The Guest List by Lucy Foley

on

 


💍 The Guest List by Lucy Foley

Murder, marriage, and messy secrets on a murdery little island

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ (3.5 out of 5 stars)
📚 Thriller | 🎭 Multi-POV Drama | 🏝 Destination Wedding Murder Mystery | ☠️ Rich People Problems

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT!
This review is about to spill more tea than a seaside Irish storm. If you haven’t read The Guest List yet, and you don’t want to know who dies, who did it, or who seriously needed therapy like 12 years ago… back out now and grab the book first.
Buy The Guest List on Amazon

✍️ So… Why Did I Read Another Lucy Foley?

I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s like I black out, see the name Lucy Foley, and suddenly I’m three chapters deep into another book where literally everyone has a secret, half the plot is told in flashbacks, and I’m once again asking myself, “Wait… who is this again?”

But credit where it’s due — her stories are fun, twisty, and drama-packed. Even if I need a murder board and possibly a spreadsheet to keep track of the five different POVs.

💒 The Setting: Where Dreams (and Maybe Grooms) Die

The story takes place on The Folly, a spooky little island off the coast of West Ireland. The island is mostly empty, mysterious, and supposedly crawling with haunted backstories the locals never talk about — AKA the perfect spot for an extremely cursed wedding.

The bride is Jules Keegan, an ambitious, slightly icy magazine editor.
The groom is Will Slater, a ruggedly handsome reality TV survival show host with enough red flags to decorate a Macy’s parade float.

The venue is owned by Aoife (wedding planner) and her husband Freddy (chef), who are banking on this event going viral so they can stop hosting haunted murder weddings and start paying their bills.

🎩 Meet the Wedding Guests — aka Suspects

  • Hannah, Jules' friend’s wife. Suspiciously observant, not thrilled to be here, and constantly wondering if Jules and her husband Charlie (Jules’ childhood BFF) had something going on. (Spoiler: they did. Ew.)

  • Olivia, Jules' teenage half-sister, a hot mess express of anxiety, depression, and haunting secrets. (Poor girl has been through it.)

  • Johnno, Will’s best man and former boarding school bro. He’s still living in the shadows of Will’s spotlight and might have some rage issues. But also? Maybe a soul?

  • The Groomsmen: Honestly just a bunch of toxic man-children from their old boarding school who think hazing is still hilarious. Spoiler: It’s not.

🕯️ The Plot: Wedding Vibes... with a Side of Homicide

Things start off with your typical rich-people wedding:
Fancy canapés, lots of tension, champagne, deep-rooted resentment, and a literal storm rolling in.

Then someone sees a body.
But don’t worry — Lucy Foley throws us back in time before the murder to show us how the chaos built up like a slow-cooked casserole of lies.

💣 Secrets, Bombshells, and Big Yikes

Olivia’s Secret

She had a relationship with an older man. He got her pregnant. She had to have an abortion alone. The man ghosted her.
Plot twist: The older man is Will. Yup, her sister’s fiancé. Gross level: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Will’s Secret

He’s garbage. He stole Johnno’s idea for the TV show. He filmed and released revenge porn of another ex, Alice — who later died by suicide. (Who’s Alice? Oh, just Hannah’s sister. Small world, huh?)

Oh, and he also murdered a classmate at boarding school — or rather, lured him into a dangerous spot during a hazing ritual and let the ocean do the rest. That boy’s name? Darcey Malone. Aoife’s brother. Dun dun dun.

Johnno’s Guilt

He helped Will with the prank that led to Darcey's death, not knowing it was intentional. He’s been living with the guilt ever since. He tries to confront Will, but doesn’t get far...

🔪 So… Who Killed Will?

At the climax of the book, with the storm raging and the power out, someone stabs Will to death with the wedding cake knife.

When the lights come on, Johnno is found with the bloody knife, looking guilty as sin.

But plot twist! (Yes, another one.)

It was actually Aoife, the wedding planner-slash-sister-of-the-dead-boy, who stabbed Will after confronting him about Darcey’s death.
Johnno just pulled out the knife like a doofus and got framed by the laws of dramatic timing.

Honestly, I wasn’t even mad.
Will deserved it.
Every single person in this book was either ready to kill him or wish they had.

🧠 Final Thoughts

I gave The Guest List 3.5 stars because:

✅ Great pacing
✅ Gorgeous, spooky atmosphere
✅ Absolutely deserved murder

BUT...

❌ Five POVs is too many for my single brain cell
❌ Too many names to remember (Freddy, Femi, Fergus, Farnsworth — okay, that last one I made up)
❌ The final reveal was a bit poof, then over.

If you love multi-POV murder mysteries set in gorgeous-yet-haunted places, this one’s a solid pick — just prepare to take notes or carry a flowchart.

🛍️ Buy the Book

📕 Get The Guest List by Lucy Foley on Amazon

📚 If You Liked The Guest List, You Might Also Enjoy:

  • The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley — Same author, more POVs, less weddings.

  • Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell — More emotional and gripping family mystery.

  • The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley — Murder mystery meets snowy cabin trip with toxic friends.

  • An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena — Snowed-in whodunnit with twisty twists and no Wi-Fi.

🥂 Final Verdict:

If you’ve ever been to a wedding where someone should have been stabbed but wasn’t — this book is for you.
⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ 3.5 out of 5 stars. I might need a nap. Or a therapist.

Want more brutally honest, slightly unhinged, book recaps like this?
Subscribe to the blog — and maybe bring a notepad. These thrillers aren’t getting simpler.

Comments

Post a Comment