A group of Oxford friends always meets up to spend New Years Eve together, and this year, they’ve booked a picturesque lodge in the Scottish highlands. At the lodge, there’s a heavy snowstorm and almost no phone signal, and the isolation brings out buried secrets, evolving tensions and resentments, and murder.
Oh man, I just love old-friends dynamics in fiction, and even better when they’re old “friends,” like this crowd who don’t seem to really like each other any more. What I like best is that most of them aren’t awful people, they’ve just grown and changed. Most have matured, and they’re not their college selves anymore… except for Miranda, who was the adored queen bee in college and needs to maintain that role, which means pushing others back into their uni roles, and manipulating others into what she needs. She’s more than happy to poke at weak spots and reveal secrets to maintain her popular girl persona. I just loved the dysfunctional relationship between Miranda and Emma, but read the book before you click that spoiler link.
I didn’t love how long it took for the personalities to distinguish themselves. With the 9 Oxford friends (well, seven friends and two of their post-college partners), 3 staff members, and 2 additional guests, I spent a fair amount of time trying to remember who was who. This cut into my murderer-guessing time, which is the whole point of these novels, isn’t it?
Overall, the novel blended dysfunctional relationships and a locked-door murder into an engaging, page-turning mystery.
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This sounds AWESOME!
I hope you like it as much as I did!
Ohhh this does sound kind of fun! I hadn't heard of it before, but the dynamics of this group does sound entertaining! I love that they don't even like each other anymore hah, it's always a mess when people don't want to be around each other but think they have to just for nostalgic purposes. But wow yeah that does sound like a LOT of characters to keep track of, makes sense that it took a long time to discern among them- I think maybe they could have pared the cast down a bit! Great review!
There's definitely a payoff after having so many characters, because so many different relationships are explored, but disorienting at first.
This sounds like a great book. Did you have a favourite character? :)
Not at all! This was much more about the least-terrible of the awful friend group, than a character I wanted to hang out with!
Interesting novel. I like the name. Lucy Foley is a good writer. I have read her another book "The Book of Lost and Found". that was amazing.
This sounds really interesting!
Well, it was a good read.