3 Turning, Twisting, Thriller Stars!!!

I was given this book in turn for an honest review.

Friends gather for New Years celebrations, a tradition since their Oxford days. As a blizzard sets in, so the lines of friendship begin to blur. With tensions high, secrets are revealed; some more damaging than you could have possibly believed. Murder is on the horizon, the question is, who did it?

The Hunting Party was an intriguing read, at first, I struggled with the many different points of views, and at one point I had to stop reading. It wasn’t that I completely disliked it, something was holding my attention, however, I was struggling to concentrate and take in, everything each character was telling me. I finally got to revisiting this story, and soon the story held me captive.

Although I found each of the friends intriguing, I never found that I liked them. They all came across as pompous, the friendship they each held was clearly much of a pseudo, only using the other for what they felt they could get from the so-called friendship. The employees of the retreat they stayed at, were definitely intriguing, and I did find myself warming to them.

This story has many twists and turns, unfortunately, few of them managed to convince me to follow them. However, Lucy Foley, definitely has a talent for writing a plot that doesn’t take the easy route and has the ability to keep the reader on their toes. The storyline was brilliant, and I’m not sure this could have been written any other way then from each of the characters points of views, to give it, its full justice. It is purely my own opinion that I struggled with the many different points of view.

Looking for a crime thriller to take you on a crazy, dark, twisty, ride, then The Hunting Party is for you.

I’d heard lots of good things about this story and purposefully saved it until the Christmas period, as it seemed the right time to read it, during the build up to New Year.

It was certainly worth the wait!

This is a novel with a varied, and not necessarily likeable, cast of characters, forced into a situation where none of them can escape from each other.

The brooding Scottish Highlands surround them, eerie and threatening, the unsettling landscape mirrors the tensions between the group. What starts off as a fun party for a group of friends to celebrate New Year, unravels as it becomes the setting for a murder.

The narrative switches perspective, and time, everyone becomes a suspect, as nobody is whom they may first appear. I changed my mind frequently as to who committed the murder, and why. 

A great novel for a grey Sunday afternoon in front of the fire! I can see this being made into a Christmas Eve chiller....

The Hunting Party is your next addiction. Plan on reading this when you have no appointments or immediate plans scheduled on the horizon. You will want the time to immerse yourself into this mystery. It's dark and captivating. Highly recommended to readers who enjoy thrillers.

Where can I start my review other than to say that there was such a claustrophobic and tense atmosphere running throughout as tensions really do simmer between this group of friends. I enjoyed the way that the past history of the group is slowly but surely revealed. You do follow a few characters in this story but in a short space of time I started to find it easy to get a feel for the different personalities and it began to feel quite natural along with flowing a little easier. It isn’t the most fast paced story so if you want non stop action you could be disappointed however this book really makes for a very intriguing story.


Flawed characters are at the heart of this book which for me made it all the more interesting and if I’m being honest I wouldn’t necessarily say I really liked any of them but I was still fully invested in the story along with wondering how it would all turn out in the end! This book is full of secrets not just about the death that occurs but also in the characters lives. I loved hearing some of their inner thoughts and feelings as they are at times very different to the ones they share with each other! There are much darker and more secretive sides that are just lurking below the surface.

The book moves backwards and forwards as we focus on the time before New Year’s Eve right through to the 2nd Jan. The way I was kept guessing over the identity of the victim was very clever and made me try and play detective to see if I could figure it out before the big reveal. I couldn’t wait to see how everything came together along with trying to discover what actually happened! I guessed a few things along the way but to be honest it was the journey to the dramatic ending that really caught my attention and kept me turning those pages.

The setting really helps to add a darker element with a wild and dangerous edge. It all combined with getting to know this group of friends as their friendships and relationships are explored. Along with meeting the employees at the Lodge. Who can you really trust? Strangers? Or friends you have known for years?

A dark, twisty and edgy mystery!

A locked room mystery that will send shivers down your spine for more reasons than one!

Alternating between characters this is a murder mystery that draws you in and sweeps you away to the remote snowy Scottish highlands. This is one book I would recommend reading with a hot water bottle and a huge mug of hot chocolate, ideally one with cream and marshmallows!

