“When you’re looking back, it’s hard not to let what would happen later influence your view of events.”
The Dinner Guest was one of those ‘spur of the moment’ reads you fall into every now and again. There’s something about snappy titles and simplistic book covers that lure me in, and that was exactly what caught my eye when I saw B.P. Walter’s 2021 thriller sitting on the shelves. I hadn’t heard of it or seen any reviews for it, so I went in completely blind here. What did I make this dinner date from hell? Join us here at What We Reading for our The Dinner Guest book review!
Date Published: 2021
Author: B.P. Walter
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Pages: 400
GoodReads Rating: 3.67/5
Premise
The Dinner Guest is told through the eyes of our protagonist Charlie, an affluent gay man living in central London with his husband Matthew and their son, Titus. Their comfortable lives are shattered when Rachel, a mysterious woman Charlie runs into in a bookstore one day, sandwiches her way into all of their lives.
The book is split between Charlie and Rachel’s perspectives across different times: the year or so leading up to a dinner party between the four of them, and the immediate aftermath following it.
It’s told to readers in the opening chapter that Matthew has been killed at the table, with Rachel confessing to the murder and being taken away by the police. What follows over the course of the book is the build-up to that one night around the dinner table, exposing how Rachel’s arrival gradually peels away the secrets and lies hiding behind this idyllic family.
Even though they know where all the characters will eventually end up meeting, the intrigue, suspicion and twists revealed in every chapter keep readers gripped throughout.
What Worked
First off, it’s always nice to have diversity when it comes to a cast of characters. Walter does a stellar job in setting the scenes and immersing readers in a life of affluence through Charlie and his family’s day-to-day lives. One of the central themes of the book is the detachment between the ‘haves’ and ‘haves-not’ in contemporary society, and the author really sells Charlie as an out-of-touch aloof sort of character.
It makes liking most of these figures hard to like, but that’s the point.
It Ends At Midnight is a good example of a book that had awful characters that were unenjoyable, so The Dinner Guest did well avoiding that.
Walter also does a great job of layering plenty of secrets and revelations across the book to keep things enthralling. It can be a hazardous strategy revealing so much to the readers seemingly off the bat, however, he does a great job of keeping things up in the air enough for readers to never fully have a full grasp on what is going on.
With a few shocking twists in reserve for the closing chapters, it’s a suspenseful thriller book that doesn’t struggle to hold a reader’s attention.
What Didn’t
Off the bat, books with different time perspectives are not everyone’s cup of tea. It does require a little bit of concentration to keep track of, with some of the switches being particularly jarring. Walter also has a tendency to leave almost every single chapter on a cliffhanger, perhaps in an effort to keep the suspense up. It never gets to the point of being insulting but was something that did become noticeable quite quickly.
We mentioned above about the central theme of the book is the class divide between the rich to the poor in our contemporary Capitalist society, and it was a ‘shown but not told’ tone for the most part across the book. So having a full-blown chapter essentially dedicated to ramming that point home, mainly through exposition-driven dialogue definitely made me lose a bit of immersion.
The ending itself was a fairly tedious read, with the final 100 pages or so feeling like there wasn’t a whole lot left to tell. ‘Just end it already’ was a thought that came to my head a few times during my read-through, which did leave things less punchy than they could have been.
Finally, not wanting to spoil everything in this book review, some of the actions certain characters make are sure to make a reader raise an eyebrow or two.
Verdict
Overall, there’s a fair amount to like about The Dinner Guest. It has a central theme that author B.P. Walter manages to nail in a way that a reader will naturally digest as they live through Charlie’s perspective especially.
The structure of the book definitely helps it stand out from others in the mystery-thriller genre; we mentioned it in our The Guest List book review, but different perspectives are something we always enjoy, and it’s a technique used superbly to keep the suspense flowing throughout The Dinner Guest.
I would say the final third is where the book ends up letting itself down, however. The pacing becomes a bit more irregular, and the final few scenes don’t pack the sort of punch a finale should possess.
Ultimately, Walter took a lot of risks with The Dinner Guest that could have seen it scuppered completely. The combination of an early reveal with all these detestable characters hanging around so much wealth, greed and SW1 locations could have seen so many readers put the book down in frustration, so it’s a testament to the author’s skill that I got through it with very few problems.
For a fast-paced, topsy-turvy page-turner, you could do a lot worse than The Dinner Guest.
Our Rating: 3/5
Views From Around The Reading World
“I’ve never read a book by B. P. Walter and my first experience proved to be more than gratifying. It is rare to encounter such an exquisite domestic thriller featuring a splendid combination between multiple perspectives and double-timeline narrative. The characters are well-outlined and the atmosphere that pervades the story is so gripping and suspenseful that renders the book unputdownable.”
Quote supplied by Dimitris from Tap The Line Mag
“The Dinner Guest is a book filled with deceit, infidelity and family conflict tied to a slow burn who-dun-it murder mystery. It is a book that will keep you hooked from the first to last page and wanting more when it’s over.”
Quote supplied by Jodie from For The Novel Lovers
“The Dinner Guest takes place in two converging timelines in alternating POVs. It is a fast-paced, suspenseful thriller that is sure to keep you hooked until the last page with its unique premise. For me, it had very good suspense and buildup, and a decently satisfying ending, albeit not the biggest surprise. If you’re a fan of thrillers, I think this is another one for the reading list!”
Quote supplied by Fives from Down The Rabbit Hole
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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).
