Tag: murder mystery review

Mystery/Thriller

My Review: The Guest List: by Lucy Foley

nicholasjgoodsell
Publish Date: June 2nd, 2020
Number of Pages: 330 Pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Genre(s): Mystery/Thriller

Total Star Rating: 2.5 Stars

There’s something about the season of Autumn that just gets me in the mood for a juicy murder mystery novel! the changing of the leaves, the crisp air, the warm drinks, and making the shift from t-shirts and shorts over to sweaters and jeans just gets me in the mindset to want to get into a creepy story that makes my mind race and keeps me guessing until the bloody climax. I’d maybe even say it’s similar to those who really enjoy having horror movie marathons during the months of fall; with Halloween just around the corner, why not be spooked a little bit for your amusement? I’ve never been a big fan of horror in both book or movie form, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t drift away from what I usually enjoy reading and turn to something with a much more sinister vibe to it, at least for the sake of a good story!

The Guest List is the most recent release from author Lucy Foley, who’s written another suspense/thriller/mystery titled The Hunting Party, which I haven’t read yet, but it’s definitely on my radar! With the gorgeous cover design, and my interest in a murder mystery story piqued during the fall season, I wanted to give it a try and see how I liked it. It wasn’t a bad book at all, in fact it’s actually set up in a creative way of mixing the past with present day, but I just wasn’t as excited as I’d hoped I’d be. I was curious enough to want to keep reading on and see who was behind it, and I also wasn’t disappointed at the big reveal at the end, but I just wasn’t mind-blown or completely shocked out of my whit by this story.

There are some incredibly noteworthy things I want to address about this book, as I don’t like to only leave my negative thoughts known in my reviews: I loved how the author had this story told from multiple perspectives, how unpredictable the story overall was and how I didn’t know who the killer was until they revealed themselves, and Will Slater ended up being an incredible character for the sake of the story!

Even though I’m lukewarm about this book, I’d still easily recommend it to those who love books within the genre it belongs to. I think just because I didn’t fully get out of it what I wanted, I can still see how others could really get into this story and enjoy it much more than I did.

What It’s About:

The Official Blurb:

The bride ‧ The plus one ‧ The best man ‧ The wedding planner ‧ The bridesmaid ‧ The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

What I Liked:

  1. It’s Told From Multiple Perspectives! I really do like a story told through the views of multiple characters, it can make a story feel so fresh and more interesting that way, and it really added to this book to see how the timeline developed. You see one event happen within the day leading up to the wedding; some actions were more shocking than others, or a character was acting strange, and then someone else’s perspective has an assist in explaining it afterward. You have Aoife (the wedding planner), Jules (the bride), Johnno (the best man), Hannah (the plus one), and Olivia (the bridesmaid). Each of them have their own secrets and baggage that seem to have followed them to the island where this wedding is taking place.
  2. It Kept Me Guessing! I love to be unsure of who the killer is in a whodunnit-style mystery, and this book truly had me trying to figure it out up until the big climax of the story and the killer is revealed!
  3. Will Slater. It’s not that I liked the character, in fact you’ll like him less and less as you read on, but the way the author integrated him into the story and had him be such a pivotal character despite how he’s not one of the character’s who’s telling the story, I had to make a note about him and how on the outside he seems like the Hollywood “golden boy” but has so much more going on beneath the surface. Definitely keep your eye on him when you read this book!

What I Didn’t Like:

  1. It’s a Real Slow Burn…I’m not exactly sure what the perfect way to set up a murder mystery like this would’ve been, the author technically checked off every major aspect to include in the set up: have a cast of characters, give them all terrible secrets and some sort of connection to each other, put them all in an isolated environment and have their means of communication cut off from the outside world so they’re trapped. What really slowed this book down in the middle was getting to know the characters and getting a sense of who they were. As it went on, the characters did get more interesting as secrets slowly began to reveal themselves until suddenly everyone had a motive to be the killer, but it was just so slowly drawn out that this book was a little hard to initially want to keep reading.
  2. Don’t Know The Victim Until The End…The story is told in a way that has it constantly switching back and forth to the night of the wedding and the day before when the bridal party and the close family members arrived. The night of the wedding, it’s implied that someone has been killed and a small search party goes out in search of whoever it may be. Switch back to the day before, and things slowly escalate to make you have two questions: who’s the victim, and who killed them? Personally, I like the murder mysteries where the killer takes out multiple people one-by-one. I’ll admit the way this whole story was told was cleverly done and was pretty creative amongst the many other murder mystery stories out there, but I personally find that I just like the stories with multiple murder victims: they’re just more exciting to read in my opinion.