The whole book is seeped in atmosphere, so much so that the cold permeates right the way through chilling you to the bone. Filled with some brilliantly created characters who are all memorable in their own ways and a great deal of them not particularly likeable. Flawed, some relatable, some endearing and some down right disturbed! The phrase ‘bunny boiler’ applies to this book perfectly!

As the group get together for their annual new years getaway over the course of the weekend old secrets begin to resurface, their shared past taking on a different light and new secrets threaten to ruin what should have been an unforgettable reunion.

It certainly will be unforgettable, just not for the right reasons!

This is a brilliant classic whodunit that is as entertaining as it is memorable, where things are not always as they seem. This is one not to be missed.

The Hunting Party is out now and can be purchased now for only £0.99 from Amazon

A big thank you to the author Lucy Foley, publishers Harper Collins UK, Harper Fiction and NetGalley for my digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest and independent review.

https://debbiesbookreviews.wordpress.com/2019/02/03/the-hunting-party-by-lucy-foley/

The Hunting Party is a modernised version of the classic locked-room/isolation style mystery. The story centres around nine friends (Miranda, Julien, Katie, Mark, Samira, Giles, Nick and Bo) seeing in the New Year together at Loch Corrin, a remote hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands. All in their 30’s, they are contemporaries from Oxford University (plus wives/husbands) and are struggling to accept that their group dynamic has changed since their undergraduate days. Adulthood, careers and family lives have tamed them and widened the gap between them all. Rather than simply enjoying their surroundings, drinking the local scotch and reminiscing, they find themselves comparing their successes and failures. Long-hidden jealousies, rivalries and resentments are pulled to the surface causing the congenial mood amongst the party to quickly depart and causing the weekend to descend into a tense and edgy affair.

When one of the group ends up dead, the friends find themselves stuck in the isolated lodge, in the middle of a snowstorm, with no way in or out. Will the police helicopter reach them before the murderer is revealed or before he/she strikes again…?

The setting is absolutely perfect for a whodunit – atmospheric, isolated and bleak. The chilly presence of the blizzard adds an extra element of claustrophobia, quickly and effectively ramping up the feelings of unease and tension.

The story is well-plotted. Set over a 48 hour period, it is told from the perspective of several of the characters, each having their own secret and each presenting the events from a different viewpoint. The story flits back and forth over those 48 hours. This cleverly allows the story to be told, whilst keeping the reader guessing not only as to who the murderer is, but also who has been murdered. There is a general feeling of menace and enough twists and ‘red herrings’ to keep the reader gripped until the very last page.

Interestingly, the characters are all pretty unlikeable in their own ways. They are self-centred and spoilt, which somehow makes it more fascinating as we watch their friendships fracture and their lives fall apart at the seams. Certainly they make a pretty dysfunctional group. In addition to the friends, there are two further characters to add to the pool of suspects - Heather, the lodge manager, and Doug, the gruff gamekeeper, who adds his own intrigue to the tale.

Lucy Foley, an author better known for her historical novels, has put forward a solid crime fiction debut. The Hunting Party is atmospheric, tense and twisty – a great update to the classic Christie-style whodunit. Highly recommended and great for fans of an old-fashioned murder mystery with a modern twist.

A cleverly written book. A group of friends meet up for their annual New Years celebration this time in a remote Scottish Lodge. Sweeping back and forth over three days the story is told from the different character’s perspectives. As it progresses we find out more and more about them and their secrets. We know a body is found, but whose? and whodunnit? Could it possibly be connected to the rescent spate of murders? It surely can’t be one of the friends- because you can trust your friends with your life can’t you?

Set over the New Year, this is a slow burning thriller with a feel of Agatha Christie. A group of friends hire a lodge on an estate in the remote Scottish Highlands, but two days later, one of them is dead. One of the group must be the killer but who? And why? Atmospheric and tense, this is a book to settle down with and read in one sitting.

This is the classic gothic mystery of a group of friends that spend the New Year's holiday in a remote hunting lodge. The couples are all old friends who seem to be hiding secrets. Of course there's the brooding caretaker and the house manager with secrets of her own. One of those friends will wind up dead, and it's nail biting suspense until you figure out who the killer may be. I loved this book from start to finish - the perfect winter read!

