I was drawn into this book from the beginning. I knew that there had been good reviews for her first book (I will now go and read it) so was please to receive a copy of this to review. I connected with the characters and their back stories. Although you are aware of a murder it is not until the end that you find out who it was. Very easy to read but suspenseful too.

Another cracker from Lucy Foley. Exactly the same format as The Hunting Party. A group gather in an isolated spot, each one with a various reason for wanting at least one other in the party dead. I whizzed through this in two days.

The Guest List describes the events of a wedding weekend on a remote Irish island, between Jules and Will. It is narrated in turn by the principle members of the wedding party and the wedding planner. Through the book there is an increasing sense of foreboding, as the backdrop to the story (bleak island, stormy weather, ruined chapel, spooky graveyard...) provides a gothic feel and ever-present tension.

I enjoyed how the tension builds through the book and the stories of Aoife, Jules, Will, Johnno, Charlie, Olivia and Hannah intertwine, with gradual disclosure of what has led up to those events.I loved the way that no matter how hard the bride and groom tried to keep things on track they are perennially sabotaged throughout. I also was kept guessing to the end who the murderer was.

Wow! I liked her first book but this is another level up. Suspend a bit of belief and read this. I love her character description and I always like a story told from different perspectives. Absolute 5/5 and 100% recommended.

Another brilliant book from such a talented author! I absolutely loved it and could not put it down.

The setting is an isolated small island off the west coast of Ireland, which Jules and Will (both minor celebrities) have chosen for their nuptials, out of view of prying eyes and the paparazzi. The location for the ceremony is a ruined chapel and the wedding celebrations take place in an enormous marquee, erected for the occasion alongside the Folly where the main guests stay for the weekend. In a roiling gale, shortly after the cake has been cut, a body is found on a path near the marquee.

As with "The Hunting Party", we do not find out who has died until near the end, although we know long before that a body has been found. There are lots of motives for some of these people to commit the ultimate act, and these are slowly and teasingly revealed. It is a testament to the author's skill that we are kept in suspense in this way. The chapters are short and punchy, and we 'head hop' between the main characters a great deal, yet they are all distinctive. Many of them are rich, arrogant and privileged, others are considerably less well off and live normal lives, but all are letting their hair down for the party of the year, helped by the dramatic location and lots of free booze. Secrets are revealed and resentments re-surface - just like any other wedding I guess!

This was such an atmospheric book, reminiscent of Agatha Christie's "And then there was none" and a touch if Lord of the Flies . It is set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland , inhabited only by the ghosts of the bodies swallowed by the bogs surrounding The Folly, a hotel run by Aoife and Freddie , the island's only living inhabitants. As guests assemble for the wedding of Jules and Will , both high profile celebrities, an air of menace prevails ,to the background of a gradually worsening storm which periodically plunges the island into darkness. Each of the guests brings their own dark secrets and as they gradually unfold we are drawn into their morass . The tension heightens to a crescendo until the climax on the night of the wedding . Very well written and excellent characterisation . This would make a brilliant television show ! More please! This book deserves a sequel and as we were left with the wrong person being arrested for murder (no matter how morally guilty of another crime) I would like to follow through on the story

Oh this was soooo good, very Agatha Christie-esque.

Media business woman, Jules is about to marry her TV action hero star fiance, Will on a secluded Irish island.

It's a chance for them to have an exclusive wedding with their nearest and so called dearest.

But 48 hours on an island with people who know your darkest secrets could lead to murder.

Read this book at every spare reading opportunity I had! Loved The Hunting party, loved the guestlist even more.

Thanks to net galley for the opportunity to review this book, this is my honest opinion.

I was really happy to receive this title to review as I had previously read and enjoyed The Hunting Party. The Guest List was even better although following a very similar theme. A group pf people together in an isolated place with all their secrets isn't going to end happily and so it was to be.

