The Disinvited Guest: A Novel by Carol Goodman
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Web ID: 15058254The Disinvited Guest (thoughts)
4.5 stars I'm really trying to read more of my favorite authors this year and work my way through their backlists. This is exactly what led to me picking this book up and I am so glad that I did. From the beginning pages, I was pulled into this haunting, atmospheric read. The story is told in two parts: one in the present and then one in the past which gives background to the history of the island that they are staying on. There's almost a fairy tale like feel to the past storyline which made it extra interesting. In the present, the friend group is dealing both with the realities of living together on an isolated island and also dealing with living through another pandemic. Which huge content warning if you find reading about the COVID pandemic triggering. It's when things start to go missing and wrong on the island that the group of friends realize that something darker is at play. This book started as a slow burn but when things started to go wrong it turned into quite the page turner. I really enjoyed how this author used the remote, isolated island setting and the past storyline to build up a feeling of dread within the pages. Then things actually went downhill and I was turning the pages as fast as I could. The only reason I didn't give this one a full five stars was because I cared slightly less about the past storyline than I did about the present one. Otherwise, I enjoyed my time with this book immensely and am looking forward to continuing on through her backlist this year (plus she has a new release for me to look forward to as well). Readers who enjoy atmospheric, suspenseful reads need to pick this book up especially if they enjoy isolated settings and books about a group of friends where things go wrong. To date my favorite book by this author is The Bones of the Story which I read and loved last year. 4.5 stars but rounding up on Goodreads. CW - Pandemic, infertility
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Past and Present on Collision Course
Set a decade or so after the 2020 pandemic, the scariest part of this book to me is that another go-round is not only possible, but probable. Would I pack up my family and go live on a deserted island until it all blows over again? It's doubtful, in large part because I, unlike Lucy Harper and her husband Reed, don't have access to family property nor money enough to keep us well fed for however long it took to ride out the storm. The Harpers, though, have no such problem - inviting a handful of their best friends (including Reed's not-so-sisterly sister Liz and her significant other, Niko) to tag along. And therein lie at least seven problems - eight, if you count the bear of a guy who apparently lives on the island and serves as a sort of jack of all trades by keeping the machinery running and food in the pantry. That's because while on the surface they're all friends and lovers, nobody seems to really like each other very much (too much personal history, I guess, although I have to admit I didn't like any of them very much either). And speaking of history, the island itself has a sordid background, once serving as a drop-off point for typhus patients and Reed's family mansion a quarantine hospital a couple of hundred years ago. More recently came deaths with far more personal ties to Reed and Liz. For the most part, while she's riding out the viral storm, Lucy plans to write a new book as a follow-up to her successful first one. She hopes to find a journal written by one of Reed's long-ago ancestors, thinking the content will kick the stops from under her writer's block. But maybe, just maybe, that's exactly what shouldn't happen; it could be that some of the dead would far prefer to remain that way. And slowly, the whole group begins to feel the ill effects of togetherness plus something more sinister; important things go missing, tensions and suspicions among the residents grow to the breaking point and accidents turn deadly serious. Clearly, something other than a virus is on the loose and full of malicious intent. But especially when she has no idea who to trust (both among the living and the dead), can Lucy figure out what's going on before it's too late to save anyone? While all that makes for exciting reading, the chapters that were pages from the centuries-old journal were a bit too long and boring. It was also a little hard for me to work up much empathy with or sympathy for characters who expressed virtually no reaction at the loss of their loved ones (but then, no one ever seemed to care much about any of the others anyway, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised). But despite that and my virtually nil belief in the supernatural, the story is a bit of a mind-bender and made for an enticing, enjoyable read that was hard to put down. Thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review a pre-release copy.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Gothic thriller
The Disinvited Guest by Carol Goodman is a recommended Gothic thriller It's around 2030 and a new virus has surfaced. Lucy Harper's husband Reed has invited a small group of five close friends and family to isolate themselves on the island that he and his sister Liz own off the coast of Maine. In the 1850's Fever Island was a quarantine site for Irish famine ships and it has a history of stories claiming it is haunted. They have stock the island with supplies and now plan to wait out the new quarantines in isolation. But the history of the island where stories of witches, ghosts, and other spooky beings abound weighs heavy on everyone and when odd occurrences and strange signs begin to appear, the group is on edge. And then it seems that sabotage may threaten the group’s survival. There are several things that were done right in The Disinvited Guest. The quality of the writing is excellent. The idea of isolating this group of characters on this creepy island is a good concept for a Gothic horror thriller. Providing the island with a tragic history is well played, as are the journal entries from the 1850's included in the plot. The increasing tension and suspicion created as strange occurrences that seem to be supernatural happen, like seeing the Grey Lady, work well. Suspicions are cast upon almost everyone. There are several twists and a surprising ending. Two major strikes against The Disinvited Guest. First, the characters are truly annoying and not very credible. There were several times I had to suspend my disbelief. Second, this could have been set during a long summer vacation rather than a new plague ten years in the future. The whole concept of "Oh, there is a new pandemic and we must be full of fear" in this novel lost points with me immediately. Pandemic fear fiction is an ill-advised choice to make as a plot element, no matter how inconsequential it may be to the overall narrative. It is also a senseless and annoying concept for the many people who worked as usual throughout the whole event. Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com