Review: The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Everyone's invited. Everyone's a suspect.

All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.

During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.

They arrive on December 30th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.

Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.

The trip began innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.

Now one of them is dead . . . and another of them did it.

Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close?

Paperback, 352 pages

Published March 3rd 2020 

by William Morrow Paperbacks

3.5/5 stars

Sounds like a great time together with friends right? Hummm..when I first started reading I thought to list who was who to whom etc., but it actually wasn’t hard to keep the relationships straight. Aside from each chapter telling who the narrative was coming from I got to know the players.

What can I say, the guests were a superficial group of friends that left me wondering how they could be friends. A mixed bag of personalities which just added to the mystery.

For me this was a slow burn suspense mystery. The setting was cold as well as some personalities and I felt it. There were many red herrings that kept me stumped for the longest time and the ending wasn’t what I expected but it worked with everything clicking into place.

Lucy Foley is a new author for me, The Guest List promises to be another winner, which I already have in my TBR pile.

My copy was part of my '2020 reading off my shelf challenge' and obtained from my Spring Thriller Box by the fine folks at SweetReadsBox