Book Review - The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

Title: The Midnight Feast
Author: Lucy Foley
Genre: Mystery/ Thriller
Published: 2024
 
Description: It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles crystal pouches for guests’ healing have been places in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule” cocktail is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.
 
But under the burning midsummer sum, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. Something’s not right with the guests. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered.
 
Review: The Midnight Feast” is the fourth book I read from Lucy Foley. I have enjoyed “The Guest List” and “The Paris Apartment”, and didn’t like “The Hunting Party”. And I’m sorry to say, “The Midnight Feast” is my least favorite so far.
 
In this book we are introduced to Francesca, who is the owner of a luxury hotel called The Manor. She has organized a wonderful weekend and everything has to be perfect. She gets help from her staff and her husband. But what many guests don’t know is that Francesca grew up in this hotel, when it was just a luxury house. Something happened here in the past which now seems to be driving the force behind the extraordinary events in the hotel.
 
Something that Lucy Foley does in all her thrillers, is creating an atmosphere with the setting, telling the story from multiple POV’s and use different timelines. The luxury seaside manor with a creepy forest is the setting, we follow five perspectives and alternate between three timelines: before the feast, after the feast and diary entries from 15 years ago. So far so good.
 
The first third of the book is introducing us to the characters, learning about their lives and who they are. We learn more about the manor. It’s actually pretty boring and I understand people DNF’ing this book at this point. It does get more interesting after this, but not interesting enough to be super invested. There were no standout characters. And the story is not very focused either. There is a dead body, characters who have a past with other characters, a farm next to the manor that suffers from the resort being there. And then there is this weird side plot about birds and bird people in the forest. I didn’t really understand why this was in here, I served no purpose and felt really silly because there is no real explanation for all this in the end.
 
As for the twists and reveals, none of them really shocked or surprised me. There was one link between two characters that I did not see coming, but that was about it. I wasn’t disappointed in this book, because I already didn’t have high expectations. But I really didn’t enjoy most of the book. If you want to pick up anything from Lucy Foley, because I still think she is a good author, you should read “The Guest List”.
 
Rating: 2/ 5