Until the day when one of the guest is found dead. Murdered.

I am very, very sad that this story didn't deliver for me. The pace of the book was slowed down by the very detailed descriptions of the lodge, the place, the food and clothes which - of course very vivid and almost poetically written - didn't add much to the main plot. Also, maybe because of the writing style, I found it a little disengaging and cold. Whilst I absolutely loved the setting and the brilliantly captured, chilling atmosphere it was still too little to save the book for me, to make me emotionally involved. This dual timeline was also brilliantly written by the author, she didn't give too much and yet tried to whet my appetite to find out what has happened, and it would work if it weren't for this group of those petty characters. However, "The Hunting Party" was brilliantly observant. The author explores the dynamics of friendship, digs deep into them, revealing what's really hidden under the surface - all the murky, dark secrets and lies. Lucy Folley has an incredible talent to capture all the details and nuances and the chilling atmosphere full of uncertainty and insecurity. So if you're into reading about dysfunctional group of characters, into some mystery and psychological games this is a book for you.

I loved it from the start! It flicks between who is narrating – sometimes it’s one of the female guests or the female staff member (in the first person) or one of the male members of staff (the only one in the third person) – and it also flicks between before and after the murder. This jumping around keeps you on your toes and builds the suspense brilliantly. There are clues throughout as to who the victim is – but it’s not actually revealed until near the very end – which really does keep you guessing. It also meant I couldn’t put it down and read far too late into the night!

As with Ms Foley’s previous books, the descriptions of the geographical landscapes are incredible and stunningly atmospheric – you really feel like you’re snowed in somewhere in the Highlands too.

The group of friends, who have mostly known each other since being at Oxford Uni together – apart from relative newcomer Emma – aren’t that nice! There wasn’t a single one that I was rooting for particularly – but that didn’t lessen my interest in the book. There are lots of underlying tensions – between partners and between friends – which means any of them could be victim or murderer, and there are other people in the frame as well. The staff seem to have hidden pasts for various reasons, and there are a couple of Scandi’s thrown in for good measure – only adding to the intrigue. It’s like a modern day Agatha Christie and would make a perfect Sunday night drama on TV – or even feature film.

Yet again I like the cleverness and intricacy of the plot, and feel like a lot of thought has gone into writing it both in the structure, content and use of language. Ms Foley is a very talented writer indeed. In a world of ‘disposable’ fiction, this feels like a book that will stand the test of time.

The Hunting Party has such a great premise – the idea of a group of old friends from university days going on holiday together along with their partners, and ending up stuck in a remote Scottish location due to the heavy snowfall is irresistible to me!

The Hunting Party is a little different from other novels that I’ve read with a similar premise in that we know from the start that one of the party has been murdered but we don’t know who. The novel goes back and forth in time across the whole weekend and gradually you start to have your suspicions about who might have been killed and who might be the killer. Part of me would have preferred to know who was killed so I could enjoy trying to work out who was most likely to want that person dead, but another part of me enjoyed being kept guessing about all of it. It meant I was suspicious of everyone, and also judging each of their actions more harshly than I otherwise might because I knew one of them would turn out to be a killer!

There are multiple characters in this book but it’s easy to keep track of them as they all have their own characteristics. None of them are particularly likeable but I can’t help but enjoy novels where no one is my type of person. It really works in this book as you see the events unfold and slowly work out who is dead and who might have killed them.

It always fascinates me to read novels where people are still friends with people they knew from school or university. We change so much in the years from uni to our late 20s and lives become so different so when a group is clinging on to what they once had it’s only going to be a recipe for trouble in a novel. I think friendships only truly survive if you continue to have solid things in common rather than trying to force it. The group in this book for the most part are definitely trying to recreate their youth and to recapture a bond that they once had.

This is a great novel to read at this time of year as the sense of cold and snow and isolation is perfect for winter. This is a new take on the locked room mystery and I recommend it for curling up on the sofa with a cup of hot chocolate and a blanket as the cold winter weather swirls around outside!

I really, really enjoyed this book. Set in the wilderness of Scotland over the New Year it really pulls you in and keeps you there until you finish the book. I loved that you don’t actually know who dies until the very end, even the revelation of the gender of the victim is kept quiet until a decent way into the book. It means you’re looking at everything that happens and trying to pick apart everything to work out what happened and why. I genuinely didn’t guess, even when the catalyst is revealed I still didn’t know who was involved until it’s revealed.

The Hunting Party is told from multiple perspectives and in two different times. When the party arrives (and leading up to the death) and just after the victim is discovered. The timelines never quite merge so you’re not stuck reading the same thing over and over again. I did find it sometimes hard to keep up with who was who and which perspective I was reading, but that’s more to do with me and my habit of skipping chapter headings than the writing itself.