Conclusion:

A clever, well written whodunnit-style murder mystery that will truly leave you wondering who could possibly be behind it until the very end. A perfect fix for anyone who likes to get into the suspense/thriller in the fall like I do, I think anyone who enjoyed books like And Then There None by Agatha Christie and An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena will enjoy this book!

Overall, I thought The Guest List was an okay read but didn’t love it, but lately any sort of suspense/thriller hasn’t really hit me like they used to. Believe it or not, but they just aren’t thrilling enough for me, ironic enough. I’m always happy to hear recommendations from anyone interested, so if you have one that you think I’d enjoy, I’d love to hear it!

Thanks for Reading!

— Nick Goodsell

Mystery/Thriller

My Review: The Woman in the Window: by A.J. Finn

nicholasjgoodsell
Publish Date: January 2nd, 2018
Number of Pages: 429 Pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Genre(s): Mystery, Suspense/Thriller

Total Star Rating: 2 Stars

I can always appreciate a work of literature that pays homage to something I actually care about, which in this case is classical crime films like the popular titles by the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. The book moves in a similar pace, and creates a nice parallel to whatever movie the main character is watching compared to what they’re experiencing in real life. It also pays homage to the more recent popular thriller trope of a woman in something (a window, a train, cabin 10, being gone, etc) and the question of whether or not she’s actually sane. They’re the narrator and they’re unreliable and part of the thrill is their murky memory of past events or what’s happening right then in the story, and alcohol is usually involved too.

The book itself is nothing too groundbreaking or revolutionary, but is still an entertaining read nonetheless. It’s pretty impressive for a debut novel from the author; if it’s their first published book, it’s only going to be uphill for them! For me, it was a little slow towards the middle and felt like it really dragged, maybe because it brought too much of the main characters outside problems into play and I just couldn’t connect with it all that much, but I can appreciate the subtle buildup the author produced by the hazy memories and the play with sanity with our MC as they continue to drink and watch some film noir in their apartment, absolutely terrified to go outside due to their extreme case of agoraphobia.

It’s also impressive to note that this book is already being turned into a movie that will star Amy Adams, who seems to be the go-to for these woman-centered thrillers. She was in Sharp Objects, an HBO mini-series based on the suspense/thriller novel by Gillian Flynn, so I guess it makes sense for her to be in the flick for this title as well. She’s a great actress and I know she’ll do an amazing job.

What It’s About:

The story is about a woman named Anna Foxx. She lives by herself in a New York townhouse, and suffers from an extreme case of agoraphobia, which is the the fear of places or situations that cause stress, fear, embarrassment and/or helplessness. She’s going through her normal routine of being a reclusive psychologist, while also spying on her neighbors through the lens of her Nikon when a family moves in across the parkway. Soon she meets the mother and son on separate occasions and they seem like any friendly, normal family.

Anna likes them immediately, and continues her spying of the neighbors like she normally does.

Until something happens.

Something happens that Anna wasn’t supposed to see…

Suddenly, Anna’s world begins to unravel and she loses stability of what’s real and what’s all in her head, all the while tryin to figure out exactly what happened in that house across the street. 

What I Liked:

  1. The Twisty Climax! Like any good mystery should have, there is a surprise twist that widens your eyes, and when the big reveal occurs, it reveals all the little clues that you missed, but also makes you appreciate the author’s cleverness of conspicuously sliding them in under your nose. After reading it, I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t see it coming.
  2. Mental Illness Used To Create Conflict! One aspect of a good mystery is a believable way to isolate either the main character, or the whole cast so they can’t just walk away, and I liked that the author chose to go the agoraphobic way. It made it feel more currently relevant because there is a bigger understanding for mental health issues in society today. It was well done to add to the story because Anna is basically trapped within her own home; she has nowhere to go because she is absolutely terrified to even step foot outside, which gives such a great inner conflict. 

What I Didn’t Like:

  1. It Was Just So Lackluster…The story was just a really slow burn for me, to be honest. Yes, the set up is interesting enough, but the book really died down through the midpoint up until the climax. I think it also drags when a big realization happens at about the 75% mark into the book, the reveal behind the cause of her mental state, and you find yourself wondering if Anna is as reliable of a narrator as you thought. She does drink a large amount of wine while being heavily medicated, watches a lot of classic Hitchcock-era movies while drunk on said wine…what if she really is actually crazy? 

