"that's the thing, you see. some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don't need much encouragement at all to become monsters" -Heather
(pg 55)
published: 2019
pages: 327
read: 7/7-9/2020
book: 55 in 2020
pages: 327
read: 7/7-9/2020
book: 55 in 2020
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?
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?
THOUGHTS
this wasn't a bad read BUT it felt like a lot of work.
i originally started this as an actual read and i was actually going to read it before i dove into the witches but even after the first 3 pages i decided to wait; it felt really really familiar to The Guest List (which i LOVED) and i don't even think it was that, i just think deep down inside i knew it wasn't going to be a hit for me.
this one takes A LOT of work.
by the time you get to the good part of it, you dislike just about every character as much as you possibly can that you start to think to yourself "is the big reveal even worth it?"
Miranda was the fucking worst.
who the fuck does she think she is with her shitty, uppity attitude!???
none of them were all the best but thiiiiiiiis biiiitch. UGH!
you don't learn who was killed and i mean not even the sex until you're really into it.....before i even made it that far i googled spoilers to see if it was going to be worth it. i don't think that it was.
but it wasn't until i read this instagram post that i realized the spin on who did it and why. to me, it probably still wasn't even worth it then. the "why" doesn't even end up mattering in the end because well,...i wont spoil that here.
idk.
i think it's just how annoying they all are as humans that pushes you to dislike the story; to make it feel like a lot of work. maybe that was the point? at least that's how it felt to me.
i switched to audio to get through this one faster and it somehow felt like more work.
aside from the fact that this is The Guest List before TGL was released, i also feel like it pulled from some other books i've already read for example: Bring Me Back, An Unwanted Guest & The Couple Next Door (tbh, im going with TCND only because of the leaving a baby all alone part). maybe pull is the wrong way to word it but i feel like its already been done and it was then all shoved into one story.
there are a total of 12 (13 if you count Iain) characters:
Emma & Mark
Miranda & Julien
Nick & Bo
Samira & Giles & Baby Priya
Katie
Doug & Hannah
given the amount of cast, you only read chapters in a few of these people's voices and the rest were just....there to be a part of the story...so part of me is like "did they even need to be there?" i mean sorry if its a bit spoilery but Nick & Bo didn't really need to even be there. the only purpose they served was simply to have more bodies for Miranda to be a bitch to. ...and also to be the token gay couple that surprise surprise, the rest of the guys were uncomfortable with. i mean these fools have all been best friends FOR YEARS! you mean to tell me that 10+ years and theyre still uncomfortable with someone in the group being gay? by that point wtf is Nick doing still surrounding himself with all these people for? he was only "close" to Katie and even she wasn't that close to the rest of the group anymore.
another thing is while the point of the story is to find out who died and who did it, there are also little sub stories left and right. with Doug and with Heather and hell even Iain.
it was all a lot.
at least with TGL it ties up and i feel like it was done idk, cleaner. neater.
i can see the way certain things, stories were also woven into other charters because ultimately they lend to the person who did it but still..... :P
i think knowing who killed who and who it was that was killed helped me pay attention a bit closer to the story. at the end of it all, i can see little things in the overall story of the killer that were woven into other characters in the story.
iduno. i wasnt crazy about this one.
but i will say that if there is another book by this author and it follows the same plot, i will still read it. even if its similar, its still a good story line...it's just for me personally this one didnt click.
anyway, jump over for quick spoilers.
SPOILERS
S P O I L E R S
S P O I L E R S
S P O I L E R S
S P O I L E R S
S P O I L E R S
the one who was killed was: Miranda
S P O I L E R S
S P O I L E R S
S P O I L E R S
S P O I L E R S
S P O I L E R S
the one who was killed was: Miranda
the killer: Emma.
was it an accident? eeeeeeeeeeeeh i dont know. i don't really think so. like yea maybe but also....eh..
Doug his story is that he was in the army and he went to war and because he didn't kill a little kid that had a bomb strapped on him, his whole crew got killed except for him so he has PTSD.
he has episodes where he blacks out and has no idea how he got to where he is.
his trigger is someone telling him that he is a fucking coward.
Emma's trigger is someone calling a fucking psychopath which is what Miranda did that caused Emma to end up killing her.
ill go by characters cause some of these fools had some shit on them.
Hannah works there because she is seeking solitude. she was with this dude Jamie who died in a fire (he was a firefighter and she was a paramedic) when he died she felt like she need to be by herself because her sense of self was lost.
