The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

 

This story is actually quite good, and makes me think of the movie, The Birds. For the record, I've never seen the movie The Birds, but I'm a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock. It's one of very few movies by him that I haven't seen, because I've been told it's truly scary, and I have a hard time with scary movies. This book reminds me of The Birds, not just because of what it talks about, but also because it's truly, hauntingly, scary. Now that's the good. The bad, is that this book is SO HARD TO FOLLOW!! It's got lots of people, storylines, timelines... It's complicated. More than most thrillers try to be, so I took off a star for that.

The story starts with the opening night at The Manor, a luxury hotel. Francesca Meadows is the owner, and her husband Owen Dacre had designed the renovations. This is told through the POV of Bella. 3 days after this celebration, a group of fisherman sees the Manor is on fire and alerted the authorities.

We are introduced to Eddie, a dishwasher that works at the hotel. We also learn about a manager at the hotel, Michelle. There is some conflicts between the hotel and the locals. The locals don't like how the hotel is taking up a lot of traffic for this small town. The hotel doesn't like how loud the locals can be with their beach parties at night, or the smell of cows on their farm. Bella tells us she's not who she claims to be. Her name is fake and she's "in character". She has a folder about the hotel opening and about Francesca Meadows. She wonders who sent it to her. She says she's doing all this for her daughter, Grace.

There are many references of birds in the book at this point. Like, Bella mentions her grandfather would tell her not to "upset the birds", and one night Francesca notices a black feather on her pillow. There are many others.

Back to the fishermen who called in about the fire at the Manor, they also see a bloody body in the water, and one of them mentions the Birds. Owen runs into Michelle at the Manor and Michelle tells him his secret is safe with her. What secret?? 

Back on the farm, Eddie is home and we learn that his brother went missing years ago. His dad is disturbed by his brother's disappearance and tried to commit suicide once, but was rescued by Graham Tate, the owner of the nearby Caravan park and Nathan Tate's father. One of the bulls named Ivor is missing from the farm.

Apparently, Bella was in this area 15 years ago. She's familiar with the whole area and she goes to the caravan park to retrieve a notebook she hid there from that time. In it is a map she had drawn. Next, we go through some old journal entries she wrote. We learn that Bella was a teenager at the time, staying at the caravan park for a summer vacation and befriended Frankie (Francesca). Frankie invited her to The Manor, and to a "Midnight Feast". Graham warned her not to go, citing something about birds.

Back to modern day, Detective Walker and Detective Heyer show up to investigate the fire and the body. They interview Graham Tate, who says it's the Birds that's been killing people. Bella is invited to a Midnight Feast by Frankie again, but this time, she tears it up. 

Back to the journal entries again. Frankie tells Bella that she should change her name from Alison to Bella. So now we know her real name was Alison. Bella goes to the midnight feast, and meets a girl named Cora, and Francesca's two brothers, Hugo and Oscar. Back to current day, Owen gets an invitation to a midnight feast.

At the crime scene, the body is found with a black feather. How creepy!! Back to the journal entries. Bella mentions meeting a boy named Shrimp. She also meets a cute boy named Jake. The twins try to molest Bella and Bella realizes they've been molesting others too. Lots more references of creepy bird parts here.

Back to current day, Michelle tells Owen that she recognizes him, because he is Shrimp from years ago at the caravan park. He's a poor fisherman's son! He's mad and wants to fire Michelle, but Michelle tells him Francesca isn't who she says she is either. I would be thinking hard by this point if this story wasn't so complex and I'm barely keeping up!

The detectives are studying the area and they see Delilah Rayne, Nathan's girlfriend (Eddie's ex-girlfriend). They ask her if she saw anything the night before. She says no, but she says last night didn't go as planned and she had a fight with Nathan. The detectives continue searching the area and find Owen's crashed Aston Martin and bloody steering wheel, with no one inside.

Bella goes to a nearby village called Tome. She sits on a park bench and a mysterious vicar appears and tells her about the birds. Ruby, another employee at the Manor, sees a couple coming back to the Manor and tells her and Eddie that they saw a lot of blood in the woods. 

Back to the old journal entries. Cora tells Frankie and Bella that there are psychedelic mushrooms in the woods. They go on a mushroom hunt, but Bella realizes the other two left her. 

Eddie (and Dan, another employee) goes to clean the blood as ordered by Francesca, so not to startle the other hotel guests. Francesca goes to the Manor's library and finds her grandfather's final words on his ledger, "The Birds... Must warn Francesca..." Why didn't he just actually tell her instead of being so cryptic... Ugh.

By the way, Francesca had installed security cameras everywhere without telling anyone. In a similar fashion, Owen had secretly installed a tracking app on Francesca's phone so he can find out where she is at any time. What a match made in heaven! So Francesca pulls up the security footage and she can tell Bella is really Allison from her childhood, who she used to call Sparrow.

Back to journal entries. One day, Bella saw Francesca's grandpa kissing Cora. She told Francesca this, and Francesca was furious. 

Back to Eddie and Dan trying to clear the blood. Dan is scared shitless and runs back. Eddie realizes the blood is from the old missing bull, Ivor, because he sees a bull harness. Owen goes to Michelle to ask her what she meant when she said Francesca isn't who she seems to be. Michelle tells her she knows Francesca is the one that set the local pub on fire many years ago. She also tells him she would disclose his secret (of being from a poor family) if he tries to fire her. He chokes her, but lets go, and they kiss. He notices she has some kind of ink mark just above her left breast. She won't tell him what it means. 

