The Guest List

This book should be renamed The Never. Ever. Ending. Wedding.

Sorry friends who loved and praised this one!  It was a perfectly fine book, and it has all the right ingredients for a good murder mystery whodunnit - creepy and claustrophobic atmosphere, multiple suspects with motive to kill, loads of secrets threatening to be revealed, and five intriguing narrators to move the story along, all wrapped up in a big festive occasion.

What’s not to love?

Well, for starters, the characters.  You have Jules, the bride: an attractive, ambitious publisher of online magazine, The Download, whose driven, always aware of the optics, self-centered personality bores me.  Next up Will, the groom: an exceedingly attractive, self-assured TV star with enough plastered-on humblebrag charm to get his way on just about anything.  Add to the mix Charlie, Jules’ best mate, who goes from mild-mannered school teacher to obnoxious turd in the course of one weekend, his wife Hannah, an ex-party girl turned good wife/mom who seems tempted by every hot guy/girl at the wedding, Jules’ half-sister Olivia, who is just an unstable hot mess, and a hodge-podge of a**hole groomsmen/ushers - Johnno, Duncan, Femi, Pete, and Angus - school friends of Will’s who were toxic bullies as children who grew into drunk toxic bullies as adults.

These are miserable people.  Miserable people aren’t fun to read about.  Even Mother Nature herself looked at these people and cried miserable gales of gloomy tears at the wedding.

The other thing that didn’t sit well for me was simply the utter convenience and unbelievability of the plot and how some of these characters were connected to the murder victim.  It didn’t elicit that “OMG, I didn’t see that coming!”  Rather, for me, it just elicited eye-rolls. On top of that, it took FOREVER to reveal the murder victim, due to the time jump, rotating narrators style of the chapters.  I understand this is to build intrigue and suspense - good mysteries do that - but since I didn’t like any of the characters, by the time the victim was revealed, I just didn’t really care.

I’m sure coming off two very uplifting, lighthearted reads affected my overall feelings about this book, which was so moody and depressing by comparison, so I’ll blame the timing for some of this.  That said, although it’s a perfectly good book, I’m just not sure I understand the hype.  

★★★ ½