Jules and Will are an almost celebrity couple who decide to get married on a remote island off the coast of Connemara. Their guests include Charlie who may or may not have slept with the bride, his wife Hannah, the only likeable character in the book and the groom's ushers, friends from school, some of the most entitled, hideous men I've ever come across either in fiction or real life. Think Lord of the Flies with adults. Add in a couple pf damaged women and you've got an explosive situation.

As in The Hunting Party you don't find out the murder victim until late on and this adds to the fun. The motives build up and you have great fun trying to guess who gets murdered and who is likely to have done it. This is pure escapism and I loved it. The atmosphere is terrific with the weather almost being an extra character in the book.

Hugely enjoyable. Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

Julia ‘Jules’ Keegan, online magazine owner, is to wed her reality star husband-to-be Will slater on remote Cormorante Island. 150 guests arrive to celebrate the couple’s big day, including sister Olivia, best man Johnno and plus one Hannah, all planned by the island’s owner, Aoife and caterer husband Freddy. A storm hits and as the weather gets more intense, so do the revelations.

Lucy Foley is an a fabulous writer and she draws you in so easily. The murder mystery style with it’s integrated past-and-present timeline,
told from multiple perspectives, only adds to the intrigue.

The characters are diverse and are all cleverly threaded right into the story’s core. Each of their history’s are slowly revealed, and each chapter is left on a cliffhanger that makes you eagerly await the next part of their tale. One minute you think you have it figured out, only to discover there are further twists waiting around the corner!

I devoured this, and I am so pleased that my second Lucy read has been as good, if not better, than the first! A highly recommended read for lovers of crime, mystery and thriller.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In a change of pace from my recent streak of cosy murder mysteries (I'm a huge devotee of Diane Mott Davidson and her sleuthing caterer Goldie), I decided to jump into The Guest List to indulge in a much darker and twisted affair...

Reminiscent of an Agatha Christie set up, the eponymous "guest list" refers to the guests invited to a bougie wedding on a remote and dangerous island. Each of the featured guests; the bride, the plus one, the best man, the wedding planner and the bridesmaid, have their own chapters and within these their secrets, insecurities and motives are revealed. As storm of epic proportion rages across the party, all are revealed with deadly consequences.

I was gripped the whole way through, despite some pretty repugnant characters, (the boorish school friends of the groom are awful) and I held out high hopes for a happy ending (or at least survival!) for my favourite characters, the bridesmaid and the plus one.

It's a clever twisty tale with flashbacks and reveals to keep you turning the pages. I loved this book, and I think I actually said "wow" aloud when I got to *that* bit!

Thanks so much to HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction and NetGalley for providing an ebook for review.

I loved her first book The Hunting Party,and couldn't wait to read this book.Unfortunately I just didn't connect with any of the many characters and found the pace to be really slow.I kept thinking that I had to be patient while the scene was being set but nothing seemed to happen for ages.I would read more by this author but this book was not for me.

An amazing thriller that kept me guessing and page turning right until the very end! A great second novel to follow up the first proving just what a great writer she is highly recommended

A pacy, dark and atmospheric thriller that whirled me through the mystery like a guest on the wedding dance floor, or a storm raging over the island of Inis an Ampora. With both the murderer and the identity of the victim hidden until the last moment, there are plenty of dark secrets and clues to unpick. Highly recommend.

A high octane page turner, cleverly contrived with a breadcrumb trail of intrigue and suspicion about almost every character’s back story. Lucy Foley keeps the pace running at speed until the end (albeit the twists taken cumulatively require a lot of coincidence). A definite recommendation with one twist which is very clever!

Many thanks to Harper Collins UK and Netgalley for an ARC in consideration of an honest review.

