“I suppose we all carry around different versions of ourselves.”
Lucy Foley was one of the first authors we covered at What We Reading, and we’ve quickly found ourselves becoming huge fans of hers. Having grown to become one of the most popular mystery-thriller novelists in the literary world, Foley’s books are known for their glamorous characters, luxury settings, different perspectives jumps in time and an array of red herrings designed to throw a reader’s suspicions around as much as possible. We decided to rank all the Lucy Foley books in order of our favourites!
The Guest List
Summary
The Guest List takes place on a remote island off the Irish coast where the guests are celebrating the wedding of the glamorous couple, Jules and Will. The pair are good-looking and incredibly affluent, which makes their choice of location of a storm-battered island all the more surprising.
Readers follow the story from the perspective of five individuals from inside the party and the event host. Foley switches these perspectives between the present day and the hours leading up to one of the party members being killed.
The Good Bits
The Guest List is comfortably the fastest-paced Lucy Foley book, coming in at just 330 pages for the paperback edition. For those who love a quick thriller and found her other books a bit too heavy on the build-up, this is the one for them. The rain-soaked Irish setting also does a stellar job as a setting with the boggy marshes and stormy weather really selling the feeling of being stranded from civilisation.
The Bad Bits
Out of all the Lucy Foley books we’ve read, this was the only one where we had almost every part figured out someways before the finish. For a mystery-thriller novel, this isn’t a great sign. The characters in general feel a lot more shallow than in her other books, with the majority of the book essentially dedicated to their drunken antics the night before the action really goes down.
Our Rating: 4/5
Check out our The Guest List Review
The Paris Apartment
Summary
Eager to kickstart a new era in her life, Jess arrives in Paris looking to stay with her brother Ben in his luxury apartment located in the heart of the city. However, when she eventually gets in, she finds her brother is missing.
Whilst she attempts to piece together what has become of her brother, she encounters the various other residents living in the apartment complex. All of them are less than helpful, and it soon becomes that they all in fact know far more about Ben and his disappearance than they are letting on.
The Good Bits
The Paris Apartment really stands out from other Lucy Foley books. The locked room approach was something we hadn’t seen from the author before, and it really works as a superb way of layering in the different revelations Jess uncovers.
Jess and the characters in The Paris Apartment, are some of the best Foley has ever written – all of them are totally believable as complex characters and whilst not all of them are likeable, their actions all make sense. The setting of Paris in the summertime is obviously wonderful, and the apartment complex almost acts as a character of its own.
Finally, there are some really good twists scattered throughout The Paris Apartment. Some are more guessable than others, but there are never any that come out of the woodwork that feels completely outlandish. In short, with this being the latest Lucy Foley book in terms of release, you can feel her assurance starting to shine through.
The Bad Bits
There’s a real sinister vibe that hangs over The Paris Apartment that some might a little unbelievable. Every single character is shown to be suspicious, and there were a couple of romance subplots thrown in which added absolutely nothing to the overall plot. Finally, it’s a staple of Lucy Foley’s books to have multiple perspectives but, in the case of The Paris Apartment, this strategy doesn’t feel as rewarding as her works.
Our Rating: 4.5/5
Check out our The Paris Apartment Review
The Hunting Party
Summary
Nine university friends reunite for a weekend away in a luxurious retreat in the Scottish Highlands. The story is told from the perspective of three of the main friends: Emma, Jules and Katie, as well as two of the retreat’s employees: Doug and Heather.
Like with other Foley books, the story is split across multiple times, with the identities of the victim and perpetrator not being revealed until the very end.
The Good Bits
We love the setting of every Lucy Foley book, but The Hunting Party might just be our favourite to date. The Scottish Highlands in the dead of the winter were made for mystery-thriller books like this, with these friends totally cut off from the outside world whilst a killer lurks around them selling the stakes incredibly. Whilst we would have to say the characters from The Paris Apartment were probably a bit more memorable, the way in which our suspicions fell on almost everyone in The Hunting Party felt much more natural than in that book.
The pacing in The Hunting Party also feels at its most natural with the secrets and tensions among the group rising at a rate that felt a lot more believable than with the others. Out of all the Lucy Foley books, this was the story whose shocks left the biggest impact.
The Bad Bits
Whilst everything to do with the major Hunting Party characters felt great, there are a few strange inclusions thrown into the mix that don’t really go anywhere. A drug ring subplot and a Swedish couple that is just ‘there’ both spring to mind and they really don’t bring a lot to the table. In fact, the book would have continued to work perfectly fine without them at all.
Our Rating: 4.5/5
Check out our The Hunting Party Review
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
