ls1314 's review for:

The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards

3.25

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This thriller had a really interesting concept but the pacing was too slow for me to be anything above an “eh.” In 2024, six friends reunite in London to celebrate the life of their recently deceased ex-employer, a professor that brought them together in 1999 to help build a dating website based on psychological testing. During that summer in 1999, they also created “The Wasp Trap,” a series of tests that can assess whether someone is a psychopath. In the present time, their dinner party turns deadly when they end up being forced to reveal dark secrets or to kill each other. What were the secrets from their past and will they be able to save each other?

You will probably like this book if you like:

🐝 Dual timeline 

✒️ Multiple POVs (first person for Will, third person for others) 

🐝 Dinner party from hell 

✒️ Everyone has a secret

🐝 Multiple intertwined relationships 

✒️ 25 years since they’ve seen each other 

🐝 Who is the psychopath? 

I love a dual timeline, but because of the switching between 2024 and 1999, it took over 100 pages to get to the deadly twist where they have to start revealing their secrets, which felt slow to me. The information that we learned in 1999 was fascinating but that made the present day chapters feel less interesting in comparison because everything moved more slowly there. And everything got resolved too quickly at the end though I did appreciate that they acknowledged that the characters might have some sort of PTSD after their insane night together!

I generally liked and was invested in the characters. Will is our main protagonist - he was the copywriter for the dating website (the name he came up for the dating website is kind of hilariously cringing but go off, 1999 Will). We also have the other five students plus some staff. Most of the characters were pretty well developed, except for poor Rohan, who was so underdeveloped that I don’t even remember what his job in 1999 was. (Sales? IDK). And of course with a bunch of horny undergrads in a house for the summer working on a dating website, there was some romance and it got messy which was fun. 

There were a lot of great twists and I do love a book about psychopaths but I want a thriller that I can’t put down and this wasn’t like that for me mostly due to pacing. 

Thank you Atria Books for the ARC! 

Publication Date: September 16, 2025