Book Title: The Hunting Party
Author: Lucy Foley
Genre: Mystery
Page Count: 327
Started/Ended Date: March 6 – March 11
Total Reading Time: 5 hours 47 minutes

Everyone’s invited…everyone’s a suspect…

For fans of Ruth Ware and Tana French, a shivery, atmospheric, page-turning novel of psychological suspense in the tradition of Agatha Christie, in which a group of old college friends are snowed in at a hunting lodge . . . and murder and mayhem ensue.

All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.

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 by themselves.

They arrive on December 30th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.

Two days 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 reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid 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.

Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close?

Lucy Foley, I’m sorry, but you let me down here. I have read two other books by Lucy Foley. The first that I read, The Guest List, ended up being one of my favorite books. The second, The Paris Apartment, was a bit of a letdown and I was hoping that this would follow closer to The Guest List, but unfortunately, it didn’t.

The story leading up to the end was well-written and there were a few twists that I did not see coming. I also really loved the concept of people who were best friends at one point in their life really trying to hold on to that connection and seemingly force a friendship due to that past history. I can relate to the feelings of a lot of the characters who were frustrated by the fact that the friendship didn’t seem to grow with them. And I related to forcing yourself back into the role you held when that friendship was strong to try to feel that connection again.

I think if the book was a little longer, I would have liked it much more. The ending felt very rushed. The whole story, we are waiting to find out who murdered who, and it isn’t revealed until the last few pages. Then in the epilogue, we find out the prison time for the murderer and a few other updates on the other characters and that’s the end. I would have loved to read more about how the other characters went on with their lives afterward, or more about the random drug smuggling ring, or really anything other than “this person murdered this one, they got four years in prison. The end.”

I think a great way to have ended this book would be to have the characters accept that their old friendships no longer fit their lives and maybe have stories of their current friendships. I don’t know, but it felt unfinished.

What did you think of this book? Let me know in the comments!