Content warnings: suicide, revenge porn, abortion, bullying, statutory rape, gaslighting, self harm, ED
Summary [courtesy of Goodreads]: On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed. But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast. And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?
This is a super-fast read, and even though I couldn’t get past page 3 in any other Lucy Foley thriller, for some reason this one worked for me. The twists are more a series of increasingly ridiculous coincidences, but that’s par for the course for most thrillers. I don’t necessarily recommend it, but it was certainly an ok way to pass the time, and it DID have one of my favorite themes. But that already gets me into
SPOILER TERRITORY
So, it features my favorite tune, ‘[cis white] men ruin everything,’ or at least in this case, ONE particular man ruins everything. Though most of the other men are pretty shit too, so it’s not NOT misandrist (hehe). Basically, the ‘twist’ hinges around the fact that groom Will is an utter bastard and his crimes include: revenge porn, statutory rape, gaslighting, ghosting a pregnant underage girlfriend… oh, and MURDER in his teen years. Like, this guy is toxic masculinity all bundled up with a blonde bow. So in the end, nearly everyone wants to kill him and has a bit of a motive (and the way this all gets revealed is fairly clever and well-paced). I DID love the ending, where Will’s screw-up childhood friend (semi-voluntarily) takes the fall for his murder, since he was a semi-unwitting accessory to the aforementioned childhood murder and has been haunted by it his whole life. Mainly, I like that this meant that the ‘real’ murderer (the sister of the boy they murdered in boarding school, who was also-gasp-the wedding planner) gets away clean. And I LOVED the final line, when the completely RANDOM plus-one guest (who turns out to be the sister of the girl that Will leaked revenge porn of in college, causing her to commit suicide) muses, “ I am only rather sorry I didn’t get the chance to plunge the knife in myself.” You all know I love a righteously vengeful lady, so all I can say here is Amen.