The Guest List
The plot of The Guest List by Lucy Foley is interesting and fun, and in some ways reads like a movie. Each of the characters has a unique viewpoint, and the threads of the story benefit from Foley's intricate planning and foresight. For that reason, it turns into quite a fun read by the turn of the final pages.
All that said, I found that the first half didn't quite grip me in the way I expect from a whodunnit-style thriller or mystery. The characters are unlikable - to a fault - and some readers may not get past that. Even so, I found myself really enjoying the final hundred pages, as the many trails all converged into one seamless story.
In the end, literally, the final third makes this one worth the effort. Seeing the way it all comes together is very satisfying, especially since we the readers get to experience the climax and conclusion from multiple perspectives at once.
Lucy Foley, author of The Guest List
Apart from the character likability issues, some readers may also struggle with the ostensibly countless narrators (in point of fact, there are half a dozen). That’s difficult in even the most capable of hands. Personally, though, I think Foley does a very admirable job with it. One or two of the characters seemed to flow more naturally, as if closer to the author's own heart, but they're all quite distinct from one another. This is one aspect of the book that might benefit in a potential transition to film.
The book calls to mind 2019's Knive's Out with Daniel Craig. This one could be done in a similar fashion, though there is no humor to be found in the entire book. I don't mean this as a slight. It's just not that sort of novel.
Ultimately, I’m glad I pushed through. Something kept telling me that all this setup would lead somewhere, that the story would win me over, and I believe it did.
It’s not quite an old school whodunnit in the Christiean sense of a dead body in the library on the first page (cf. The Body in the Library). All that being said, however, if you can make it through the multiplicity of narrators and the hefty backstory, you’ll definitely be rewarded by the end.