Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - The Guilt Trip

Title: The Guilt Trip
Author: Sandie Jones
Genre: Thriller
Rating: 2.75
Pub Date: August 3 2021

Thank you to Minotaur books for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

T H R E E • W O R D S

Intriguing • Domestic Drama • Average

📖 S Y N O P S I S

Six friends. Three couples. One destination wedding. Everything should be perfect right? But mix in a few secrets and you have a recipe for disaster.

When Rachel, Jack, Paige, Noah, Ali and Will arrive in Portugal for Ali and Will's wedding the villa is a paradise and they can't wait to enjoy a weekend of fun. But as the weekend unfolds, and Rachel begins to question Ali's fidelity, each person's secrets begin to be spilled leading to a whole lot of chaos.

💭 T H O U G H T S

The synopsis for The Guilt Trip sounded intriguing and promising, but for the first two-thirds there wasn't a whole lot going on, and then in final third there was too much going on. Meaning - I was never fully invested in this story, and a full disclosure it took me an entire month to get through this novel. It's marketed as a thriller, and yet there wasn't a whole lot of thrill happening at all. I'd say it's more of a domestic drama than anything.

It didn't help that I figured out one of the major plot twists pretty early on, and the characters are all unlikeable (aside from maybe Will). It also felt as though there were one too many secrets. The writing is decent, and the setting spot on, so if gossip, assumptions and domestic drama is your thing you'd probably enjoy it. For me, I didn't hate it but I also didn't love it. Throughout the entire thing, I simply just kept hoping it would get better, and I will say the ending helped.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• readers who like a good soap opera

Content Warnings

bookishandlegal's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

3.0

Thanks netgalley for the audio arc copy of the book! I was super intrigued by the synopsis of this book and the actual story wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. I was thinking there would be a murder or death or something that we were trying to solve, but the story is really about a group of 6 friends unraveling truths/secrets about each other.

The beginning was interesting enough, figuring out what was going on, and the end was pretty good because there was a huge twist at the end that totally came out of nowhere. But the middle really dragged and even though the audio book was only about 8 hours it felt loooonnnggg. The main character, Rachel, was super annoying and pretty naive in my opinion. My husband and I had figured out the ending several times and then Rachel would jump to a wild conclusion with basically no basis and make us question if we were right but knowing we weren’t. It was frustrating.

If you enjoy character driven, slow paced thrillers definitely check this one out. But if you prefer fast paced and action packed thrillers you might give this one a pass.

Content Warnings

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