The Perfect Guests
Emily Rous
284 pages
Published 2021
🛏️🛏️🛏️
The Perfect Guests is a twisty family drama/mystery told in three timelines, which was published in 2021. I got it from book club quite recently and I liked the sound of the Murder Mystery game in an Agatha Christie-style stately home. It certainly started well and was a quick read – I finished it within a day, but the plot became increasingly far-fetched and I was left feeling dissatisfied by the denouement.
In 1988, fourteen year old orphan Beth is welcomed to Raven Hall by a couple of strangers, to be a companion to their daughter, Nina. Thirty years later, the house, which has been empty for years, has been freshly renovated and is now set to host a Mystery Weekend. Down on her luck actress Sadie is invited to join the cast, but soon discovers that something strange is going on.
I think this tried just a little too hard to be clever. The clues are certainly there, and I enjoyed the first half, but the more that was revealed, the less I believed in the characters’ motivations – it all seemed rather over-elaborate and pointless. I guessed some of the twists but not others, and liked how she wrapped things up at least, but I’ll have forgotten most of the plot by next week.
Leave a Reply