Reading: THE GUEST LIST - Lucy Foley

While I can't buy too much into the Agatha Christie comparisons (beyond this story of a group of people trapped on a secluded island with a dead body), The Guest List is a good, serviceable mystery-thriller that starts with a scream that results in the discovery of a body on the evening of one of the biggest, most exclusive weddings of the year ... before going back in time to narrate for readers how the whole mess came about in the first place (all while the reader is supposed to guess not only the identity of the killer, but also the corpse). The bulk of the book is laid out via first-person multiple POVs from five of the wedding participants - Jules, the demanding bride; Olivia, her milquetoast half-sister and bridesmaid; Hannah, the "plus one" who's arrived on the island with her husband - Jules's long-term best buddy (and possible ex?); Johnno, the best man and groom's slovenly slacker of a best friend; and Aoife, the wedding planner who, along with her chef husband, owns and runs the wedding venue on this rocky, desolate island off the coast of Ireland. Each chapter is short and does its best to end with at least a minor cliffhanger, occasionally interspersed with an even briefer "flash-forward" chapter bringing us back to the wedding night for more clues as to what's going on - all during which we slowly learn that each narrator has his or her own guilty secret, and/or hidden agenda for attending. My only real complaint about the book is that the constant change of perspective with each chapter, along with the cliffhanger teases at the end of each, eventually grows a bit old and tropey; so much so, at times in the middle of the book I found myself not as enthusiastic as I should have been to pick it up again. Thankfully I kept at it, because the end reveal of killer and victim - and how everything and everyone got there - was so good, so worth it, I nearly forgot getting bogged down a bit on the way there! Ultimately more mystery than thriller, The Guest List ended up a pretty solid treat, the solution/ending alone easily bumping up what could have been a three-star read by at least another star. Most definitely worth your time.  4/5 stars

NOTE: I received a free ARC of this title from Goodreads and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.