bibliophiliac 's review for:

A Death at the Party by Amy Stuart

3.25

dark mysterious fast-paced

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This twisty thriller, which takes place over the course of one day, is more of a “who’s the victim” than a whodunit, full of unsolved deaths, family secrets, affairs, and a nasty child predator. The book opens with a man dying on the floor of a basement bathroom, with the protagonist, Nadine Walsh, standing over him and not helping, while a party celebrating the 60th birthday of her mother, famous author Marilyn Millay, is in full swing upstairs. From that scene we go back to that morning, following Nadine as she preps for the party and her reminiscences about the various interactions of the characters over the course of thirty years. While the story does flashback to events in the past, all of the story’s action takes place over the course of one day. The narrator and many of the other characters are unreliable, which makes the murky tale complex and intense.