Conclusion:

It wasn’t a bad read at all; I enjoyed it enough I guess, but it just wasn’t anything especially brilliant, spectacular or breathtaking. It is a pretty decent debut for the author, and it did raise some questions to make the reader think: what goes on behind closed doors? Are people really who they say they are? Do we really see what happens around us? What’s real and what is just a figment of our mind playing tricks on us? It also offers commentary on families and the lengths they will go to perpetuate that picture-perfect image, when in reality things couldn’t be any more screwed up beneath the surface.

Thanks for Reading!

— Nick Goodsell

Mystery/Thriller

My Review: An Unwanted Guest: by Shari Lapena

nicholasjgoodsell
Publish Date: July 26th 2018
Number of Pages: 290 Pages
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Genre(s): Mystery

Total Star Rating: 2.75 Stars

While it’s nothing exactly new to the Mystery/Thriller genre, this book is still an entertaining addition that I think a lot of readers can enjoy. I’d say it’s become a bit of a mystery trope for a small cast of strangers to come together, and for someone to begin to murder them one by one (The Agatha Christie trope perhaps?). Figuring out the secrets of all the characters, along with their motives if they were to be exposed as the killer is something that I consider so much fun about mysteries; it’s amazing to see how it still works even all these years later, even when Agatha Christie’s work was first published in 1920. You guys…that’s almost a an entire century as I type this, so I find that absolutely amazing!

What It’s About:

The story takes place entirely at a small, beautiful, remote hotel in the middle of the woods in upstate New York. Cell Service is limited, and there’s no wifi, its the perfect place for people to go to literally escape the hustle and bustle of their lives, relax, and truly enjoy themselves. It’s the middle of an incredibly cold and dreary winter, and a deadly blizzard just over the horizon as 11 guests all converge there for the weekend, not knowing the horror they are about to experience…

The blizzard hits and the power goes out with absolutely no way to contact anyone for help, so all the guests bunker in and expect to patiently wait it out. People had all arrived for different reasons: to escape, to have their own writing retreat, a romantic couples weekend; everyone just wanted to enjoy the soothing, rustic experience that the hotel usually offers.

When the first body shows up at the foot of the grand staircase, everyone assumes its an accident, well, almost everyone. When the second body appears later that afternoon, panic begins to set in, but then a third body shows up and all hell breaks loose. Someone there is slowly killing the guests trapped in the hotel one-by-one, and it’s either someone who’s snuck in, or it’s possibly one of them, but who? They’ll need to band together and find out before the storm wears off and they’re all dead by the end of the weekend…

What I Liked:

  1. Homage to the Queen of Mystery! This book is a classic “whodunnit” style murder mystery, and felt very much like an Agatha Christie novel. The Original Queen of Mystery always wrote her mysteries in a similar fashion; bring a cast of characters together, have them become isolated from the outside world somehow, let them all have dirty secrets that they don’t want exposed, and let one of them be a murderer, and keep the mystery short.
  2. The Buildup! The suspense steadily and purposefully rose in excellent fashion as the story developed. I love a good “whodunnit” style mystery, and it’s always so much fun to try and figure out who the killer is, and try to decipher any clues you might think pop up that the author reveals. I’d say the story is also character driven, and the paranoia and unrest that escalates the suspense was done so well, your curiosity will get the best of you!
  3. The Little Surprise Included in the Ending! Not to give much away, but it’s something that the author had hinted at several times in the book, and I found the whole thing amusing, as amusing as a fictional murder twist can get.

What I Didn’t Like:

  1. Lack of Details…For me, this is specifically for the characters. There’s such little descriptions of them and what they look like, I found myself frustrated with trying to remember all of them and what they may appear as with so little given for me to work with. I’m a face person, not a name person!
  2. Disappointed in the Climax…The buildup was actually impressively done, but then you get to the climax, the killer is revealed…and I found myself put out by it. I was a little disappointed, plus the reveal was something no one could have figured out because the author didn’t give any of the information to help you figure it out until afterwards. I get that some mystery authors do that on purpose, Agatha did it too, but this one just really fell flat for me. I wished the author maybe thought of something a little more clever about how to tie it all together.

Conclusion:

A fun, thrilling, quick mystery for anyone to enjoy; it’s not too graphic or gory detailed, and the characters become an interesting bunch. The buildup is probably what was done best, and you yourself start to feel the paranoia at how little is revealed until it is almost too late. Personally, I was very disappointed in the ending and found it underwhelming compared to the rest of the book, but that’s just me. Perfect for fans looking for an Agatha Christie-esque mystery; this books is fun, modern, but not nearly as impressive of a take on the style that made the OG Queen of Mystery so iconic.

Thanks for Reading!

— Nick Goodsell