Title: The Perfect Guest
Author: Ruth Irons
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Black & White Publishing
Publication Date: 20th June 2024
Rating: 4.5/5
Cover:
Book Summary:
We all have that friend – the one who doesn’t quite belong. Dinah Marshall is that person and knows it. After someone drops out, she’s invited to spend the weekend at a luxury holiday home with women she’s known since university. However, the gulf between them has widened since then, and Dinah is conscious of being the only one with no money, career, partner or children. Feeling like an outsider, she takes to snooping around the house. She’s fascinated by its owners, Sarah and Isaac Rivers – and when she discovers she can secretly stay an extra night, that fascination quickly spirals into obsession.
When Isaac Rivers meets ‘Diana Malone’ at an exclusive members club, he introduces her to his wife and friends, and she’s soon welcomed into the group. She seems to be trying a little too hard, however, and as her somewhat intense behaviour starts to raise both eyebrows and questions, one of her new acquaintances begins to suspect she isn’t who she says she is. For Diana – or is it Dinah? -this is a disaster: she’s worked hard to get where she has, and these suspicions threaten everything. But Diana isn’t the only one with secrets, and if she’s going down, then she might just take everyone else with her . . .
Review:
I always love a book with a main character that schemes to climb the social ladder and Dinah Marshall is a perfect example of just that. She is not, perhaps, likeable in any sense but there is something deeply fascinating about her obsessive and bizarrely desperate need to manipulate and lie her way into the lives of the rich and beautiful people whose house she stays in by chance after she is a last minute invite to a ‘girls weekend’ with women she no longer has much of a connection with.
Dinah, or ‘Diana’ as she tells her new friends, becomes completely consumed by Isaac and Sarah Rivers, their beautiful home and their privileged life, going to increasingly unhinged lengths to remain in their circle. I was completely gripped by the twists and turns The Perfect Guest took as Dinah begins to realise that these people she is so enamoured with all have secrets of their own. The plot ticks along with an addictive need to see how everything will eventually unravel and I couldn’t put the book down. This is a perfect summer read – tense, nerve-wrackingly uncomfortable at times and deeply, deliciously deceitful. Highly recommended.
★★★★.5
Huge thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for my place on this tour and for the copy of the book. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.
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