Back to Eddie and the bull, he runs into Bella. They hear something so they go hide behind a tree. They see 12 people wearing black cloaks covered in feathers and wearing crow masks. They have Ivor's severed head in the center. Eddie sneezes, which made the group turn towards them. They run.

Francesca goes through security footage and sees that Owen was having sex with Michelle in the wine store. This is hilarious because early on, Owen's inner monologue talked about how much he hates Michelle. Francesca is very upset of course. 

The detectives continue to interview people, but everyone seems to be high. The paramedics show up and took two bodies from the wine store. Apparently they had been locked in the wine store during the fire and couldn't get out. I hope it's not Owen and Michelle...

Back to the journal. Francesca was so upset that her grandfather was caught kissing Cora. To cheer her up, Bella gave her some mushrooms she found in the woods. Francesca confessed to planting all the bird evidences around town because she was bored.

Back to modern day. The midnight feast is tonight. Eddie goes into the basement and discovers a crow mask and a robe!! He thinks his dad must be a member of the Birds. Eddie decides to take the outfit with him. Apparently, Owen is still alive, because he wakes up next to Francesca, feeling guilty for cheating on her. Bella runs into Eddie at the farm, and recognizes Eddie as Jake's younger brother! So Jake the cute guy is Eddie's missing brother. God help me.

Excavators are at the Manor supposedly for Owen's Treehouse project. But Bella goes to them and shows them the map and tells them to dig where X is. Owen is thinking to himself how satisfying it was when he burned down the pub years ago, because the town looked down on him so much for being poor. He sees the excavator and realizes they are digging in the wrong spot! He runs out there and is like, what the heck? But they announce that they found something. In the meanwhile, someone had thrown birdseeds on the front lawn so there's a ton of birds that nobody can get rid of. I'm getting tired of birds to be honest. 

They find a tarp in the hole, and under the tarp is a skeleton. Uh-oh. By the time Bella gets to the excavation site, the hole is empty except for a silver jewelry, so she took it. 

Now it's time for party. The twins don't like the cider being served at the party. Michelle offers to take them to the wine store. Francesca notices guests are behaving oddly. Delilah tells Eddie that Nathan is planning something bad because he is angry at Francesca, who's trying to take his father's caravan park.

Detective tells us the two people that died in the wine store are the twins, Hugo and Oscar Meadows. Bella tells Eddie that that she knows what happened to Jake 15 years ago. She shares her journal with Eddie. We are reading the journal again. Bella and Jake were having their own little kissy moment when they hear someone scream. They run to the scream and find Cora dead, Francesca standing by her body. Cora apparently had ingested poison mushrooms, the ones Bella had picked (Bella had told Francesca they were poisonous once she discovered that herself). Bella tells Eddie that Jake took his moped and his moped was later found by the cliff, so Jake is presumed dead. Well, Eddie tells Bella that actually, Jake didn't die. He jumped off the moped last second and became a drug addict. His parents kicked him out and he's never seen again. 

Owen had passed out when he saw the skeleton. When he came back to consciousness, he realized the body is his mother, due to the chipped front tooth. He took the skeleton and brought it into the woods.

Now we find out that Cora is Owen's mother!! Hmm... This whole time I had assumed Cora was closer to a teenager when she disappeared, although now I remember the book did say Cora and the twins are older than the rest of them. This book is dragging on and on. I'm so ready for it to be over already.

The detectives find the silver ring and the key to Bella's cabin in the crashed Aston Martin. People at the party are going crazy and they realize Nathan had spiked the cider. Nathan is now trying to light the place on fire. He's not happy because Francesca is trying to buy up his dad's caravan park remember? Eddie and Nathan start a fight because Eddie is confronting him about selling Jake drugs all those years ago.

Bella finds Francesca and accuses her of killing Cora. Bella knew where the body was buried because 15 years ago she saw the patch of grass that was disturbed and marked it in her journal. Owen tells Francesca about finding his mother's body. She acts surprised and says your mom is Cora the cleaner? Since this whole time she's believed Owen is a child of some wealthy family. Owen now knows Francesca must have known about the body, and he puts two and two together and figured out that she was his mom's killer. 

Bella continues to scare Francesca with stories of the Birds. Francesca sees Nathan dousing the Manor on fire and feeling the effects of drinking the laced cider. She throws a lantern at the gasoline and lights the whole thing on fire. Then she gets in Owen's Aston Martin. Bella manages to escape from the fiery building. Owen chases after Francesca. Francesca thinks she sees a figure in black and crashes the car. She gets out of the car and runs away from the black figure, and falls off the cliff.

Eddie has been working to rescue guests from the burning building all night. So he's hailed as a hero by the detectives. Now we are told he has the same last name as one of the detectives. Apparently, Jake cleaned up his drug habit and became a detective one day, so Detective Walker is Jake. But Eddie never recognized him until now? Didn't think about the fact his last name is the same as well? OK.

Jake and Eddie reconnect for lost time. Jake says he's the one that sent those clippings to Bella about the opening night of The Manor. He's also the one that orchestrated for Owen/Shrimp to be the designer/architect for the whole Manor project, basically for revenge, because these were all the poor people 15 years ago that Francesca made fun of. 

Eddie was the one dressed as a bird man and chased Francesca off the cliff. When she fell, she tried to grab onto Eddie, but only got a feather. Perfect scene for a movie. Owen becomes the new owner of The Manor (or what's left of it after the fire). Jake reunites with his parents. Eddie's mom tells him that when she noticed her bird costume was missing, she knew it was Eddie that scared Francesca off the cliff. 

The legend continues with the Birds. The official cause of death for Francesca is that she was high and fell off a cliff. But the community says it's the Birds. The vicar is at the pub, together with Jake and Bella and Jake's mother, among others.