The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones is a thrilling tale of love, love lost, long lost love and deceitful love. From the moment you start this book you are wrapped up in the world of Rachel, her husband Jack, her best friend Noah and his wife Paige as they embark on a trip to Portugal to celebrate Jack’s brother, Will, and fiancé Ali’s wedding. As we get to know the three couples we find that their past has not been kept in the past and is still haunting them in the present.

Thank you to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This story is full of unlikeable characters, backstabbing drama, and a whole lot of unreliability. While the overarching storyline was good, I found it hard to keep up with the number of characters and all of their sordid secrets. There was literally no one to root for, and it was hard to feel invested in the outcome.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Three couples venture off to Portugal for a destination wedding for Ali and Will. There, secrets will be revealed and the friendships and marriages go awry.

This was a pretty quick and suspenseful read. A couple of twists, especially at the end.

Y’all, this was disappointing. I really enjoyed her book The Other Woman so I had high hopes for this one. But no. It was not a thriller. It was a domestic drama with a crazy, unrealistic, action-packed ending. While it was fun to read the last 50ish pages, the end didn’t really justify the means. Unfortunately, I don’t recommend.

This cover is so gorgeous and the premise sounded interesting but this story just didn't work well for me. I'm not a high drama person. I'm not completely opposed to drama in a book, especially if it moves a plot along and fits in well, but this whole entire book is drama.

It's 6 people - 3 couples, all friends and headed off to the wedding for 2 of them. But really, it's a relay of who you think is having an affair. There are fingers being pointed everywhere and, in between each new reveal and blow up is either a food event or other wedding drama. I think if I'd liked a single character in the story, it might have helped, but maybe not. It was just too much relationship drama and not as much mystery for my taste.

<i>A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.</i>

I listened to the audio version of this book. Here is my review: Five long-time friends are traveling to Portugal from GB for the wedding of one of them. The sixth person is the bride-to-be, a boisterous young woman who seems rather self-absorbed. Everyone has secrets. Which are true? Which are false? This book focuses on interpersonal relations and suspicions among partners. It was an interesting book, with some surprising outcomes. I'd recommend it!

Two couples, Rachel and Jack, Paige and Noah - go to the destination wedding of Jack's brother Will and his wife-to-be Ali in Portugal, and the backbiting, gaslighting, and buildups of secrets and suspicion begin. Besides Noah and Will, who don't have much personality at all - they all seem to deserve each other. Perhaps this was on me, this was much more of a soap opera focused on infidelities, imagined and real, than the thriller I expected. The "action" was repetitive and a little hard to care about, given the unlikability of most of the primary characters. Nearly abandoned it several times, but powered through, and the ending was a little far-fetched but fairly well-executed - 2.5 stars, rounded down for the first 90% of the book.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is a huge and repetitive mess. I kept thinking something was going to shake well and it did not.
Free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

This domestic thriller was like running a marathon. A quick moving dramatic story of couples intertwined lives attending a wedding. Lots of twist and turns. Enjoy this quick read, and the deep personality traits of each character.

What a fun ride! The characters were really well written, the atmosphere was perfectly described and the tangled web of relationships was well explained. There were a few things I'd unraveled, but there were still a few surprises, which for me makes for a great mystery. I will seek more from this author and I would recommend this to anyone looking for a good story about friendship, betrayal and destination weddings.

A promising premise, a stunning setting that fell short.

This was a highly anticipated read for me and unfortunately, it wasn't all that I expected it to be as I was under the impression it would be more of a thriller. Don't get me wrong this is still a decent book but it was difficult to follow at times and the characters weren't very likable at all. This is a novel set in a beautiful Portuguese Villa, packed with drama and friendship betrayal. The story is filled with lies and has the reader trying to decipher the truth between the couples. The ending provides quite a twist but left me questioning if all the build-up was worth it.

Thank you to NetGalley and St.Martin's Press for the ARC Digital Copy of The Guilt Trip.

