The Guest List, Lucy Foley – A Review.

Hello fellow bookworms! I’m here again with another book review to share with you all, this time it’s The Guest List by Lucy Foley! You can check it out here on Goodreads. (I also want to apologise to whoever brought me this for my birthday because it took me nearly 9 months to read it!)

Overall rating – 5 stars.

Straight away as soon as I started to read this book I could feel the fear rooting itself in my mind, and by the time I finished reading this book I was absolutely terrified. I’m usually quite difficult to scare, but The Guest List really got to me…

From the start there was this huge sense of foreboding and tension which oozed through the pages, something that the author effortlessly kept up throughout the whole book, no easy feat to keep those feelings building up.

The sheer number of characters in this book also lent itself well to the story telling, it allowed us as the reader to get a glimpse into the past and present, through the eyes of various characters, who all have very different perceptions and memories of what happened all those years ago…

I also felt that The Guest List used this number of characters to its advantage, in helping to weave multiple different plot lines to create an explosive final few chapters.

Every plot line within this book was well thought out, well delivered and ultimately, added value to the story. Something that you don’t see often in books. Everything blended together so wonderfully to create a chilling, foreboding and downright frightening atmosphere.

The atmosphere of this book was second to none, also. The description of the island, the choppy seas surrounding and the characters themselves brought this book to life, and made me feel as though I was sitting at the wedding rehearsal dinner, or at the wedding, or overlooking the water on the cliff edge. It was so cleverly done.

The ending of this book was the icing on the cake for me, and while I didn’t want it to end, I definitely wasn’t disappointed!

The shorter chapter lengths (they were short, snappy and felt like we were rolling down a hill at speed), the well written chapters pointing fingers at each character, never revealing the truth until the very end… It all made for a truly thrilling ending.

I cannot find a fault with The Guest List by Lucy Foley, it was a truly remarkable read.

Let me know if you’ve read this one and what you thought of it!

Until next time, Em xxx

📚Books I loved but will never re-read📚

Guess who’s back, back again! Following on from my post a couple of weeks ago where I wrote about books I will always re-read I decided to create a list of ones that I absolutely loved but will just never re-read!

This one will likely be a lot shorter than last weeks, just because there aren’t many I wouldn’t chose to re-read. Some of these books I did rate 4 or 5 stars and I absolutely raved about them but I just don’t feel like I’d want to read them again.

1 – The Guest List by Lucy Foley. Now don’t get me wrong this was a cracking book but I feel like the air of mystery and suspense won’t be the same because I know how it pans out.

2 – The Players by Darren O’Sullivan. Much like the one above the first read of this book really draws you in, I was so interested by the premise of the book and how everything unfolded but now I know what to expect and what happens, it just wouldn’t feel the same to re-read it.

3 – Honeymoon Alone by Nicole Macaulay. I loved this book it was so good, but I just feel as if I would feel differently if I was to re-read it, not in a bad way but I just don’t think I’d get the same joy that I did the first time around.

Those are probably the only books that I rated highly but wouldn’t re-read. It mostly comes down to the fact that they have quite unique plots that once you’ve read them, it would spoil the atmosphere of the book if you read them again!

Let me know if you have any books like this that you loved but wouldn’t re-read, I’d love to know what they are and maybe add them to my own TBR!

Until next time, Em xxx

📚Top Ten Tuesday – Books I read in one sitting (or I would if I had the time)📚

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

Today’s post is all about books that I read in one sitting, or that I would have done if I had the time to. While there aren’t many recently that I’ve been able to read in one go, due to time constraints, there are definitely some from when I was younger!

1 – Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick. I could easily read this book in one sitting, I find it so easy to devour this one!

2 – Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix. I remember vividly when this came out, I read it in one day where I literally only moved to use the toilet or to get a drink.

3 – Goosebumps Horrorland Series. If I remember rightly my re-read of this series a few years ago took place across one full day. Granted they’re only short books but I was so desperate to find out what happened that I just powered through them.

4 – Matilda by Roald Dahl. This is one from my childhood that I never ever tire of reading!

5 – The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Not so much with my re-reads of this book but the very first time I read it I literally flew through it, I couldn’t put it down.

6 – Chopping Spree by Angela Sylvaine. Now this one was helped by how short the story was, I didn’t think it was going to be that short, but I devoured this in one sitting and it was SO worth it.

7 – Me and Mr Jones by Lucy Diamond. This one was just so easy to read that I completely lost any sense of time and carried on until I finished the whole thing!

And moving onto ones that I would love to read in one sitting if I could…

8 – The Pastel Effect by Arly Carmack. This book gave me all of the feels and was so bloody good that I would love nothing more than to be able to re-read it in one go, without any interruptions so that I could fully immerse myself into the story.

9 – The Shining by Stephen King. I absolutely love the atmosphere of this book and I always get disappointed when I have to put it down as it spoils it for me, so to be able to read this is one sitting would be PERFECT.

10 – The Guest List by Lucy Foley. Now I probably won’t re-read this one but if I could erase it from my memory and then read it again I would do so in one sitting, I felt like I was constantly on edge and I needed to keep reading to find out what would happen next. Every chapter was a cliffhanger.

And there you have it, 7 books that I absolutely flew through in one sitting and 3 that I would love to have done so if I just had the time!

Let me know if you’re taking part in TTT so I can check out your post too.

Until next time, Em xxx