The Dinner Guest by B P Walter is a thriller where four attend a dinner, but only 3 leave alive. The story is told from the POV'S of the two main suspects, Charlie the husband and Rachel the new friend. How well do you really know those sitting across from you at the dinner table?

From false confessions to navigating British society, readers are in for a wild ride. With the dual perspectives and changes in timeline, this is one book I recommend not skimming over any passages or pages.

The Dinner Guest will be available for retail April 2021.

A special thanks to everyone at NetGalley, HarperCollinsuk and OneMoreChapterhc for this arc.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable, well written thriller. I have found many thrillers in the past to be very mediocre in terms of the writing quality, so this was an immediate plus for me. I have read lots of thrillers in my time, and would consider it to be my favourite genre - therefore, finding something surprising and refreshing is very pleasing!

The storyline was twisty and full of surprises, most of which I didn't see coming. I enjoyed where the storyline was leading me in terms of who the killer was, and I didn't find any of the twists and turns to be especially obvious.

One thing that surprised about this book (in the best way!) was the surprisingly attentive discussion of social class issues; most of the characters are upper-middle class, and the way they perceived Rachel, a working-class Northerner, is a key part of both Charlie and Rachel's narrative. I enjoyed the handling of social-class issues in the story - clearly, there is a lot of prejudice towards Rachel and other important characters, purely because of her class and background, and assumptions are made about characters being involved in some unsavoury things based on their class.

It was refreshing to see a gay couple feature front and centre in a thriller novel too. I find most domestic thrillers centre on husband and wife relationships, which I find can become really repetitive once you have read a few. It is always a positive to me if characters are more diverse in a story, so the LGBT representation was great.

I enjoyed the dual narrative aspect of the story. However, Charlie was generally a more fully-realised and well rounded character in my opinion. I would have liked to see some more hints dropped about his violent tendencies throughout the novel, though.

I found Rachel to be an interesting, albeit less convincing, character. Her reasons for the actions she took at the end of the novel didn't seem to be totally convincing or realistic unfortunately.

Similarly, I found Titus to be an odd character. He seemed to undergo a total personality transplant over the course of the story; I'm unsure whether his good boy persona was supposed to be an act or not. The obsession with sex and becoming a party boy later in life seemed like an abrupt change - this change occurring more subtly and slowly may have made for a more convincing character development.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable domestic thriller, and the cliffhanger ending was fantastic! I would gladly pick up another thriller by B P Walter.

Ooh, this was good - I had absolutely no idea where this was going, I just sat back and thoroughly enjoyed this twisty tale which is a cross between a whodunnit and whydunnit (not sure if that's an actual thing!)

Charlie and Matthew's perfect life with their adopted son, Titus is thrown into turmoil when they meet Rachel in a book shop and invite her to Matthew's book club. Charlie dislikes he on sight, Matthew accuses him of being a snob, but there is something to be said for gut instinct...as Rachel confesses to Matthew's murder.

Then, everything you think you know or suspect is turned on it's head. Excellent writing and characters that get under your skin. The teenage angst and sexual awakening of Titus was particularly well written.

The rollercoaster ending still leaves you with questions at the end, Rachel might have confessed, but she is holding all the cards!

Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to review this book, this is my honest opinion.

How enticing was the synopsis – a dinner party where four people sit down for dinner, but only 3 survive. A real Agatha Christie like hook. To add to the resemblance of the Golden Age author, the action is set in the elite landscape of the rich and privileged; with their opulent accommodation set in the very best locations in London and, of course, their country piles. Their social gatherings allow the participants to shine and glisten in their traditional habitat of the rich, powerful and famous. Charlie and his husband Matthew and their son Titus are very much part of this set and all is well in their world – or is it? Then in the best of the tradition the other is introduced; the outsider in the form of Rachel – who is the dinner guest at this fateful gathering.

Of course, Rachel is not part of the wealthy set, she lives close by but on a council estate – in little more than a cupboard but somehow she has managed to break into their circle, by virtue of joining their book club. And lo and behold by virtue of meeting the elite her circumstances change and she becomes a companion to a wealthy member of the book club and moves into her beautiful house.

