** Thank you NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. **

Wow! Amazing book! This author never disappoints. The beginning was a bit slow but as it builds up it draws you in. I could not put it down! So many twists and so much drama. This author really knows how to write a good twist! I also recommend “The Other Woman” by this same author.

This book was sent to me by nethalley on Kindle for review. At times it was confusing. Other times, intriguing. Try it

The Guilt Trip is a gripping thriller. It was a slow burn-which I really liked. The synopsis of the book was intriguing to me and in my opinion was done very well! My main gripe with this novel would have to be with the characters. They fell flat for me. The main character complained a lot which was a bit annoying and the other characters were not that likeable. This is not usually a problem, I don't think characters have to be likeable to be good but I found myself not invested in them or rooting for them which took away from the novel. Overall though, the plot was very interesting and worth a read!

Another excellent read from Sandie Jones. I got into this one right away and even though I can usually guess the ending in most books I did not guess the twist in this book so that’s why I gave it 5 stars.

Another terrific chilling thriller by Sandie Jones.Sat down to read a few pages & could not put down.So many twists and turns so many shocking moments.A thriller I will be recommending,#netgalley#st.martins books

This story was a slow burn. The main character, Rachel, is the same age as I am and has been married the same amount of time so I instantly connected with her. She has traveled to Portugal for the wedding of her brother in law, Will and soon to be sister in law, Ali. Not only has she traveled with the future couple and her husband, Jack but their best friends Paige and Noah. Upon arrival in Portugal Rachel starts to have some serious doubts about her husband's fidelity and think that there might be something going on with him and Ali. Ali is a very outgoing, drop dead gorgeous woman who also works with Jack. Paige is right there to stand by Rachel however there is more than meets the eye with Rachel and Noah.

What I liked about this book was I thought I knew where the story was leading. However I was dead wrong. You think you know what is going to happen but in true Sadie Jones fashion, you have no idea.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books and NetGalley for this advance arc.

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THE GUILT TRIP - May 31, 2021 Release⁣
By: Sandie Jones ⁣
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The concept of this book was really good, I love books that revolve around weddings and the fact that it was a thriller really had me excited! I loved Lucy Foley’s ‘The Guest List’ and I was hoping this would be as good - unfortunately it fell flat.⁣
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The story is about six friends who go to Portugal because two of the friends are getting married. However, secrets unravel and things get tense has the wedding day gets closer. ⁣
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I found the main character to be super whiny and the story was very flat up until the last 85% of the book.⁣
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I guessed the ending - except for the epilogue but it wasn’t as thrilling or exciting as I had hoped.⁣
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Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. ⁣
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#bookstagram #wedding #thriller #reading #portugal #bookstagrammer #librarian #booknerd #bookpusher #netgalley #weekend

The Guilt Trip is a story of 6 friends with relationships that involve twists and turns as well as many secrets. Rachel and Noah have been best friends for their entire life however, Rachel married Jack and Noah married Paige. Paige was jealous of Rachel initially but later became good friends with her. The story takes place in Portugal as Jack’s brother Will is about to marry Ali who used to work with Jack. Rachel was concerned about Jack’s negative attitude towards Ali. When questioned, he tells Rachel that Ali was having an affair with a co-worker.After several strange occurrences, Rachel is concerned that Ali is having an affair with Jack. They begin to wonder if they should talk to Will about Ali but Will is so happy with Ali, so they do not say anything. There are a number of secret conversations between the various friends over the days leading up to the wedding which leaves the reader wondering who is telling the truth. The wedding reception has a number of surprising events occur. I recommend reading this book.

First, I want to thank netGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Minotaur Books for an advanced copy of “The Guilt Trip” by Sandie Jones in exchange for an unbiased review.

Wow. This book sucked me in and spit me out in record time. However, it really has few redeeming qualities. These characters are so dysfunctional I can only hope I don’t know anyone so clueless, shallow, evil, and kind of stupid in real life.

The story is told through the main character’s eyes, Rachel, who seems to lack any basic understanding of her husband (Jack), her best friend from college (Noah), or Noah’s wife and her best girlfriend (Paige). I don’t want to give away any of the advertised twists, but frankly, most of them were so obvious it was predictable. The foreshadowing of the steep cliffs and people falling was a bit “in your face” from the beginning. Heck, that is on the cover of the book!

But Rachel, seriously! What kind of an intelligent, mature woman sleeps with her best friend from college (who is portrayed as a total slut- sleeping with different women left and right), then sends him off on a year long world tour, marries her boyfriend and has a baby 9 months later. Pretty obvious plot point there for anyone with the ability to add. She then proceeds to dedicate her life to her family, not bothering to continue with her chosen career, and ignoring that semi-unrequited love from college. But yet she doesn’t know her husband well enough to figure out he is a pathological liar after 20 years of marriage?! You see why I felt she was clueless.