The Guest List is a brilliant read. Set on a remote island in Ireland in the middle of a gale the wedding of the year takes place. As the guests arrive and the day progresses the tensions build as we find out more and more of the history of the guests and their connections to each other. Excellently executed the plot gives you so many culprits, you are lead down many blind alleys, only to be completely surprised - proper engaging whodunnit

The beautiful wedding of Jules and Will, an online magazine editor and an almost famous celeb., on a remote island off the coast of Ireland, sounds idyllic. Jules has left nothing to chance in her planning for the big day. She wants it to be perfect. The wedding planner, Aoife, and her husband want this to go well - it is the first big event in their new business. However, there are quite a few secrets, lies and grudges among the cast of characters. The weather turns stormy, the terrain is trecherous, there are looming gravestones and ruins. As the tension builds, fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol and drugs, things begin to unravel. This is a rollercoaster of a novel, better than her first one, The Hunting Party, but with similar themes of bullying by privileged public schoolboys and revenge. None of the characters are very pleasant but it doesn't matter - it's entertaining.

Totally loved this book.
So I'm new to Lucy Foley - I didn't pick up The Hunting Party but intend to rectify that immediately after reading this.
What a masterpiece this was. All in all, faultless.
I really have nothing to pick up and fault with this book it's a great unravelling whodunnit (as well as whodunn'what until near the end) that is brilliantly told with a brief glimpse of the current events interspersed between catching up on the back stories of all the characters at the wedding on a remote island where the current story takes place. The tension and climax were brought to a great simmering conclusion with characters that you really felt you knew and sympathised/empathised with. It had me gripped from start to finish and I really couldn't put this book down.

Thank you so much for the preview copy via NetGalley and I look forward to (much!) more work from this author in the future.

WOW, what a ride! The atmospheric start which was continued throughout. All the main characters who had a back story. The storm raging around and then the lights went out. I don't very often give 5 stars but they are well deserved in this case. The tension is kept up throughout. I don't usually like books that are told from the point of view of different characters or which flit back and forward in time but this author does it so well I was not confused as I normally am by this format.

I loved Lucy Foley's first novel, "The Hunting Party", so I hit request on NetGalley as soon as I saw "The Guest List" come up, and jumped it to the top of my reading list as soon as the request was approved. 

Second novels are a funny thing - when you've loved the first one so much, the second fills you with both excitement and trepidation. You want to read it but can it live up to the expectations set by the first? In this case, I'm happy to say that The Guest List surpassed my expectations in every way, and I couldn't read it fast enough (and then was annoyed with myself for binge-reading it as it was over too quickly). 

The novel is set on a tiny windswept island off the Irish coast, where Jules (the editor of a glossy magazine) and Will (a Bear-Grylls type TV presenter) are about to tie the knot away from the prying eyes of the press and in front of their closest friends and family. The wedding party have arrived the night before the wedding to start the celebrations in style - but there are tensions brewing, and perhaps the perfectly coiffured, perfectly respectable guests aren't quite as perfect as they seem...

We know from the start that a body has been found but we don't know whose, and we don't know what has happened. The story then returns to the night before and we work back to the ending, occasionally flashing back to the present in between chapters narrated in turns by different characters: the bride, the groom, the bridesmaid, the plus one, etc. This really worked well, gradually ratcheting up the tension as well as giving insight into each character's history, insecurities, and relationship with the happy couple. 

Lucy Foley is brilliant at creating unlikeable characters that you still want to take the journey through the book with - I disliked Will from the off, and I wasn't a huge fan of Jules either. But the author draws every character with such nuance and skill, you do end up seeing the human element in even the most unlikeable characters. 

Loved the twists, the tension built up brilliantly, and I loved the way the backstory was gradually threaded in to the present day plot. I was biting my nails by the end!

I recommended The Hunting Party to my reading group and they loved it; I will be recommending The Guest LIst with even more gusto. A cleverly written and genuinely thrilling book - Lucy Foley is definitely one of my favourite authors, and I can't wait to read whatever she writes next. 

Thank you to NetGalley, who provided me with a free ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I read Lucy Foley's previous book on Netgalley and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was with great excitement that I started to read The Guest lIst, knowing that I would enjoy it.
It was really great, everything you want from a crime book.......set on a remote island off the coast of Connemara, a glamorous couple about to get married, lashings of champagne, scented candles and a guest list of old school friends and family. The secrets that are revealed are interesting and very well written.
I really enjoy this author's fiction, thank you