Welcome to another Crawford’s Mysteries and More! Book Club Novel Review. Novels read in book club will fall into the following categories: Detective (crime is solved by a detective/police officer), Cozy (no violence), Caper (told from the criminal’s POV), and More (not strictly a mystery)! Mysteries will be reviewed based upon the crime taking place, the intrigue of the information that gets revealed, the relative success of red herrings, and the satisfaction of the ending.
The Guest List by Lucy Foley is her fifth standalone novel and could be best categorized as the little sibling Caper Mystery novel that never thought it was good enough and so it had do everything better. Mystery told by the criminal’s POV? How about five POVs where you don’t know who to trust? Intrigue of information? How about turning up the focus on our favorite industries: reality TV with celebrities, weddings, and romantic get away vacations? Red herrings? How about not knowing who the victim is until the end? Satisfied ending? How about an ending revealed in the dark in the middle of a storm in the middle of the bride and groom’s first dance?
The mystery unravels as told through the points of view of the Bride, the Maid of Honor, the Wedding Planner, the Best Man, and the Plus One. You start with the Plus One and are thinking, “Who cares? The wedding party didn’t even really invite you,” but Foley’s voice is so endearing that you are immediately taken with her. Especially when you meet the other four. From the opening pages, the other four narrators are all such basket cases that you consider that each of them could be the murderer the entire time…or the murdered.
Foley’s got you hook, line, and sinker stringing you along with five characters with such traumatic backstories that they honestly could be on the brink of something disasterous. Other mystery authors may have done this before, but Foley does it with such finesse that you don’t even realize you’re being sucked into the bog on this tiny, remote island in the middle of the Atlantic, thinking you’re hearing voices, until your head has slipped below the earth and you realize you should have called for help.
Then, you’ll wake up, realize you have been reading, and eagerly dive back into the story.
Elegance Press 