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

Book Review - The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Title: The Hunting Party
Author: Lucy Foley
Genre: Thriller/ Mystery
Published: 2018
 
Description: During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands. The perfect place to get away and unwind themselves.
 
They arrive on December 30^th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world. Two day later, On new Year’s Day, one of them is dead.
 
The trip began innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscence about the past. But after a decade, the wight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amir the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.
 
Now one of them is dead.. and another of them did it.
 
Review: Friends Mark, Emma, Miranda, Julien, Nick, Bo, Samira, Giles and Katie hadn’t been together in a while. Now they got the chance to celebrate New Year’s Eve and spend four days together. Emma, Mark’s girlfriend, had arranged everything and hopes her friends will enjoy their stay in and around the modern glass lodge managed by Heather and gamekeeper Doug.
 
Most of them have known each other since they studied at Oxford, while Emma feels like she’s never really going to fit in because she only joined afterwards, because of her relationship with Mark. One of the POV’s we follow is hers.
 
Miranda is the ‘it-girl’ of the group. The beautiful one, the one that lights up the room, the one that everyone wants to be, the one who is fearless, the one who has everything. In college, she had a stalker, but she never told her friends that she feels she is still sometimes followed. She is the second POV.
 
Katie is the third POV, the only single person in the group. She is the quiet one. Katie is also Miranda’s best friend, but somewhat distant lately. But Katie also has some secrets. The other two POV’s are from Heather, the hostess of the lodge, and Doug, the gamekeeper. Doug’s chapters are the only ones told in the third-person, the others all in first-person.
 
We jump back and forward in time, from the days before New Year’s and after the holiday. It’s very easy to follow. The book started good, I was intrigued. The setting is amazing. A snowy, secluded Scottish lodge is a perfect setting for a mystery thriller story. But after that first chapter, not a lot happens in these first 200 pages. Just everyday drama between a group of old friends. People who have secrets, talking about having secrets, but not mentioning what they are. We don’t know who was killed yet. That last part I don’t really mind, it builds up the tension. But author Lucy Foley dragged this out way too long.
 
After about 200 pages, there are some twists and turns. All but one were not very surprising and I around this point I predicted who was murdered and who did it. I didn’t really like any of the characters and aside from the ones whose point of view we follow, we don’t really get to know any of them very well.
 
Even though the setting is perfect for suspense, it eventually wasn’t enough to make this thriller exciting. I believe this is Lucy Foley’s thriller debut. Her later thrillers, “The Guest List” and “The Paris Apartment” I enjoyed a lot more.
 
Rating: 2,5/ 5

Book Review - The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

Title: The Paris Apartment
Series: -
Author: Lucy Foley
 
Description: Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows us, to find a very nice apartment, Ben is not there. The longer ben stays missing, the more jess starts to dig into her brother’s situations, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s starting to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s in question.
 
Review: In “The Paris Apartment” strange things happen, when Jess travels to Paris to visit her brother Ben. When she arrives at his beautiful apartment, Ben is nowhere to be found. And the neighbors, who aren’t very friendly, don’t seem very eager to help Jess.
 
Jess flees to Paris to escape her life in England and when she finds out that Ben is missing, it stays unclear what really happened to him until the very end. This keeps you on the edge of your seat. Like in “The Guest List”, each chapter is told from a different perspective. Jess of course, and several of Ben’s neighbors. Who all are very suspicious.
 
It’s the newest murder mystery by Lucy Foley, who previously wrote “The Guest List”. I loved that book and it was a real page turner. For “The Paris Apartment” I listened to the audiobook, which turned out to be a good choice, since there is an entire cast. Every character in the story has their own voice actor. This adds to the experience, because I don’t think if I had read the physical book, it would have been a page turner like “The Guest List”. The book wasn’t as exciting and the ending and final conclusion weren’t very surprising. I did have some hunches earlier on in the book, which turned out to be correct in the end. So a bit predictable.   
 
That doesn’t mean I didn’t like the book, because I did enjoy reading it. I like Foley’s writing style and how the narration changes perspectives. That’s always a thing I love in stories like this. I do prefer “The Guest List” over “The Paris Apartment”, but I do want to keep reading more of Foley’s books.
 
Rating: 3,5/ 5

Book Review - The Guest List - Lucy Foley

Title: The Guest List
Series: -
Author: Lucy Foley
 
Description: On a small island off the coast of West Ireland, guests have gathered for the wedding. The bride and groom are online magazine publisher Julia “Jules” Keegan and celebrity host and survivalist Will Slater. They’ve gathered their relatives and loved ones to celebrate in true destination wedding style, with plenty of champagne and fashionable people. But as a storm brews, the guests and their shared histories collide with one another, and when the lights go out, a body is found. Between Will’s old boarding school friends and Jules’s close friends and relatives, there’s plenty of secrets and intrigue to around. As old secrets get revealed, the question remains is, who did it and why?
 
Review: Jules and Will can’t believe their luck. The day has finally arrived: their wedding on a beautiful island off the Irish coast. While the final preparations are being made and the guest are slowly arriving, a storm breaks out outside. No one can leave the island. Old sores arise, long forgotten feuds are fought over and the mood on the island becomes increasingly grim. But no one could suspect that one of the guests was capable of murder. Everyone has secrets. Everyone has a motive. One of them will not leave the island alive. But who?
 
In “The Guest List” we follow several characters including Jules. Jules is thirty-foir and the owner of a successful magazine. She is about to marry her fiancé Will who is also very successful himself. In fact, he is a well-known actor of the television program Survive the Night. With such a successful couple comes a wedding that is arranged down to last detail. For Jules, that means a wedding on a remote island. The story is told from a wide range of perspectives and from different characters: the bride, groom, groomsmen, a half-sister, wedding planner and the plus-one. It is the perfect set-up for a classic whodunit type story. It’s filled with secrets, lies and betrayal.
 
Lucy Foley has managed to create a very strong and exciting whodunit. I was into the story from chapter one. The setting is perfect for a story like this and I could totally picture it. Telling the story from multiple perspectives makes it more interesting. You don’t only get to know the characters better, it also adds to the mystery of it all. They all seem like loose ends at first, but eventually they are all tied together. Foley did this very well, working toward that final conclusion.
 
Foley created interesting characters, all with their own stories, secrets and histories. Everyone remained mysterious up until the unfolding of the story. A number of plot twists in the story were very surprising, which is really hard to accomplish these days.  
 
I’ve always loved whodunit stories. A good murder mystery is difficult to write Lucy Foley did an amazing job and created a modern mystery with classic touches. And I really enjoyed Foley’s writing style. This was my introduction to her, so I will be checking out more of her work.

Rating: 4,5/ 5