We learn all of this from two sources – Rachel and Charlie the narrators who reveal the background, hint at secrets and motivation and propel the story onwards. In doing so we learn about the characters – their strengths, their weaknesses, their pasts.

We discover that these people are flawed, each and every one of them – even 15 year old Titus who is introduced as a polite, hard-working, studious boy but as the plot unveils shows him to be selfish, indulged and spoilt – much like the adults that surround him.

So, what did I think? As the plot unfolds I really didn’t like the characters, I didn’t like their spoilt, indulgent lives with their multiple residences. But I didn’t like Rachel, the ‘other’, either. I felt she was secretive, duplicitous, manipulative and not entirely safe, but I was curious about her motivation. What was she hiding, what was her connection to this family?

Oh, and I did like the book, quite a lot actually. I couldn’t figure out why Charlie didn’t trust Rachel; couldn’t figure out why Matthew was so interested in her; more importantly I couldn’t figure out what was going on with Titus, why were Rachel and him so close? Secrets and lies.
A really easy read, easy to pick up and get straight back into the action.

All in all, a good domestic thriller (using the term loosely as my ‘domestic’ is nothing like their domestic). A thoroughly enjoyable read.

Thank you to the author, publishers and NetGalley for providing an ARC via my Kindle in return for an honest review.

This was so compelling right from the first page. I love a book where you’re thrown straight into the action. I’m a fan of alternating timelines to before and after, I find they keep a story moving and this was done so well. The jumping between time and characters meant that just as you thought you were about to get the answers you were back to before the murder, which I found kept me really engaged.

Trying to work out who Rachel is and why she’s trying to worm her way into the family kept me captivated throughout.

Overall I liked the ending, I liked the explanation of Rachel and Matthews shared background. However, I didn’t like the revelation that it was Charlie, I felt that the fact he has a history of violent thoughts was very abrupt and there was nothing throughout to indicate that which might have made the ending more satisfying.

A couple meet a random woman by chance in a book shop. They don't know her, but she becomes part of their lives, slowly becoming an integral feature in their relationship.

The protagonist, Charlie, doesn't trust Rachel. He believes she has ulterior motives, and he's determined to find out why his husband is acting so strangely.


The Dinner Guest is a great read. From the very beginning, Walter sows the seeds of there being something not quite right. We know that there is a backstory, and the writer is good at slowly feeding clues.

As I was reading, I wanted to know who Rachel was, what did Matthew know, what is Titus up to? Credit to Walter, the novel has some agonising cliffhangers.

I would recommend this for fans of fast-paced, twisty thrillers.

Thanks to B P Walter, NetGalley, and One More Chapter for this advanced copy.

I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The first chapter I learnt that Matthew was a father and husband, it wasn't until Chapter two I realized Charlie was a guy and the husband of Matthew, that was a good surprise.

The story already had an ending, Matthew was murder, and Rachel, the woman who seems obsessed with him murdered him, but why? Then the story jumps between nearly a year before the murder and the week leading up to the murder, and alternate between Charlie and Rachel's perspective.

Some stuff I didn't get was:
- Matthew started the book seeming like a little reserved, but such a nice guy, what happened? He's having affairs with women, and even trying to flirt with Rachel despite knowing her true identity? What, did he think he was just going to charm her out of revenge? Also, if he did recognize her, why did he even invite her to the book club, and kept on standing up for her? Did I miss reading a chapter to explain this?

Ditto for Titus. Who was this hateful, manipulative teenager? When did he turn this way?

I couldn't put this book down, read-in-a-day kind of thriller.

The Dinner Guest has one of the best opening chapters in a book that I've read in a long time. It grips you right from the start, teases just enough to drop you in the middle of a shocking murder mystery.

