A gripping slow-burn (no that’s not an oxymoron) thriller that unfolds in delightfully terrifying (also not an oxymoron) and unexpected ways. Absolutely bonkers.

First off, Foley is really a master at creating these places that should be gorgeous and alluring but even without the mystery you can feel the darkness and despair of the place seeping from the pages, and I’m completely in awe of her for that. Somehow this apartment feels more isolated and moody than the misty, lonely, literal island in The Guest List.

The characters may feel a bit cliche at first, a bit stereotypical of any other murder mystery whodunit cast, but that doesn’t really hold up past the first chapter for each person. You’re quickly given reason to suspect that there’s something deeper to everyone. Not necessarily a, uh, good “deeper” for everyone, but you don’t get a mystery plot with a bunch of suspects with only good, likeable people.

It starts a bit slow, but it’s a really good slow and I will die on the hill that it is okay (good, even!) for books to not be crammed with action on every single page. And the slow bits certainly aren’t wasted space (or time) - there’s so much stuff in there that adds to your understanding of the characters, to the building suspense, to the presentation of the plot. I almost felt bored, maybe like once? for half a page? in the first 5%? …and that was it. The plot and action is well-conceived and well-executed, but the genius of Foley’s writing is in the characters, the setting, the way it’s all set up, the way it unfolds. She has a way of writing a story in such an unconventional way that I feel like she could write retellings and I wouldn’t even realize what they were (but I’d enjoy every page of it).

And, like, it gets absolutely bonkers. I truly don’t know how people are saying nothing happened in this book. Maybe because most of the action happens in the past tense, rather than present tense, and characters are recounting/looking back on it rather than currently living it? Still, we’re talking about a time difference of maybe 48 hours for some events, a couple months for others. You get to see their current emotions and how they’re handling things based on what’s happened to them over the past couple days. It creates a kind of investigative feel to it, like you’re uncovering the story piece by piece and once one thing clicks into place a bunch of other things do too. It’s wild. And, at the same time, none of the twists are out of left field.

Although I wouldn’t necessarily call this book character-driven, maybe the reason I liked it so much more than other people is because I love a character-driven mystery, or maybe because I’m not the biggest thriller fan and people who read more of them expected something else from this book? I don’t know. I thought this book was great, beginning to end. I was hooked, I read it in one sitting, I definitely could not process what just happened when I finished it, I really want to listen to a radio-show style dramatic reading of it, and I for sure recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the eARC!