Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book. I ended up not finishing this book. I was hoping for more of a thriller. This book featured too much of the relationship drama for my tastes.


Twenty-five years ago, on a campus paralyzed by a snowstorm, beautiful 19-year-old Vinca Rockwell ran away with her philosophy teacher after they began a secret affair. For Vinca, "love is everything or nothing."
She is never seen again.
The once inseparable Manon, Thomas and Maxime -- Vinca's best friends -- have not spoken since graduation. Twenty-five years earlier, under terrible circumstances, the three of them committed a murder and buried the body in the gymnasium wall, the same wall that is about to be demolished to make way for an ultramodern new building.
Now, the three friends are about to meet again at their reunion. Will decades of lies unravel to reveal what really happened on that deadly winter night?
Taut, suspenseful, and addictive, The Reunion will grip you until its haunting final page.

The Reunion—billed as a mystery and set in the south of France at a an elite boarding school—had the potential to be a fascinating psychological thriller and dark character study. Could this be The Secret History: Riviera Edition? Sadly no. Not even close.

Alas, this one was a letdown given the premise. In a novel that’s more schlocky soap opera than true mystery thriller, a set of flat, unsympathetic characters futz around and fret about a heinous crime from their past. The bodies pile up rapidly as the story gets going, but the string of murders feel more like absurdity than excitement or thrilling menace.

The setting too is a disappointment. Despite the locale involving two of my favorites (boarding school and the south of France), there’s almost zero atmosphere here. Blame the translation? Maybe, but the rest of the book didn’t particularly make me think I should give the author the benefit of the doubt.

Musso certainly demonstrates that he can put together well-crafted, lovely sentences and to some extent character observations, but the plot is simply too ridiculous and unoriginal to engage the reader in any meaningful way, and the setting too bereft of any real substance to be evocative on its own.

The setting is a private boarding school on the French Riviera, and the characters are students, teachers, and administrators whose stories bounce between 25 years ago when they were at the school and the present as they attend a school reunion. The writing is superbly translated, so that this book reads as though it were written by a native speaker, although the pop culture references are French. Twenty-five years ago, a beautiful and popular student went missing along with her philosophy teacher, and the main characters are not the only ones who know what happened to them. Surprises abound as the plot moves between a modern murder and past disappearances. The characters elicit strong reactions from the reader, and the writing about the Riviera is evocative.

After a summer of reading "just ok" books, I was thrilled to happen upon The Reunion. Not just the best thing I read this summer, but possibly the best suspense novel I have read this year! Beautifully written, with believable characters the book sets out to explore what happened at a prep school 25 years ago when Vinca disappears with (we think) her teacher. Viewing the characters as they were perceived as children, then looking at them through the eyes of the adults they have become is illuminating. This book is not to be missed!

In a world with many many thrillers, The Reunion did not particularly stand out to me, but was still an exciting read and I did finish the book. The interesting subject matter will intrigue some and disturb others.

I read this in one day and part of the night, intrigued by the story and the characters and the unfolding of the unusual plot. The setting of the south of France - the cliffs and the sea - add to the interest of the novel. Recommended.

I was worried that I would have trouble with all the lovely French names in this one but I quickly was drawn into the plot of this fantastic mystery! When Thomas returns to his elite school for a 25th reunion, he worries that a secret from his past will come back to haunt him as Vinca--the girl he adored--disappeared and there is scandal surrounding it. Soon we discover that there are more secrets than students here! And everyone is involved, from Thomas to his parents and friends. Layers and layers of deception must be uncovered before we finally know the truth behind the mysteries. It's clear why Musso is a bestselling author as the writing is nuanced and clear and the plot is amazing!

As I began this book I quickly became engaged in this story of a reunion in an elite high school in Antibes. The narrator has returned, after becoming a successful author, to uncover the truth about the girl he once loved and the murder of a faculty member.

Honestly, the first 75% hummed along and I grew more interested in Thomas and several of the characters. Alas, at this point the narrative fell apart with the introduction of many new characters, bizarre relationships and a totally muddled plot.

I found the ending completely unsatisfying. Strands of the story had no closure, other loose ends were tied together in a very unsatisfactory way.

I was disappointed that a novel with so much potential disintegrated.

It’s been 25 years since Vinca Rockwell supposedly ran away with her philosophy professor and vanished forever. Now her best friends, Manon, Maxime and Thomas are together again, worried about the demolition of their old gymnasium, where they had buried a body. At their class reunion, lies begin to unravel as the truth about what really happened that long ago snowy night begin to surface

THE REUNION, by bestselling French author Guillaume Musso, is astonishingly complex and riveting, a one-day read for me. On one level, it is a compelling clear-eyed examination of life at age 44, and whether success and life goals have been achieved; whether one has lived up to one's expectations and those of others. On another level, it is a finely-tuned and very complicated mystery from "out of the past," and I was engrossed from the beginning as over and over our protagonist - narrator, novelist Thomas Delagais, predicts his complete and sudden downfall, created by a seemingly chance event. On a third level yet, the novel is a comedy of errors, a tragic and fatal minuet in which almost nobody knows the truth, assumptions are made--wrongly, some assume responsibility not theirs, and nobody wins. As a backdrop are first love, maniacal obsession, and a terrifically nasty villain, unseen, pulling the strings. All in all, definitely one of my favourite novels of 2019.