This book reads like some of my favourite murder mini-series'. It has a great setting and a cast of characters that are described so well, that I feel like I know them. I can fully picture Charlie and Matthew's upper class London society world. I feel like I know them. I think that why, when there are a few instances of the characters acting very much out of character to suit the plot, it made me upset. I felt betrayed when I knew Charlie wouldn't do something like that or Titus isn't acting like himself. It's a credit to B.P. Walter's writing, but also the inconsistencies nagged at me, no matter how minor.

The Dinner Guest's mystery is teased in a fairly standard way leading you forward with a nugget of information in each chapter. I enjoyed that there were perspective jumps between Rachel and Charlie, but also timeline jumps between the months leading up to the murder and the days after.

Rating: 4.0/5

"Noir" is a term that seems to get bandied around quite a bit these days, but often inappropriately. In a true piece of noir fiction each and every one of the key protagonists is flawed and the lines between good and bad, right and wrong, are blurred. That is a description that can certainly be applied to "The Dinner Guest".

I have to say that the combination of the book's title and the marketing blurb supporting it had me anticipating a very different storyline structure than the one that B.P. Walter has actually constructed. In my mind I had conjured up an image of a very restricted cast of characters in a "locked room" type scenario with the dinner they are attending being the central point around which the plot revolves. This very much is not the case and, if anything it does a bit of a disservice to the author, who can created a very cleverly and skilfully crafted plot across a number of time frames.

As it occurs at the very beginning of the book, it is not too much of a spoiler to let you know that the novel opens with a murder. Thereafter the narrative moves around across a variety of points in time, both pre and post the night of the murder. The events are also presented from the viewpoints of two key protagonists, Charlie and Rachel. Chapter by chapter clues are revealed, along with some red herrings, until the completed picture is finally able to be presented.

In many respects this is very much a "whodunnit" / "whydunnit" in the classical style, but the author has taken a sufficiently different approach to make this a fresh and absorbing read. The background setting of the privileged, wealthy elite of London is appealing and the sharp, credible characterisation add to the story's appeal and combine to help deliver an intelligently written, engrossing noir.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for supplying an ARC in return for an honest review.

"Matthew seemed so polished. So perfectly presented...Matthew came pre-loaded, so-to-speak, with little Titus, not quite nine...And so I became Daddy...Titus had two perfect daddies...". We loved each other and had been married for five years. "But love changes over time, and in those final moments, when I knew he was dying,...I must confess...the love I felt for him wasn't quite as profound as I would have expected".

Matthew had been stabbed at the dinner table. Rachel, sitting calmly with the knife in her hand, called the police and confessed to killing him. Why would Rachel confess to a murder she didn't commit? Charlie, Matthew's husband and their son, fifteen year old Titus were witnesses to the murder. Who committed the crime?

Rachel had been employed in a non descript job at a garden center. Looking on Instagram, she saw #Weekend Baking "...there he suddenly was. The man from my dreams. My nightmares. My waking thoughts...In the photo, he was standing with another man and a teenage boy...in front of them...four different cakes...They looked so...perfect". Twisting and turning through two timelines in tandem, before the murder and after, the points of view of Rachel and Charlie are revealed.

A chance meeting in a bookstore. Charlie and Rachel reaching for the same book. Strange, Rachel bumped into Charlie and Matthew, in the market, later the same day.. Matthew was the real reader in the family. He invited Rachel to the next meeting of his book club which would take place in the family abode shared by Matthew, Charlie and Titus. A complete stranger would enter their midst. Charlie had a "feeling of foreboding". At the club meeting, claiming to be looking for the bathroom, Rachel peered into the master bedroom looking at photos on the dresser. Charlie felt that Rachel's motive might be sinister. "It was like she'd been helicoptered into the personal side of our lives. She was being woven into the fabric of our family". Matthew excused her behavior indicating that everyone's curious about other people's houses. Rachel's presence, although unwelcomed by Charlie, was embraced by Titus. Family discord contributed to Titus's angry, oppositional behavior.

"The Dinner Guest" by B.P. Walter is a domestic thriller that will keep you guessing. Did Rachel, Charlie, or Titus kill Matthew? Was there a home invasion with a stranger causing Matthew's demise? Even the most experienced puzzle solver will find the mystery to be riveting. The characters, although not likeable, are very well detailed. This was an unputdownable read!