Iain "worked in the property" for/with Hannah and Doug but in reality, he worked for the main boss running a drug scam using the train that went nowhere. it ends on their property and it can go all the way into London. the night of the murder, he saw it go down.
Nick dislikes Miranda because she "accidentally" outed him to his parents. they didn't know. she knew they didn't know but she did it anyway.
Bo (Nicks man) doesnt have an opinion on her but on New Years Day once everyone is drunk Miranda is on a whole other level. he takes her inside to get water and i forgot what he tells her but she replies with "it's okay Bo, i'm not a junkie." bo being a former addict, well how do you think that flies. eventually she "apologizes" riiight away but the damage is done.
Miranda cheated on Julien when they were first dating. she slept with Giles. the dude who is married to Samira. you know, the stupid ass couple that brought a baby on this trip just to leave her alone in the fucking cabin! they're playing a game of truth or dare that Miranda started and they asked her if she's ever slept with anyone in the group. she says yes but not who.
its not til after Bo takes her into the kitchen and leaves that Giles goes in after her and tells her to shut the fuck up. Emma ends up over hearing.
Julien. his "secret" is that he was into some insider trading shit. there's more to it but that's all that Miranda knows.
Julien & Katie. Katie is Miranda's best friend and Julien is obvs Miranda's husband. the secret here is that they are having an affair. they've been having an affair.
B U T
the kicker is that Katie is pregnant. she just found out on the trip. she has yet to tell Julien.
after Miranda got fucked up Julien took her back to their cabin, left her on the bed and then went to go sleep with Katie. on the way over, he passed the sauna and noticed it was going (it was around 3am) he goes in and low and behold, Katie is in there.
out of nowhere Miranda wakes up goes i forget where and ends up going into the sauna catching Julien going down on Katie. she's all wtf and eventually ends up telling Julien himself that Katie is pregnant. Miranda threatens to turn him for insider trading. he goes after her making Katie realize that Julien was a piece of shit all along.
i dont think the affair or the pregnancy so much affected Miranda. i think it was the fact that Julien cheated on her with someone as "ugly" as Katie.
like how dare he cheat on her with someone who is not even good looking?
anyway, Miranda leaves, goes to Dougs cabin (Doug is the grounds keeper guy) and tries to make a move on him. he says no and she gets mad because "how dare he turn her down? doesn't he know how lucky that she would even entertain the idea of him!?"
so she goes to Emma's cabin.
EMMA has personality disorder. you learn that she has actually known Miranda since their college days. Emma has actually gotten in trouble before for stealing other people's identities. but she was off it until she met Miranda. they actually hung out but Miranda ends up dropping her. so she does what she can and starts stalking her. the reason Emma is such an amazing cook is because she learned how to cook once she heard Miranda say that she couldn't cook to save her life.
Emma was actually Miranda's little stalker and on this night in her cabin Miranda finds this little box that she unlocks and ends up spilling all of this other missing shit that she never got back. (Emma would steal her stuff and then return it with notes but she kept the more "important" stuff to herself). Miranda starts piecing it and gets on facebook and scrolls back in time to see that she actually had a picture in there where Emma was in the background. honestly to me this part was stupid because Miranda says she has a good memory and never forgets a face but then doesn't remember Emma until this very moment.
anyway, Miranda cusses her out, leaves and Emma is after her.
Miranda decides that she is going to take the train back to the city as soon as possible and decides to walk over there.
on the little bridge, Miranda notices some dude (it was Iain) and she freezes giving Emma just enough to catch her.
Emma tells her that she just wants to be her bff for life and blah blah blah but Miranda ends up calling her a psychopath. Emma starts remembering about the little girl who called her that and how she pushed her and caused her to fall and break her elbow.
but by this point, she has already latched herself to Miranda's neck and has strangled her. she lets her go and i guess falls over the bridge. for sure dead.
Emma runs away and in her head, she didn't do bad but now she has to avenge Miranda's honor. she needs to get payback for what Julien and Katie did. she only goes after Katie and i'm assuming its only Katie she goes after because she held her coveted spot of best friend that she so desperately wanted.
Emma's about to shoot Katie IN THE STOMACH when Heather (the only other person that lives there) jumps in front of Katie to get her out of the way.
in the end, Katie ends up being a month shy of giving birth. Julien has ran off with his yoga instructor or some shit. and the gang of course has broken up. Nick & Bo move to NYC. and Samira & Giles have regular friends.
Emma only gets 4 years in jail because she spun it as self defense.
everyone knew it was bullshit. even the people that sentenced her knew it but they let her get away with it because people like her do not do acts like she does.
and that's it.
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