The Hunting Party: A Novel

If you’re wanting to read a thriller by Lucy Foley, I would strongly urge you to go for The Guest List.

The Hunting Game wasn’t bad, but it was missing a spark, IMO. I really loved the group dynamic, but I definitely felt like the book would have benefitted from Mark’s, Julian’s, Samira’s, or Bo’s perspective. I didn’t feel that I was too connected to this book and I think part of that is because I didn’t like any of the characters I was reading. I think if I hadn’t just finished The Guest List, I would have really enjoyed the Hunting Party. Imo, the two books are too similar to really enjoy reading them both.

I enjoyed this. I read The Guest List a couple of weeks ago and loved it! This one felt very similar and almost a bit predictable.

Lucy Foley does a good job of writing the suspense. She writes in a format for building up a story between the past and present by revealing each secret a piece at a time. She portrays the story in multiple POV which I like because it adds to piecing together all the parts of the story one by one.

I listened to the audio and it was really well done. The various narrators did a fantastic job. I'd definitely recommend this one.

Lots of red herrings and interesting backstorys

CRANKY'S BOOK CLUB REVIEW OF THE HUNTING PARTY BY LUCY FOLEY This is a no-spoiler review :) We pretty much all found this book an easy and enjoyable read. The story is in a beautiful setting, in a snowbound Scottish hunting lodge and the action takes place around New Year's Eve, making for a great choice of read for this time of year. The premise of keeping the identity of the victim secret, as well as the killer until close to the end was novel and those of us who read whodunnits remarked that it was harder than usual to guess the killer, although it was fairly obvious to guess who was going to be revealed as the victim. The story is told by each character in first person, apart from one, whose story is told in the third person, and it flicks between the present and two or three days previously. Some of us found this structure brilliant, but others were annoyed and disorientated by the constant flicking about. Some of us thought the structure was gimmicky and unnecessary, but others thought it might have been essential to keep the identities of both perpetrator and victim secret. We agreed that the book was great for a first novel but it wasn't without its problems. There were lots of twists and turns towards the end of the book that happened so rapidly that they felt a bit gratuitous. The end was peppered with film cliches, and given several extremely brutal events, it was slightly amazing that only one person ended up dead. The plot of unpleasant ex-Oxbridge young adults wrestling with the mysterious death of one of their party was a nod to Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History', without the latter's subtlety. Saying that, sometimes you simply want easy entertainment from a book and we all found The Hunting Party absorbing and wanted to finish it. We weren't surprised to read that it's been turned into a TV series, as it was fairly clear that the author had an eye on that throughout the book, and the many twists and turns of the last third of the book would probably be given a bit more development. We gave the book 6/10.

Fab read, I love how the author conceals both the victim and the murderer until the last minute