Intense. Chilling. Twisted. Read in one sitting. I am loving this genre reminds me I’d I have a destination wedding NO CLIFFS

Jones is the queen of subterfuge and the path we start on isn’t always where we end up. When a group of friends go on a weekend trip for a destination wedding, things don’t turn out quite as expected. Ali (the bride) is a ditzy blonde and the stories she tells just might not be true. Jake and Rachel and Noah and Paige have been friends forever, but these friends have secrets, BIG secrets. As the story unfolds so do the secrets, but who’s telling the truth? A soapy fun read with an ending that works perfectly!

A group of long time friends travels to Portugal for a destination wedding. In the process we find they all are lying about something, secrets start to come out, and things get very out of hand.

The prologue starts out hinting at a death and I was invested from that moment. This one is a reaaallly slow burn - that death doesn’t actually happen until almost the very end. Some of the secrets were easy to guess but some were very surprising. This was a fun summer thriller!

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy

Ali and Will are having a wedding in Portugal and only forty others are invited: Will's brother Jack and his wife Rachel and Rachel's best friend Paige and her husband Noah. Ali is the "new" kid on the block because the other five have known each other a long time. Ali isn't well-liked/accepted by anyone except, of course, Will. So they all go to Portugal with reservations.

The scenery described of Nazare, Portugal, a gorgeous beach with a cliff view was breathtaking. It certainly made me want to see it in person. There was so much drama during the weekend wedding trip! OMG! Every person there with perhaps one exception had deep, dark secrets that were about to come to light. Eventually no one knew who to trust about things that were unfolding and who was telling lies or truth.

I liked the story overall but what I thought about the drama was that it was not completely realistic. That is obviously just my opinion, but for me it was a bit over the top. Otherwise I really liked it.

I had both the ebook and audio version (thanks to NetGalley) and I thought the narrator Clare Corbett did an excellent job and the pacing was really good. I was able to understand her accent and I tend to have a hard time with accents, so I was thankful for that.

I'd like to thank NetGalley and St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books for an e-ARC in exchange for my opinion, which is mine alone.

I sadly had to DNF this book. It fell flat and was insanely boring. I couldn’t quite figure out what the purpose of the book was or even what genre it was trying to be. I kept finding myself confused on what was happening or going to happen. Overall it frustrated me. Reading is supposed to be fun and entertaining this felt like a job reading this book. I’m sorry for the bad review. I hope to read more books by sandi and hope to enjoy her next book more. Thank you for this gifted copy.

Thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for the advance copy of this e-book. Jack and Rachel and their best friends Noah and Paige travel to Portugal to attend the wedding of Jack’s brother, Will. No one is too keen to attend. And that's all because of Ali, Will's fiance. She is trying desperately to fit in, but she's just trying too much. No one dislikes Ali more than Jack, and that's when his wife Rachel gets suspicious. They're are plenty of twists and false leads in this one!

Unfortunately, I could not finish this title. I tried multiple times, but it just didn’t happen. I even tried to listen to it and felt as though I was wasting my time.

I hope to read some other reviews that will guide me back to this title, but I didn’t feel like the novel flowed very well. I love books that are about a group of friends too, but this one just didn’t do it for me.

3.5 STARS

Six friends.
Three couples.
One fatal misunderstanding . . .

As the weekend unfolds, the secrets each of them hold begin to spill, and friendships and marriages threaten to unravel. Soon, jumping to conclusions becomes the difference between life and death.

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After reading The Guest List earlier this year, I was a little worried that THE GUILT TRIP would be too similar. Thankfully, the only thing that is even remotely similar is the "destination wedding gone wrong" plot. This was a quick, popcorn thriller with loads of juicy drama (just what I love!) Full of twists, turns and unreliable narrators, I thoroughly enjoyed this one!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for my ARC! THE GUEST LIST is out now.

I’ve never disliked any of Jones’s books, but this one was the first one to engage me as fully as The Other Woman did. The points of view, playing with timelines, and character development made me immediately engaged and invested in the story and i read this one in a day. An excellent story that doesn’t shy away from intricate plot points and avoids plot holes or unbelievable storylines. Loved it!