“The Guest List” - Lucy Foley

 💍 TGL is told similarly to “The Hunting Party” - alternating between days before the wedding, and the wedding night. Foley alternates between the POV of several characters. I’ve included a quick reference of characters on my blog because there are so many.

Aoife and Freddy —> event planner and owner of the inn, and her husband.

Jules and Will —>  bride and groom

Hannah and Charlie —> Charlie is Jules’ friend, Hannah is his wife

Olivia —> Jules’ half sister

Johnno —> Will’s best man

Femi, Angus, Peter, Duncan —> ushers; Will’s boarding school classmates 

💍 As with “The Hunting Party,” Foley makes maximum use of her chosen setting, in this case, a remote, uninhabited island off the Connemara coast of Ireland. She incorporates Gaelic folklore - with an emphasis on ghosts (real or imagined?) and omens. 

💍 The desolate island with its quicksand, dangerously rocky beaches, and deteriorating traces of former inhabitants, add up to a novel that oozes atmospheric tension. The fictional Cormorant Island of Inis an Amplóra has the constant threat of storms and is cut off from civilization. The rule of law seems to disintegrate as wildness brews among the guests.

💍 Setting the murder mystery at a wedding was ingenious. Even in the happiest and most joyful of circumstances, weddings can be fraught with tension: costs, meeting of old and new friends, expectations, resentments, all come together. Adding to this brew, a hefty pour of secrets, the haze of alcohol and drugs, the dampening of inhibitions, and an old, festering rage, and Foley has created the maximum possible tension. The tensions crank up under the tent as a storm rages outside - Foley writes of real and metaphorical storms.

💍 The twists and turns of this one! As truths come into focus, I felt like I was marching inexorably toward these revelations; yet they came as a surprise to me. Foley is a pro at neatly fitting together friends, dramas, and tragedies from different locations and time periods.

💍 This is another must-read by Foley for lovers of psychological thrillers. What stands out to me in the two novels by Foley that I’ve read, is her powerful use of the setting to establish the atmosphere.