This was a great little seasonal thriller which I read near the end of last year. It has all the elements of a classic whodunnit with tons of atmosphere; a fractured group of old college friends, a remote location in the Scottish Highlands and a cold, bleak winter. Throw in a snowstorm and a murder and you've got all the trappings for a great story, and this one didn't disappoint.

There's quite a large cast to keep track of here; nine friends (and a baby) plus the few staff who care for the estate where the group decide to spend New Year's Eve. The book alternates between different viewpoints, and in the beginning I found it a little difficult to keep track of, but as the author goes deeper into our flawed collection of character's lives, this wasn't a problem.

The thing about this group of friends, is they don't really have anything in common, or like each other much at all. They come together once a year out of a sense of tradition, and reminisce about the old days when they attended Oxford University together a decade before. Whilst on the surface the group seems united, scratch the surface and a whole host of tension and secrets comes to light. And, when things go wrong and a snowstorm hits rendering them trapped in the estate, it's the perfect time for those secrets to come to the surface.

"Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don't need much encouragement at all to become monsters."

I flew through this book; it was tense and gripping from start to finish. The remote, bleak setting was the perfect place for this dark little story filled with simmering tension and a bunch of nasty characters. As the secrets gradually unfold and relationships fall apart, the author throws twists and turns in which I would never have predicted. An excellent, atmospheric mystery thriller which had me engrossed.

‪ https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2019/1/28/the-hunting-party-by-lucy-foley‬

We all have a certain group of friends who we have known from certain times of a lives who we would class as our inner circle. They knew us when we grew up before we learned to act like adults. They’re the group we can seamlessly shift into our old roles of joker, leader, confidant, wingman etc and know us better than anyone else. But at the same time there is that other side of friendship where we still meet up because of that past bond but our lives are now going in very different directions and as the years pass are we really the same person as we were back in the day…are we actually still friends? This intriguing novel from Lucy Foley uses this theme to build a murder mystery where each friend would no doubt say they would die for you but perhaps one guest has decided to take them at their word.

A gang of Oxford graduates and their partners have made it an annual tradition to have a New Year’s year gathering. Now in their thirties the group is starting to move from being partying twentysomethings who would go to Ibiza for debauchery to now a remote Scottish Hunting Lodge for food, drinking and this time hunting. We have the star couple Julien and Miranda; the first couple to have a baby in Samira and Giles; the loyal best friends Mark and Emma plus Nick and his partner Bo; and finally, Katie who is Miranda’s best friend who has recently started to become the most detached. Emma has made it her mission to make this the best New year’s ever…and like with Walford’s Christmas that turns out to be an instant curse.

The initial horrors of no wi-fi; extreme bad weather and taciturn staff plus creepy Icelandic tourists start to immediately place the group on edge but slowly the dynamics of this group start to increase the tensions and there is no where people can really get away from each other when the snow begins to fall. The book uses an intriguing concept of not just a whodunnit but who got dun? We know a little after New Year’s Eve the manager of the lodge Heather finds a body in the snow, but the identity of the guest is not immediately revealed. In a series of flashbacks/flashforwards we go into the principle perspectives of Miranda, Katie and Emma plus the Lodge staff of Heather and her mysterious gamekeeper Doug to try and establish who has died and who was the killer and why?

What I really enjoyed in this book was that sense of friendships that may be past their sell by date. On the one hand you can see how this group all got together and particularly around Miranda why this group got around her orbit she is a fascinating magnetic but sometimes cruel and careless personality. But you also can see how the groups change when people settle down in new relationships; battle addictions and change career paths. On the face of it these bright young things from Oxford would look to have loads in common still in their ultra-professional middle-class lives but is that enough? Being in each character’s head allows us to see their inner and outer personas to the world (plus what they really think of each other) and slowly the history of the group plus the secrets they’re all less willing to share with one another get explained increasing the tension as eventually others will find out the truth. The reader is being propelled along via a mix of red herrings and startling revelations to construct what actually happened that early New Year’s Day. Our first impressions of who is the hero and villain in this group shift (and shift again) as we find about where they are all now in relation to each other. This creates a great deal of uncertainty which for any good thriller does ramp the tension as we also want to find out which secret led to murder.