I loved the setting. It made it all so simple but yet so much more tense. At the cast of characters are the same throughout and it is made clear that no one else could be involved. It means that it couldn’t be a ‘surprise’ of it all being done by/to someone who appears briefly in other sections of the book, rather it’s characters you grow to know well.

There’s several reveals in the book but it’s never over done. Every single one was a surprise and I welcomed all of them. The writing is masterful and this really is a book to keep an eye on!

Okay, let's be fair and say that The Hunting Party blurb sounded just my type of book. But then who can refuse a bit of a murder-mystery around the New Year - and yes before you ask, I did wait to start it until New Year's Eve (because I am that sad). Anyway, what a way to start 2019 this was!

Set in the remote Scottish highlands The Hunting Party was just a delicious unravelling of a mystery, quite Agatha Christie-esque in its telling I thought. The very well-defined characters play their parts with aplomb, sharing qualities that most of us could recognise in long-standing friends. Though I am blessed to say that thankfully none of mine share the same narcissism as Miranda. I liked the fact that the characters, whilst somehow obliged to undergo this ritual of joining together every year, don't really seem to get on that well. There are lots of cutting remarks and questionable behaviour that do make you wonder what it is that is holding them together; why their group has not gone the usual way of graduating classes and fallen one by one as the years passed.

I particularly enjoyed the structure of the story though, told through different timespans - the now, and the flashbacks to the days before New Year and before the murder. I wasn't hung up on trying to work out who had done it. and whilst obviously important. it wasn't the main focus of my attention. I was just enjoying building up the history to the death; the enjoyment of finding out about the past lives of Heather and Doug who were staffing the lodge at the time, and the various interactions the group had with each other. The sense of isolation that the setting provided meant that an air of danger was there from the outset, and carried on until the end. I really did enjoy this book, I think it's a cracking read and would really recommend you grabbing a copy when you can.

Phew! What a book. Twisty, addictive and full of layers of secrets and lies.
It is wonderfully well written and engaging, with its multilayered plot and the descriptions of the remote and bleak landscape all adding to the slightly claustrophobic and uneasy feeling. The format is riveting and jumps between the 2nd of January and three days before, with chapters and narrative alternating between five characters POV. This really worked in this book, from the outset we know as a reader a body of one of the group is found, but we don't know whose body until towards the end of the book when the killers identify is unraveled.

Lucy Foley has put a modern day twist on the old country house Agatha Christie whodunnit murder mystery. It is a true page turner and will have you guessing until the final reveal. The writing style, entertaining plot, atmospheric setting, intriguing format and such a diverse group of characters, will keep anyone who enjoys a good old fashioned murder mystery utterly riveted right up until the final pages.

Many thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK, Harper Fiction for the opportunity to read this ARC, in return for an honest and unbiased review.

Nine friends who have always spent New Year together have outdone themselves this time. An isolated group of cottages in the remote Highlands of Scotland. And while tensions can run a little high, it’s nothing new between old friends.
Three days later, and the manager of the resort, Heather, has a crisis on her hands. A body has been found – one of the guests – and the only person she should be able to trust, the local in charge of hunting, is behaving oddly.
And if there’s a body, there must also be a murderer…
A new release from Harper Collins, this is the first thriller from Lucy Foley, who has written three historical novels before this. Inspired in part from visiting the location in which the book is set, this is very much in the vein of the modern unreliable narrator narrative. And if that’s your thing, then this is a well-constructed read.
It’s described in the blurb as a cross between The Secret History and And Then There Were None. I can’t comment on the first comparison but in terms of the second one… nope, no comparison. There’s an isolated setting but if you’re looking for a massacre, then look elsewhere.
There’s a single murder and if anything, this resembles Towards Zero (a bit) as it is only at the end that the murderer and the victim are revealed. The narrative in the pre-crime section (the majority of the book) alternates between the three main female guests and the post-crime section between the manager and the hunter.
What irked me a bit about this one was that despite how well it was written, with the five distinct voices working very well to reveal the big picture, at the end of the day, nothing seemed particularly surprising in the revelations. The murderer and victim were obvious to me from about the halfway point and while there are some twists in the motivations, the surprises become more limited when a significant number of the cast – four of the friends, the two random extras, the rumours of the Highland Ripper – rapidly fade into the background as everything circles around five of the guests, namely the narrators and two of their partners. Which leaves only a finite number of possibilities. And there’s a really odd red-herring section in the present day…
All in all, I found this pretty unsatisfying regarding the plot.Character-wise, it was strong, but for me at least (and Amazon reviewers seem to disagree, with 4.3/5) this needed a better twist for it to be a satisfying thriller.

