The Guest follows Alex, a young woman who finds herself unwelcome on the East End of Long Island after a social blunder at a party with her older, wealthy boyfriend. With nothing to her name but a broken cell phone and mid-tier people skills, Alex goes on a journey that seems to float between reality and a ghostly haze. Cline's writing captures the sun-blasted dunes and the intense atmosphere of Long Island's elite, creating a stunning if not unnerving backdrop.

I found it super challenging to feel any sympathy for or connection to Alex. While her ability to move effortlessly through her world should have intrigued me, I was rolling my eyes. Alex seemed like a cipher, lacking emotional depth that would have made her more relatable.I just didn't understand this girl's motives at all and so I wasn't really invested in her journey. I also found this book to be a bit of a snooze at times, just drifting aimlessly. I wanted the stakes to be higher, the tension to be palpable, but instead, the narrative floated along just like Alex, occasionally punctuated by moments of destruction.

That being said, Cline is a talented writer and I did come around to the book by the end. While this was not my favorite read recently, it was a good summer book and made for good entertainment at the pool.

In the end, The Guest is a novel that offers glimpses of brilliance but just didn't fully hook me!

Thanks so much to Random House Publishing as well as NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts.