I’m back and likely not going away anytime soon my dudes. ’Cause guess what, I’ve got books so I’m gonna review them. Are my reviews terrible and entirely biased? Yes. But whatever, joke’s on you ’cause you’re reading this. 

Here’s what I do: I see books on BookTok. I decide whether I should read them or not—this is largely influenced by whether or not I can get a copy of the book or not. And then I read it—or sometimes just stare at it—and then I come here and do my thing. 

This week’s victim: “The Guest List” by Lucy Foley 

“The Guest List” has been featured on Reese Witherspoon’s—AKA Elle Woods—book club list. Being certified by Reese’s Book Club can make your way in the BookTok world. Everyone freaked out over “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens (which is controversial and I’m not getting into it but I can’t support that book no matter whether Taylor Swift wrote a song for the movie or not). It also brought “Daisy Jones and the Six” by Taylor Jenkins Reid and “Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng into the spotlight. 

All of these books, mind you, are either actively being turned into film adaptations or are in the works to being converted to another media. So being in this club is a big deal. I also have liked the recommendations from the book club so far, aside from “The Firekeepers Daughter” by Angeline Boulley, which was just too much for me. 

“The Guest List” was something else. It’s a thriller, and again that is not my go-to genre, so it was a little out of left field for me. 

I really enjoyed the ending but it took a long time to get there. The build-up of the plot is fun and Foley is most certainly thorough in developing all of her characters. This story does involve a lot of characters so the attention to all of them is nice but maybe a tad overdone. I felt like I got to the middle and just wanted it to be over already. Like I probably could have skipped 50 pages in the middle and it wouldn’t have made that much of a difference. 

“The Guest List” brings together a whole slew of characters gathering for the wedding of Julia and Will. Julia runs a successful online magazine and Will is a TV star—they are a match made in heaven, described as a handsome pairing. But everything is not what it seems, and you spend the course of the novel unraveling the guests’ secrets and the truth that is hidden beneath. You get the point of view (POV) of the wedding planner, the bridesmaid, the plus-one, the bride and the best man in order to piece together the murder that occurs on the day of the wedding. 

Someone on Goodreads called the story fast-paced. I would beg to differ. The story goes into depth drawing out the characters and their traits. You learn their pasts and their presents while piecing together this murder. There are a couple of time jumps that I found slightly annoying as someone who is not a fan of time jumps. Though I’m usually not a fan of multiple POVs, this one wasn’t too bad, but that is because of the tradeoff where she spends a millennia explaining everything. 

The ending, though, really does save the book, because while I was getting bored in the middle, I kept pushing myself to want to know who did it and more importantly why they did it. But boy oh boy was it an effort to keep going. And I was not disappointed in the ending; it was most definitely worth it. 

It’s a great book for a rainy day when you’ve got nothing else to do. It’s a thriller that keeps you on your toes—just make sure you are ready to really pay attention to the narrative and everything that is going on. It’s definitely not a light and fun read if that is what you are looking for, but not bad if you want something a little more dense.