Thank you HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book reminds me much of The Silent Patient with mysterious characters, interesting plot and a finale that stays with you for a while.
Charlie and Rachel are the two narrators on their life stories which end up in the murder of Charlie's husband. All along, you keep pinning for Charlie to be the good one in this mystery thriller but somehow, in the end, no one is likable. They expose more of their flaws with no quality in sight. Even the victim, which seems like a good person at heart, ends up being all wrong.
Once you get over the writing style of going back and forth between Rachel and Charlie, the story happens fast and keeps you guessing. I enjoyed it because of its originality; the ending is interesting if not an happy one.

This was such a fun and wicked debut for Walter! It was an extremely captivating and compulsive domestic thriller that was jam-packed with twists, dark secrets and lies!

I’m always a fan of alternating timelines and Walter did an exceptional job with this and had me hooked from the very beginning! He also did a stunning job in developing such authentic and fascinating characters.

And who doesn’t love a little dinner turned bloody?!

This is a dual timeline (before and after the murder) novel, told from the POVs of Charlie (the husband of the victim) and Rachel (the alleged murderer). The whole premise is that we don’t know who the murderer is, and therefore information is slowly revealed through each character’s backstory, all of which demonstrate potential motives for being the one with the knife.

However, the fundamental problem I had with this is that there are only three suspects. Matthew is our victim which only leaves Rachel, Charlie and Titus. We’re led to believe, early on, that Rachel didn’t do it (no spoilers here, don’t panic – it really is an early reveal), which leaves us with two suspects and questions about whether Rachel really did do it or not, and why she would confess if she was innocent?

Which, to be honest, all starts to become a bit overly complex and feels like a ploy to serve up multiple red herrings. Whilst I understand there are only so many ways suspense can be developed in such a novel, for me this felt a little over-played and almost condescending in its approach.

Again, because of the structure of the story this had a really slow initial pace, which at times, I felt frustrating. However, I must say the distinct character voices had me hooked, and it wasn’t a difficult read – I was eager to pick it back up again when real life pulled me away from a while.

However, there is only so far the quality of writing and individual narrative styles could carry this because, ultimately, the characters are horrible. Matthew seems nice enough, and I queried why he was the victim – he was probably the only one I could actually tolerate. Charlie is a boorish snob. Titus is billed as the perfect son yet seems to turn in to a cliched hormone ridden monster overnight. Rachel is just boring, bland and somewhat pathetic.

The only thing that makes either Charlie or Rachel remotely interesting is the idea they might have been the murderer. In the end, the motives of the real murderer felt like an information dump and really felt like a bit of a cheat, designed just to string the reader along.

As a result, I struggled to find myself really embracing the whole concept because I just couldn’t bring myself to care. It wasn’t helped by the fact that none of the characters were really relatable at all. The whole idea of everyone (bar Rachel) living in excessively opulent surroundings, with the best of the best laid out at their feet, just didn’t work for me. The constant brand dropping reminded me of Bret Easton Ellis’ Patrick Bateman and simply made me roll my eyes.

Ultimately, this was a really good idea that was, for me, executed rather poorly. I can see why many have enjoyed it; however, personally it felt like ordering a steak for dinner and being served lukewarm tofu. It wasn’t awful, but I really quite desperately wanted more.

It's difficult to summarise what this novel is about without giving away some clues so I will just say that it primarily involves a married gay couple, Charlie and Matthew, who are father's to Matthew's nephew Titus. Into that world comes Rachel who Matthew asks to join his book club. Charlie has never been interested in joining Matthew's bookclub and finds it disconcerting that Matt asks Rachel whom he has only just met. There is also an apparent class disparity between Rachel and the two men who are very well off. Charlie's suspicions are accurate in that Rachel does indeed have an agenda but it's not one that Charlie could possibly foresee.

Told from different points of view of the main characters, this well-written and engaging narrative keeps the reader guessing right until the end. There are plenty of sub-plots to provide complexity and lull the reader into a false sense of security. I don't think I was entirely sold on the climax but it certainly provided a left-field outcome. A most enjoyable read.

