Old friends.
Past grudges.
Happy families.
Hidden jealousies.
Thirteen guests.
One body.
The wedding cake has barely been cut when one of the guests is found dead. And as a storm unleashes its fury on the island, everyone is trapped.
All have a secret. All have a motive.
One guest won’t leave this wedding alive . . .
Comment: This book has been in the pile for years and I think I've added it because several friends had liked it and I got curious over such a majority of positive opinions.
Jules Keegan and Will Slater are a hit couple and are about to be married in an island, something very recent but very exclusive, managed by the couple Aoife and Freddy. Several guests will travel for the big day but a few will arrive earlier and all expect the best wedding ever. The problem is that everyone has some kind of secret which they don't others to know about, even if it means to stop someone from speaking out, but at what price? Who is being honest and who isn't, and who should be trusted?
After such hype and good opinions, I confess I expected something great, especially when the book is also described as "the perfect whodunit" in the cover. This even won a GR award and that made me even more curious but to be honest, now that I've finished, the sentence that comes to mind, and that I probably will keep from this book, is the following, thought be a character at some point: "they're like children without their parents present".
The thing is, for me this story felt rather weak because all the characters behaved incredibly bad and most of the time they acted like children without supervision. Were those adults really doing silly things as if they were still in school without any kind of consideration for others and for what they were supposed to be doing there? I cannot see the appeal. I also think the fact that every character is despicable or isn't likable made me find this story very annoying.
The plot is set on a huge amount of resentment and bad decisions the characters did at some point in their lives. It also depends on many coincidences fitting in at the end, when all the secrets that matter are revealed to the reader. I think some transitions were interesting, namely how the characters really connected, but at the same time, what they were hiding wasn't really shocking, but mostly abhorrent in terms of morals and respect for others.
When we finally have the clues linked and the identity of the victim and of the killer known, I wasn't very surprised. Not that some things weren't well done, they were, like the real reason why the setting is the island, that was a good twist, but the real impact of these things and why they should matter in regards to how the story had been presented and developed lost strength and I think that happened due to the narrative choices.
The story is told in first person by five different characters, and then we have a few chapters in third person just to help with the tension in between key moments. The whole thing happens in three days, which means a huge part of the story is shared by the characters' inner thoughts. We get to know a bit more about the bride Jules, the best man Johhno, the bridesmaid Olivia, the guest Hannah and the wedding planner Aoife, but to me this didn't work. Yes, usually first person works great in thrillers but here not really, since everyone was awful and I didn't feel really invested in rooting for anyone.
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