All complaining about irredeemable characters aside, I found myself drawn in and kept reading, wanting to see if I was right about who was the good guy vs bad guy. Of course it is never quite that simple. But you’ll have to grab a copy and read it to see for yourself! Another positive side note—this book really makes me want to go visit Portugal. It sounded amazing.

So. Good. Thank you Sandie Jones for another fantastic story. Setting is so important in a novel and I'm a sucker for anything tropical. Jones will have you guessing till the very end and even at that, I had to reread the ending several times to make sure I knew what happened. Such a trip! Great characters, strong plot, lots of twists and turns. I really enjoyed this book!

WOW! Amazing book. This Author is incredible. A destination wedding. Secrets and lies are plentiful. Clear your plate before starting this one. The ending and just before blew me away. Didn’t see that coming. Everything this Author writes is fantastic, Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and the Author for allowing me to read and review this book.

I'll be honest. When I first started reading, I was underwhelmed. There were a lot of characters introduced at once, each mixing into each other to be some bland mess. Maybe it's because I've spent one and a half lifetimes staring at Pinterest wedding boards or I have a crippling fear of eventually being a middle aged individual with a life full of regrets, but the novel sucked me in. After I got past the beginning and situated myself into a comfortable state within the novel, I sped through it and found myself enjoying it. You'll enjoy it if you love drama, some hints of mystery, and romance. Overall, it's a really solid novel, enough that I skipped my looming responsibilities enough to finish.

3.5 Stars Rounded Up!

A group of six friends goes to Portugal for Ali and Will's wedding. Ali can be a bit much, to put it nicely, and her personality becomes grating to most of the group as they are all shacked up in a villa together. The main character, Rachel, begins to question who Ali really is, but will she like what she finds out when she digs deeper in search of the truth?

*sigh*

Very good, but shy of great. Sandie Jones's writing was wonderful and the story was filled with a whole host of detestable characters, but based on the synopsis, I really thought I would be reading a completely different book. Without spoiling too much, the main conflict and big reveals were thriller tropes I just do not love. So much so I found myself irrationally angry pretty much the entire time I was reading. The final chapter and the epilogue did offer some overall redemption.

I want to extend my sincere thanks to NetGalley, Minotaur Books, and the fabulous Sandie Jones herself for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Sandie Jones is one of my favorite authors. I was almost jumping out of my skin in anticipation of her newest book, The Guilt Trip. This centers around two couples, each have their own issues and dynamics. Then there is the way they relate to each other as couples. It thought Sandie did a great job of creating these characters and intertwining them.

The story takes place at a villa where there is to be a wedding. Ali is, what Rachel and her friend Paige think, a vacuous bimbo who is marrying Rachels’s brother-in-law Will and as far as they are concerned, he could do way better.

Rachel starts to suspect her husband is having an affair with Ali, certain things arent adding up and Ali is always flirting with him. Why was she coming out of their bedroom, why did she insist on going for a jog soon after he did? Rachel knows something is up.

As the wedding weekend progresses, so do Rachels’s suspicions. And when Ali’s friends and family show up, certain things she has told Rachel just don’t add up and Paige agrees. But everyone has secrets and this weekend they might just be coming out…

Synopsis:

Rachel and Noah have been friends since they met at university. While they once thought that they might be something more, now, twenty years later, they are each happily married to other people, Jack and Paige respectively. Jack’s brother Will is getting married, to the dazzling, impulsive Ali, and the group of six travel to Portugal for their destination weekend.

As they arrive at a gorgeous villa perched on a cliff edge, overlooking towering waves that crash on the famous surfing beaches below at Nazaré, they try to settle into a weekend of fun. While Rachel is looking forward to getting to know her future sister-in-law Ali better, Ali can’t help but rub many of the group up the wrong way: Rachel’s best friend Paige thinks Ali is attention-seeking and childish, and while Jack is trying to support his brother Will’s choice of wife, he is also finding plenty to disagree with Noah about.

But when Rachel discovers something about Ali that she can hardly believe everything changes. As the wedding 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.

Don’t miss this or any of Sandie’s other fantastic books!

Out on August 17.

Cancel all of your plans! Once you pick this book up you won’t want to put it down! I finished this in two days and it only took that long because I had prior engagements!

This book keeps you guessing until the end! I would think I knew what was going to happen but the twist kept coming! This book is about six best friends ( 3 couples) who go to celebrate a wedding. Even though I would say more frenemies with secrets you would never have guessed! And as you get to know each character you will be guessing what else they are hiding!

I promise you this is amazing! It will not let you down! This is a book I would definitely read multiple times!

The Guilt Trip is a book about three couples who attend a destination wedding together in Portugal. With forced proximity being the name of the game, marriages come to be tested, established friendships are called into question, and a bevy of secrets, cheating, and betrayals spill out to poison the celebration - as well as the characters' relationships with one another - with disaster.