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Every year a group of old friends gets together to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Most of them know each other from their golden days at Oxford University some years ago but two, Miranda and Katie, became best friends when they were at school. Through the years they’ve gathered partners and lovers and they, too, are now part of the group, although Katie is still single. She knows that means she’ll get the smallest room…. This particular year, Emma, the newest member to the group, has arranged the trip and the destination is a remote lodge by a loch in the Scottish Highlands. Emma’s keen for it to go well. But when a wintry storm strikes and the lodge is cut off from the outside world, then you just know it’s only time before something goes wrong, before there is a murder. Because there is nobody on this hunting party without a secret.

The Hunting Party has such an appealing premise. It has that Agatha Christie vibe of a small group of people cut off from the world (ideally by bad weather as here) and one of them is murdered. It’s claustrophobic, dark and compelling. And you just know that there are going to be surprises.

The novel’s narrative moves between several of the protagonists, which include the hosts at the lodge as well as the guests, notably the rather dark and moody gamekeeper. The action takes place in the ‘Now’, after the body is discovered, and in the two or three days leading up to the murder. During this time we get to know everyone and the dynamics of their relationships. There’s a salacious pleasure in watching the strings that bind these people together wither. They each have their secrets, a space within themselves that nobody else can enter, but perhaps the time to clear the air has come.

The Hunting Party is a tense and fast read. With so much drama going on the pages almost turn themselves. But I didn’t entirely get along with it. I think this is partly because out of all of the characters in the book, I didn’t like a single one of them. That shouldn’t really matter but, when you’re trying to work out who killed whom, it makes it less of a puzzle when you’re actually not bothered and rather think they all deserve it. The author definitely had some fun with these people. Miranda, the beautiful one, is outrageous! In fact, it’s the women who have the most character. The men are a bit limp, with the exception of the moody gamekeeper.

The other main issue I had with the novel is that these people have far too many secrets or hidden angst. There isn’t one settled person amongst them. This made me wonder how they could have celebrated so many New Year Eves together in the past without killing each other – why wait til now?

Nevertheless, The Hunting Party is a fun read, especially during a long dark evening and the Highland setting, although not explored in depth, is a suitably chilly setting for this atmospheric tale of murder.

To begin with we don't know a great deal. We know that there's a body and before too long we know that Doug, the gamekeeper, doesn't think it was an accident. You get the feeling that Doug knows about these things. Three days earlier there had been nine travellers on the train: however you cut that one, the seating is going to be awkward. Someone is going to be left on their own. The highland lodge is stunning though, but these people who don't usually get outside the M25 find it difficult to realise exactly what isolated really means. In this case it means that it's an hour's drive to the road and that's when the weather's good. But this new year, the weather definitely isn't good. This is serious snow.

The nucleus of the group met at Oxford and each new year they try to do something together along with added partners and babies. You wouldn't need the knowledge of a dead body to guess that there's going to be trouble: a sea of alcohol, big egos and old grievances with no escape don't usually make for a peaceful break. Emma's the one who organised the holiday and she's keen that everyone is well fed and that the drink flows freely. Part of this is that Emma's a bit needy, but she's also the newest member of the group and she's conscious of being the one who wasn't there in the early days at Oxford. She's also in awe of Miranda.

Well, most people are in awe of Miranda, although it's sometimes difficult to understand why. She can be unpleasant, well, cruel would be more accurate, and she's never really achieved much. She doesn't have staying power and gets bored very easily. She's beautiful though, and she knows it. She's in Scotland with her husband, Julien and he'd probably be enjoying the party more if he didn't have a secret on his mind. Bankers have to be very careful about what information they share with other people.

Katie's the outsider, although Miranda counts her as her closest friend. You're never quite certain why Katie has gone to the lodge as she doesn't seem to be enjoying herself and she's reluctant to join in the boisterous fun. She's not the only one: Samira's there with her young baby. She used to be one of the wildest of the group, but these days she's more inclined to insist that she and her husband have their meals in the chalet rather than leave the baby on his own.

It's quite a long time before we find out the identity of the victim - despite the fact that the story moves back and forth between the time before the death and the period afterwards. This adds to the tension as you're not only trying to work out the name of the murderer, but to identify the victim too. Characterisation is superb: I was still worrying about some of them days after I'd finished reading and that's always the sign of a good book.

This is Lucy Foley's first foray into crime from her previous home in historical fiction. It's a definite success and I hope to read more from her. I'd like to thank the publishers for letting Bookbag have a review copy.

