My book club picked this for our August read (how is it almost August??) and I had some ideas from the start about this book. Will we have an unreliable narrator? A vengeful ex? Perhaps just some really bad luck? I won’t reveal if any of these are true, but I was pleasantly surprised by the end. Our main character, Ellery, is on an anniversary trip to a remote resort in Big Sur, freshly divorced and lacking the husband with whom she originally planned the trip. Not wanting to waste a prepaid vacation, she braves her fears and goes alone. Several unplanned events occur: a wedding is due to be held at the resort (great, she’s surrounded by a happy couple and wedding activities leading up to their nuptials), an extremely dynamic duo who take her in as one of their own (not associated with the wedding party), and the death of the groom. A storm strikes the area completely wrecking the resort and their path back to serviceable roads and civilization. They’re on limited power. More death follows the beloved groom’s, but how many? Will their rescue team make it to the resort before they’re all picked off?

Condie does a great job about building tension between characters AND between the reader and the book’s content. I tore through this book, anxiously waiting to get through the chapter and wondering about the Big Bad reveal. I rarely try to solve a mystery as I’m reading it, but I found myself doing this constantly! Though I found the ultimate reveal a tad lackluster (and it took a little more of a spoon-fed explanation than I think should’ve been necessary by the end of the book), it was still very tidy and I didn’t hate it! People have related this to a cross between “The White Lotus” and Agatha Christie and I understand the reference clearly. I would only add the caveat that this is a little less sexually-driven or explicit than “The White Lotus” and that the twist wasn’t as great as a Christie, but this was still a very fun, fast read!