I had a good time with this one! It was fast-paced, psychological, and engaging. I tore through it in no time, curious to know what emotional fallout or calamities lay ahead for this collection of characters, who, by all appearances, were good friends with no bad blood between them but, in reality, had a lot of skeletons buried under the surface that required unearthing.

From jealousy to suspicion, and from manipulation to infidelity, nothing was off-limits. It was all there. Hidden secrets were ripe for discovery!

The six friends were all connected somehow, too. (Think: six degrees of separation.) Jack and Will were brothers. Rachel and Noah were best friends, and had been for years, but just so happened to be married to other people who wondered if they'd "always" been platonic. Paige and Rachel were gal pals. Ali and Will were the soon-to-be-newlyweds. Ali worked for Jack in the past, etc.

The story is told almost exclusively in third person, from Rachel's perspective, so there's a real sense of living through her "who or what should I believe" turmoil vicariously. There's lots of irony at work in this novel. Duplicity, as well. Even though everyone seems happy and close-knit at the beginning, it isn't long before you start wondering who's innocent of something nefarious and who's guilty.

You both trust and side-eye Jack. You seek comfort and consolation from Paige, wish for her zeal. Your heart breaks for Will, roils with envy and suspicion and doubts about Ali. You subdue the stirrings you feel for Noah, quashing them down, washing them away. You stew with anger, insecurity, pain, and disbelief at all that is happening.

I couldn't help but be invested in the uncertainty, the secrets, surrounding all the characters. Suspense was formed and maintained because of that.

I do admit I had expected this to be more like The Guest List by Lucy Foley, though. That novel left me on "who's the murderous scumbag" tenterhooks the whole time, but I liked how this one ended up being more of a suspicion-riddled, character-driven drama than a whodunnit thriller.

Some might not care for that. They might find the summary misleading in that respect. Personally, I didn't mind it. I preferred the focus on the characters and their relationships because I love sordid conflict, backstabbing, and hidden agendas in fiction. It's fun witnessing people at their most manipulative, their most petty, scraping away at the cruelties and jealousies they try to conceal. (Not sure what that says about me exactly, but hey, I'm only human.)

The lies that existed, and then were slowly revealed, between friends/lovers as well as the idea that the people you love might not always be who/what they seem--that was the driving force of the novel. Mind you, there is a Something Awful Happened™️ subplot but it's relegated to the background. The plot careens toward that event at the end, marking it as the climax, which then concludes in an abrupt fashion, so for that reason I would classify this book more as a diet domestic thriller than anything.

That said, there's still lots inside to thrill and entertain readers so buckle up! With secrets and revelations existing around every turn, you best watch where you walk. Make sure your wedding shoes are strapped on tight, y'all, because this one's bound to trip you up in a boatload of interpersonal drama and deception!

Thank you to NetGalley, Minotaur Books, and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

I love this author and everything she rights so I knew this would be no exception. She delivered. I loved this story! I’d highly recommend it to people and I think people are gonna love it!

This story took my breath away. Literarily. You know, I’ve read so many books which has fabulous synopsis and been disappointed. The synopsis for this book did not do it justice. Just saying. I can’t believe I’ll read a book without any sex scenes, no heavy emotional scenes, and enjoyed it! The only scenes or emotions are that of betrayal. Ali was a perfect set up as a flighty, amorous, and immoral young thing. Apparently appearances can be deceptive. I couldn’t put my Kindle down till I finished the story.

This is the story of what happened at a destination wedding. It was just three days. Three days from hell. There were three couples. Two have been ‘happily’ married for about two decades. Rachel and Noah were supposed to end up together but didn’t, and they are both married to two different people. They are still friends though with their respective spouses. What do you know. As it happens, someone was having affairs with someone, but not Noah and Rachel. The twist was right there under our noses. You need to read this. You’ll see.
Awesome all through. Just shows you can’t trust nobody.

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ali and Will are getting married in Portugal and they have invited Will's brother Jack, his wife Rachel, her best friend Paige and her husband Noah to share a villa overlooking the sea in the lead up to the wedding. Things spiral out of control when Rachel starts thinking Jack handle had an affair with Ali and it may still be going on.

3.5 stars

I mostly enjoyed this book as a quick and easy read. My problem with it is that if the people who knew the truth had just told the truth instead of trying to threaten others into coming clean about their indiscretions, there would have been no story. The ending and who was actually doing what with who was unexpected so it ended up being a decent book. I have read several from this author and expect that will continue.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I have loved everything Sandie Jones has written. I was so excited to see another book by her.

She definitely has an ability to draw the reader in. Her characters are captivating and her writing is full of twists and turns.

If you are looking for a quick read, that will make you keep guessing - then definitely grab this book!