Have you ever watched an old movie or a soap opera whereafter any dramatic element of dialog the background music ramps up a deep ta dum or similar effect? Multiple times? To the point it gets annoying?
Well, that’s what Lucy Foley does in The Guest List (Morrow 27.99). Everybody’s got a secret constantly alluded to and strange things keep happening at a wedding party on the bleak island off the Irish coast where the wind howls and nobody can get to except by boat over choppy, nausea-inducing waters. Jules has been warned by secret message not to go through with her wedding to Will, a gorgeous, rich, playboy actor. He’s just too good to be true and Jules insists that everything at the party be perfect. You know there are secrets and plenty of them.
There’s Will’s classmates from boarding school, Jules’ anorexic sister, Jules herself, and even the woman organizing the sordid, over-the-top affair. Maybe even the chef or the guy driving the boat across the brutal channel. The ending even includes a lights-out scary possibility of a ghostly apparition. Cue Bella Lugosi. The villain or villainess is finally exposed and the dead deserve their demise.
It’s not a bad book, just not a great one, as long as you put aside why the hell anyone would throw a wedding gala in such a miserable place, let alone why anyone would come. If you like melodrama give it a try.
Recent Comments