The Dinner Guest centres around Charlie, his husband Matthew, their teenage son Titus and Rachel, the stranger who has inserted herself into their apparently golden lives after a chance meeting in a bookshop.

From the very outset we know that one of these four people is dead - yes, over the dinner table - and one of them has confessed to the murder. But of course, it's not that simple.

The narrative follows events both before and after the murder, from the viewpoints of Charlie and Rachel, as information is gradually disclosed to eventually reveal the full picture.

The characters - most of them, with the exception of Rachel - inhabit a very privileged world, alternating between their home in Kensington and Chelsea and various country estates. It's not a world most of us will be familiar with - though to be fair to Charlie and Matthew, they are at least to some extent aware of their own privilege, rubbing shoulders with the aristocracy and a former Prime Minister. (I did laugh at the reference to the Rees-Moggs - "there's a time and a place for them and I'm not quite sure Christmas is one of them".) Well, quite.

The central characters here are a bit different from the usual, not just because their family setup differs from the "norm" - a teenage boy with two dads. Titus, in particular, was a character who stood out, if not necessarily in a good way (his behaviour is alarming) and I'd have been interested to know what was going on in his head at times.

Overall The Dinner Guest was a very enjoyable, even addictive read which kept me guessing throughout. I raced through it to find out what was going on (who really stabbed Matthew? What is Rachel's secret agenda?) and if the eventual reveals felt just a little underwhelming, that's probably because I just read too many thrillers.

A well constructed and gripping story, though ultimately it wasn't entirely credible that people would act in the way they do here. This is the first book I've read by B.P. Walter and I'd be interested to check out his other work on the strength of it.

I thought the suspense this story generated was palpable but the book just went on for too long. It could have been at least 50 pages shorter and tightened up. The suspense gave way to "just TELL ME ALREADY" toward the end.

Charlie Allerton-Jones is happily married to Matthew and their adopted son Titus. When a seeming stranger inserts themselves into their lives and Matthew takes her in with open arms, he has no idea what he is getting into. As the plot unravels, more and more of the backstory is revealed.

I cannot really describe past that without giving away important tidbits of the plot, which were the best part of reading this and discovering the holy cats crazy stuff that makes this book so suspenseful.

I really enjoyed reading the story. I would consider reading other books by this author and that is the highest praise I can give. I docked 1 star because as I said, I think this went on a little too long.

Wow this book is probably one of the best thrillers I have read in a long time! I absolutely loved how this story was written, it bounces around a timeline between two characters and I thought it was brilliant! The chapters were short and fast paced, which kept me enthralled into the story until I finished it. Just when I thought I had the plot figured out, B P Walter would throw some twists and turns into the story! I just loved this entire story from beginning to end and did not want it to be done. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a good thriller!

The Dinner Guest by B P Walter is a tale of secrets and lies in the opulent world of West London that ultimately ends in death. Four people are present in the dining room on that fateful evening, Matthew, his husband Charlie, their son Titus and Rachel: the perfect stranger. Matthew and Charlie met Rachel less than a year ago. It was a chance meeting in a bookstore that led to them inviting her to their book group and very slowly she starts to ingratiate her way into every aspect of their lives. This book is a compelling thriller, impossible to put down. It’s full of secrets and lies and has some great twists and turns. Thank you to NetGalley, One More Chapter and the author for the chance to review.

This is absolutely what I want in a thriller! Love that it wasn't a "typical" family, and I enjoyed how well the author simulated the back stories. Each character had me questioning their motives. This story was well-paced and the twists were perfect!! I didn't see many twists coming, though they weren't totally out of left field either. You may need to suspend disbelief a bit with this one, but it's worth it.

Charlie is happily married to Matthew and they have a fifteen year old adopted son.
One day Charlie meets Rachel at a book store and this incident will change his life forever.
A story about jealousy, revenge, secrets and murder that kept me guessing.
I found it hard to put this book down.
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.