As such I think there may be a view as you near the end that the various plots are kept spinning in the air just perhaps a little too long. I really enjoyed the additional revelations of the lives of Heather and Doug who all have their reasons for choosing this remote workplace, but I never felt the book really fully bonded their stories with the main group. The main mystery I think makes this well worth reading but the secondary plot I think isn’t fully developed enough to make it feel like it compliments the story more that it gets in the way of the tense finale to come. But I do think Foley is very good at making each of these characters stand out as personalities in their own right and their life stories are fascinating. It may just be an impatience to finally get to the big reveal I was feeling but at the same time I really did want to know what other secrets this Lodge had to offer.

Overall, I think if you enjoy a thriller that explores the dark side of friendship then I think this fast-paced thriller would be an extremely entertaining read. But beware you may think twice the next time your oldest friends invite you to a weekend away

3.5 stars

A group of friends are spending New Years Eve in an exclusive luxury hunting lodge in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands. The thirty-something Oxford graduates have remained close friends since university, despite obvious cracks in their relationships. Very early in the story, we learn the body of one of the group has been found in the wilderness and a snow storm has trapped everyone in the resort. Including the killer.

I enjoyed this book immensely. The story was gripping and the characters, despite being hugely unlikable, were very well drawn and presented. I loved Foley's evocation of nature and the bleak, Scottish wilderness, and her handling of a plot that had the potential to become very muddled owing to a large number of major characters was impressive. This brings me to the 3.5 star rating: So many names are thrown at you in the opening chapters that it does become a little confusing, added to the fact that the narrative structure is quite changeable, with the point of view alternating each chapter.

Outside of that, The Hunting Party is an addictive and seductive thriller that will keep you guessing. And Lucy Foley is one to watch.

This was an interesting read, with the narrative going backwards and forwards over a couple of days. There were enough plot twists to keep me guessing as to whodunnit and why - which was more interesting.

I've finished the book and looking back on the whole story it was a good mystery. However, the time setting the story up seemed long and slow. The relationships and how they came to be at the hunting place seemed to drag. About half way it picked up.

Wow! It’s hard to convey quite how much I enjoyed this novel. I’d seen some reviews suggest a comparison to Agatha Christie and so was expecting something a little like Shari Lapena’s An Unwanted Guest. Although it shares some similarities, it’s actually so much more than that.
A group of university friends, who are now in their thirties, go to a remote and exclusive Scottish lodge to celebrate New Year’s Eve. The evening ends with one of the guests being murdered. The novel is told from the viewpoint of several characters and goes back and forth in time.
The story is accessible and well written whilst still being satisfyingly complex. The characters are well drawn and well rounded. If I was to compare with any other book it would be Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I loved it.

Log fires, whisky, brooding mountains, a snowbound hunting lodge, university friends, loaded guns – what could possibly go wrong? I loved Lucy Foley’s psychological thriller, The Hunting Party, set over Hogmanay in the Scottish Highlands. Marketed as a modern day Agatha Christie, Foley introduces the reader to a sizeable cast of characters, eleven guests and three members of staff, which she handles well. Just like Christie, the claustrophobia grows, as secrets are revealed and hidden jealousies exposed. Atmospheric and twisty, it’s perfect for curling up with, whilst enjoying your favourite dram.

This is a classic "who-dunnit" story with a cast of mostly unlikeable characters but set in the very beautiful but remote Scottish Highlands.

The story is written from the perspectives of various characters using two timelines - the days leading up to the death and once the body is discovered. We are kept in the dark about which one of the guests is dead and the author does a good job of throwing in red herrings to throw you off the scent as to who it is and who did the deed.

This is a "who-dunnit" story but is also develops into a "who-is-it" conundrum and I really liked that about this book. I also liked the fact that 90% of the characters were pretty horrible if I'm honest and I wasn't particularly bothered who had been killed but this resulted in a lack of connection and I didn't become as emotionally involved as I would have liked which lessened the enjoyment a little for me.

Overall, this is a pretty good read and I would recommend it to anyone who loves a cast of dysfunctional and unlikeable people trapped together in an unforgiving landscape with an unknown killer amongst them - just sit back, enjoy and watch it all unravel.

My thanks must go to the publisher, HarperCollins UK, via NetGalley for my copy in return for an honest review.