Excellent read. Gripping from the start, it's a real page turner. Leaves you guessing right up til the end

Wow!! What a book. Have struggled to do anything since I started this. Brilliant. Lucy Foley weaves an excellent tale with all the ingredients for a great thriller.... group of uni friends, remote Scottish estate, weather that snows them in over New Year, secrets, undercurrents, a brooding gamekeeper...
I was totally immersed and enjoyed all the reveals as the story unfolded. Clever twists. Would highly recommend this book and shall be looking out for others by Lucy Foley in the future. A must read....you won't be disappointed!

Highly stylised, it took me a while to get used to voices and leaps in time - but after I became accustomed to it, I realised I could be confident in the narrtor's skillful hands. The cold and the confined space are really smart to handle the crime figuration. Ther eis tension between the people running the place and the guests - and there are reasons why those people are working there! Secrets emerge and are salient to the murdering ... it moves along very quickly and there are surprises that I should not mention here. Like a good old fashioned - almost Agatha Christie-like crime novel if this is a debut, as we're told, it's a great one and shows promise.

https://lynns-books.com/2018/12/03/the-hunting-party-by-lucy-foley/
Before I get to the meat of this review I can say upfront that I had a great time reading this – it has a cosy murder mystery feel to it, if, that is, you can liken being snowed into a very remote Scottish country retreat with a dead body cosy. I just blasted through this, it was entertaining, well written and compelling and I really didn’t want to put it down.

I would also mention that this isn’t speculative fiction. It’s a straight up murder mystery with an Agatha Christie type feel, plenty of red herrings and a group of friends who aren’t quite as close as they think.

The story is told in two different timeframes – very close together but one in which we jump forward a couple of days and a dead body has been discovered and the other set a few days earlier as the party of friends make their way across country to arrive at the lodge they’ve booked for their New Year’s shindig. We also have a few narrators. Two of the employees, Heather and Doug, who run the lodge and 3 of the friends, Miranda, Emma and Katie. The story is told in such a way that for a large portion of the book the reader is unaware of who has been murdered – although it doesn’t stop you from guessing of course.

I think the author succeeds in a number of ways.

Firstly, setting. A remote lodge set within many acres of land and very little wifi signal, even less when in the middle of a serious snow storm which occurs during the time the guests are in situ. The guests stay in individual style chalets and the celebrations take place in an ultra modern, all glass structure that helps to increase the tension. The guests are sometimes outside by themselves going to and fro and on top of that there’s a feeling of being watched which is exacerbated by the all the glass and the slight feeling of fear generated by the fact that a serial murderer seems to be stalking the neighbourhood. In placing the setting in such a difficult to reach place the author manages to convey a sense of isolation and a feeling of menace and in cutting the guests off from their phones, social media and other means of contacting the outside world succeeds in giving them the sense of being stranded or abandoned – a feeling that is increased further when the snow storm sets in and prevents travel to or from the lodge.

Then there’s the characters. Both Doug and Heather have secrets in their past which have driven them to accept jobs in such isolated circumstances. They’re both running away from something and what that is is slowly revealed during the course of the story. The guests are a bunch of thirty somethings. The majority of them have known each other since their university days, Katie and Miranda’s friendship goes back even further. They’re all living their own lives now, for the most part successful in their careers, one couple with a baby daughter but they still come together for these occasions – almost determined to have fun! On the face of it this is a group who share a lot of history, they like to have a good time, they know each other well, who likes to party hard, who the quiet one is, but, with all this history comes not just good memories but also sometimes long held resentments, jealousies and indiscretions. This is a group of people growing apart but are not quite ready to accept it. A group of people who if they met now, at this age, they probably wouldn’t be friends. They’re together because of a long history but sometimes the ugly side of that history pops out and as a result it casts suspicion on more than one character providing lots of red herrings.

Quite a large portion of the story revolves around Miranda. She plays the queen bee. Golden, beautiful, dazzling, unexpectedly generous but ruthlessly bitchy. She has the ability to light up a room. She can put on the charm at will. Yes, we’ve seen this sort of character before although what I particularly like about Miranda is that she also has something of a vulnerable streak and as she narrates some of the chapters this comes across quite well. At the same time the whole group do seem to be a little bit in her shadow and in fact even when you’re reading from one of the other narrators they’re usually thinking about her.

Overall, that’s probably all I can tell you without giving away plot points. The writing is good, the pace is fast and the story kept me guessing all the way through – and honestly, I didn’t see what was coming but I did have a great deal of fun jumping around from character to character as the author twisted me round in circles giving me first one suspect, then another and then yet another. On the strength of this novel I would definitely pick up more by this author.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.