The Guest List
By Lucy Foley
3 Stars
A celebrity wedding on remote Cormorant island off the Irish coast brings together a group of people expecting the wedding of the year; one for magazine pages. But as the drinking begins resentments and petty jealousies begin to dilute the good wishes. When someone turns up dead things begin to ruin the wedding.
The first few paragraphs introduce us to the wedding guests which is okay but there seems a lot to take in at once. The story is told from the individual points of view of Jules, Will, Hannah, Johnno, Olivia and Aoife which just seems to work as the story progresses. There is an air of dark mystery throughout the story. There is also a group of adult but ex-public schoolboys who are quite annoying. There is a backstory to each person, giving them some depth. I don’t usually like that too much but it seems to work in this instance. The pace of the narrative is good although with multiple viewpoints it does chop and change quite a lot.
Once I got used to the changing viewpoints the story flowed well. There were some unexpected twists as things progressed which I enjoyed and the pace began to pick up. But so did the switching of points of view and, for me, it detracts from the natural flow. The story does have a good twist at the end though.
It would be another good holiday read.
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