British crime novel writing is going through a vanguard or renaissance period currently, be it from the loner detective in Joseph Knox's Manchester set crime novels; to A.A. Dhand's Yorkshire set crime epics; and there is great representation by Fiona Barton from the female writers of these shores.

Set over a New Year's weekend of celebrations, Foley takes her protagonists away from their sheltered happy self-important London existence of wealth and privilege, dropping them into a remote part of the Scottish Highlands where they hope to engage in fun and frivolity over the four day weekend.

Atmospherically set amongst the vast landscape of a cold bleak Highland setting, Foley cleverly weaves an ever-changing narrative flash forwarding and backwards amongst many of the characters, this offers us different voices to listen to prompting quite a challenge for the debut author to maintain this flow of narrative.

The anticipation for this novel has been met by the finished article here, and it is great to see a riveting example of crime fiction by a British female in the same vein as Lapena, Foley will be able to be heralded in the same company as Fiona Barton on the evidence of this first stab at crime novel writing.

The Hunting Party is a smart locked room mystery set in a remote hunting lodge in Scotland which examines how friendships change, new beginnings, mysteries and secrets in a tense and atmospheric plot. It is a real page turner with characters that leap from the page.

A group of friends who met at Oxford University get together for their annual New Year celebration. This year, Emma who is the partner of original member Mark and is therefore a relative newcomer to the group has organised the trip and has booked a beautiful hunting lodge on the banks of a loch in Scotland. The bedrooms have four poster beds, there is a sauna, a high-spec kitchen, open fire, beautiful living area and live-in staff to cater for your every whim. Sounds amazing doesn’t it? But what if I told you that this place is miles from anywhere, is inaccessible if it snows and that one of this group of friends is found murdered at the beginning of the book? Doesn’t sound quite as great now does it? We don’t know who has died or why until the end, but via a slow reveal of the events of New Year 2018 we come to understand what happened and how the pieces fit together.

This book is a really clever examination of how friendships shift over time and how people revert to their previous selves – kind of like when you go home for Christmas and become a 15 year old within minutes of walking in the front door. This is a group who have really enjoyed their twenties, are now in their early thirties and are tackling adulthood head on. They are high-flying achievers who in their day to day lives are successful lawyers, hedge fund managers etc but resume their roles in the friendship group as the joker, instigator, wall-flower and party animal, albeit a little uncomfortably.

Then there is the couple who have a young baby; the first in the group to do so. The others fall into two camps, those who adjust to a baby being there and those who don’t understand why the parents seem to have entirely different personalities. This unsteadiness and upheaval of the status quo in the group is such an interesting narrative tool. The feeling of others progressing through life at a different pace, experiencing things outside of your understanding and acting in unrecognisable way (Samira was the life and soul of the party, now she is clinging to a baby monitor and abstaining from the flee flowing champagne) is disorientating and upsetting. Combined with the location; a remote hunting lodge with acres of wild land around it, these city dwellers are on ground that is shifting in an unknown landscape.

Beautiful and glamorous Miranda is the Queen Bee of the group, instigator of the fun, holder of the secrets and at times, an absolute bitch. We’ve all known somebody like her, incredibly insecure so revels in attention and doesn’t care who she hurts on the way. I found her chapters hugely enjoyable, even though I found her completely infuriating. I loved reading about her and her relationship with the others, particularly her husband Julian and her best friend Katie. There are some great observations of the complications of female friendship, especially when it comes to these two. Miranda is the alpha and Katie is the beta and the power play and control is fascinating to watch.

Told in multi-person narrative that switches between the days leading up to New Year’s Eve and New Years Day this is a tense and twisty read. It is packed full of atmosphere with characters that leap from the page. This clever use of the multi-person narrative allows the story to unravel and for the pieces of the jigsaw to come together. I couldn’t put it down and found it an easy read but, I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending. It is still a solid 4 star read and one I would recommend as it is such a clever examination of friendship in your thirties and the nuances and layers in relationships.

Wow ! I absolutely loved this book :)
It was a bit of a change of genre for the author but it was brilliant !
I loved all of the mismatched characters that all seemed to have something to hide.
Edge of the seat stuff !!
10/10