A review by matthewsalibi
The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf

dark 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

1.0

Really hated it.  The contortions the author has to go through to make the twists work spoiled the story for me, because nothing really makes sense.  I saw most of the twists a mile off and could not have cared less about the final whodunit. The main character is a brat who argues with people who DEFINITELY know better than she does about their own safety.  The brutal stuff is a little too brutal for my liking without enough payoff.  The final confrontation takes way too long.

Also, not a huge spoiler to say, the abducted-woman-held-prisoner trope is one of my least favorite of all the hacky thriller tropes, and I think I am just going to have to implement a rule where I refuse to read any more of them unless it seems like the author might subvert the trope in an interesting way, because otherwise they only ever annoy me!

The thing that structurally did not work at all about this book is we're supposed to believe Wylie is a true crime writer, but we never see her think or talk about the crime itself or the house she's living in, which really should be driving the suspense of the book -- so right away, that was a big clue that she's one of the folks from the other stories, because why else would the Gudenkauf not leverage the very intriguing and creepy setup of a true crime writer isolated by a storm in the house where her most recent subjects died to ratchet up the tension? But she's boxed herself in because all Wylie's memories of the crime are personal, so we can't really know her thoughts about it without spoiling the reveal.  

Some of the plot holes that annoyed me: you're telling me this crime happened to Wylie and she just finished writing a book about it, and not only is there NO doubt in her mind about who committed the crime (the evidence is pretty inconclusive), it also NEVER occurs to her that the mysterious stranger who shows up on the doorstep of the crime scene and is the right age as the missing person might be related to the case, and FURTHER she does not recognize her childhood best friend who she just wrote a book about, even though she DOES immediately recognize the person she thought was their assailant?  I mean.... what a terrible, terrible book, and I am mad at it.
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