The Guest List

The Guest List by Lucy Foley is a contemporary murder mystery novel published in 2020. Foley, an English author, weaves a tale of intrigue, secrets, and betrayal upon the backdrop of an isolated island in West Ireland. Foley is also known for the thrillers The Hunting Party (2018) and The Paris Apartment (2022), among others. Often likened to Agatha Christie, Foley’s novel is a slow-burn whodunit.

Plot Summary

Many perspectives compose The Guest List; each chapter jumps from character to character and through time from past to future. The novel is set on a remote island somewhere in West Ireland that’s known for its haunted past. The novel begins a few days before the wedding of Julia Keegan (Jules) and William Slater (Will). Jules and Will are the “it” couple—beautiful, successful, and seemingly wealthy. Jules is the editor of an online magazine, and Will is the celebrity host of a survival reality television show.

As guests gather on the island to celebrate with the bride and groom, secrets from the past arise. On the night of the wedding, a storm leaves the island in a blackout. When the lights finally come back on, a distressed waitress screams that she has found a dead body.

The perspective shifts to before the wedding. The island, also known as The Folly, is owned by a couple who planned to turn it into a popular wedding destination. The couple is Aoife and Freddy: Aoife is the wedding planner, and Freddy is the chef.

Some family and friends in the wedding party begin arriving on the island on the day before the ceremony. Charlie, who is Jules’s long-time best friend, arrives with his wife, Hannah. Hannah notices that Charlie changes when he is around Jules; he puts on airs. Charlie and Hannah are having a difficult time; they are struggling with making ends meet, and they have little time to alone due to their children. From the moment that they land on the island, however, Charlie engrossed with Jules and leaves Hannah to her own devices. Hannah has always wondered if Charlie and Jules ever slept together, and she is even more suspicious when she notices how venomously Charlie treats Will. Hannah sneaks off to a nearby cave for some alone time. 

In the cave, Hannah meets Jules’s younger half-sister, Olivia, who is just 19. The two quickly become friends, and Olivia reveals her secrets to Hannah over the course of the novel—she met an older man, became pregnant, got an abortion, and is not mentally healthy. She has lost a significant amount of weight and has begun to self-harm.

Will’s four groomsmen are often described as a pack of feral dogs. Will’s best man is Johnno, his best friend from school. The other four ushers, Femi, Angus, Duncan, and Peter also went to boarding school with them.

Jules received an anonymous note three weeks ago warning her that Will is not who he says he is. Jules is confused by the note but unwilling to let it ruin her wedding. Jules is extremely jealous of her younger half-sister, Olivia, not only for her slim figure but also for having the happy childhood that she did not have.

At dinner that night, almost everyone gets drunk. Hannah picks up that something terrible happened to Charlie during the bachelor party. Will and his groomsmen, now drunk, discuss an old boarding school game called Survival, wherein the older boys kidnapped one of the younger students and left him in the wilderness around their school to “survive” the night. We later learn that a boy died because of this game. Survival was the basis for Will’s current show, although it was originally Johnno’s idea. Unbeknownst to Johnno, Will sabotaged his chance at being a co-host.

The next day, the wedding ceremony goes as planned, thanks to Aoife’s careful organization. After, Johnno has a run-in with Will’s father, who was the headmaster of their boarding school. He believes that Johnno stole the GCSE papers for Will to cheat from. However, it was Will alone who stole the papers. Johnno then speaks with Piers, the producer of Will’s show, and learns he had been offered a position on the show as well.

Suddenly, guests begin to panic about a figure in the water. It is Olivia, who has wandered into the sea and begun to drown. Will saves Olivia. Jules begins screaming at Olivia for averting attention from her, and then at Hannah for defending Olivia.

Hannah tells Olivia about her sister, Alice. Alice was incredibly intelligent and wanted to work in politics, but her ex-boyfriend in college published explicit videos of her. Ashamed and aware that this made her dreams of being a politician impossible, Alice took her own life 17 years ago. 

The readers learns that Will is the one who impregnated Olivia, and Will threatened Olivia not to tell Jules. Olivia wrote the anonymous note telling Jules not to marry Will. Johnno gets the ushers to blindfold Will for an impromptu game of Survival. The men leave Will in a cave, where Johnno confronts him about the show and about the young boy who died during a game of Survival all those years ago. They called the boy Loner; he discovered that Will had stolen the answers to the exam, and Will wanted to get rid of him. Johnno and Will kidnapped the boy and tied him up on the beach. When the tide rose, Loner drowned, and his death was ruled as an accident. Johnno, wracked with guilt ever since that day, demands to know if Will planned Loner’s death. Aoife interrupts them.

Whilst everyone waits for Will to return, Hannah learns about what happened during the bachelor party. The men left Charlie alone on an island, naked, and came back to find him scared and crying. Charlie is convinced that Will orchestrated the entire thing. Hannah then discovers that Charlie cheated on her with Jules while she was recovering from the birth of their first child. Hannah is furious and storms off to dance with someone else. At the bar, Hannah overhears a conversation and realizes that Will is Alice’s ex-boyfriend who shared the sex tape.

Will returns, and Olivia says that she will show Jules their text exchanges. Will throws her phone into the ocean, but Jules has overheard the entire conversation. The novel flashes back into the present, where everyone discovers that the dead body is Will. Johnno comes up to them covered in blood and holding the knife used to cut the wedding cake. 

The novel returns the reader to the moment right when the lights go out. Aoife finds Will in the dark and confronts him about the young boy Will murdered in boarding school. Loner, whose real name was Darcey, was Aoife’s brother. Aoife stabs Will and kills him.

Back in the present, the groomsmen are convinced that Johnno is the murderer. Johnno is oddly resigned that he will be wrongly convicted. He wants to atone for the death of Darcey. The police arrive and take Johnno into custody. Meanwhile, Olivia and Jules reconcile. While Hannah and Charlie leave the island together, things have irrevocably changed between them. The novel ends with Hannah fervently wishing that she had been the one to kill Will.