Reviews with content warning for Child death - The Guest List

Author did some things that were some of my personal pet peeves. Overall the experience was fine. But the follow are super subjective but I just hate in my mystery/thriller reads.

1. Overly ominous one liners at the end of chapters to add suspense, specifically if that is the author's only attempt at adding suspense. This was more apparent at the beginning of the book. I don't expect authors to have thrills right out the gate chapter 1, especially if we still need to introduce characters/setting. So it's really jarring when a chapter is spent talking about work, marriage, children, backstory etc. and the final sentence in the chapter is something like "Little did I know, even he keeps secrets from me." DUN DUN DUN.

2. Not everything has to connect back together. Pretty self explanatory. I don't want to explore into spoiler territory so I'll leave that there.

3. Time jumps that add little to nothing.

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bethanie_l's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I really enjoyed this book. I read some stuff other people said about it after finishing and I get their complaints, but I really liked the different narrators and the twists. Maybe it worked better since I listened to the audiobook, I really liked that it was a full cast instead of a single narrator. I gasped many times while listening and cried a lot too. I liked that we not only didn't know the killer, but we didn't know the victim until near the end. I went back and listened to different bits after certain reveals and it was really satisfying. There was one single twist I could've done without, but it didn't spoil anything for me. I wish the characters had been a little less one-dimensional and there were really only 3 characters I found likable, but I don't need my characters to be likeable. I do prefer when they aren't just tropes, but I still think the mystery itself made that okay.

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