I'm giving this four stars because the truth is, no matter how crazy it got, I was always itching to get back to reading and finding out what would happen next. If you liked The Guest List, I think you'll like this.
This story is buck wild. If you want an escapist read, you've found it! I suppose in thrillers, it is key to let the reader figure out some small piece of the puzzle and wonder how it's going to get there. This novel gave that, and then some very surprising twists.
The cons-there were a few too many twists, it creeped towards convoluted. It felt jam packed. There was a weird fatphobic side plot. The narrator got a bit repetitive in her constant swirling self doubt. I don't think the character was written to be stupid, but it got to a point where she was beginning to be depicted as stupid.
All in all, it was a fun, crazy story that I couldn't put down (in audiobook form, haha).
Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC.

First I would like to thank Netgalley and Macmillan audio for a copy of this audiobook to read and review.

The narrator Clare Corbett did a very good job of bringing the characters to life, I found her voice pleasant to listen to.
The story gave me quite a bit of anxiety and I found I kept yelling at the main character, Rachel. But the ending made all the anxiety worth it and blew me away!

Overall I really enjoyed this audiobook and will definitely read more books by this author and add Clare Corbett to my favorite narrator list.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to hear the audiobook for this. The app wasn't working for me. I will be sure to check it out once I can it on a different platform! I love the author and can't wait to read this.

I listened to the audiobook and the narration was amazing. Truthfully what keep me coming back to the story was how well Clare Corbett narrated and captured these different characters.

But I need to keep it real- this book is a bit of a train wreck. There is no one you are truly “rooting for” which is tough for me. But its all very well written. You feel like you are in the resort overhearing these terrible people lie to each other while sipping on a frozen cocktail. The tension is at times palpable.

I appreciate the use of an unreliable narrator or maybe here a more accurate description will be- completely uniformed narrator who would prefer to keep her head in the sand?

Overall I was both completely frustrated and completely hooked into The Guilt Trip

I love the other books I have read by Sadie Jones and this is just as great! I love her fabulous twisty stories. I feel like this one didn’t fail me and couldn’t stop listening. I just binged this in a day while doing house chores. I loved how the narrator tried to give each of the 6 characters a different tone to help the listener understand who is talking. Highly recommend for anyone looking for a twisty thriller.

•Ｒｅｖｉｅｗ•

★ ★ ★ ★
Pages: 320
Genre: mystery/thriller

“𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚕𝚒𝚎𝚏 𝚊𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚞𝚛𝚍𝚎𝚗 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚒𝚜 𝚊𝚕𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚊𝚜 𝚙𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚞𝚕 𝚊𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚏𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚜𝚎𝚚𝚞𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎𝚜.”

Thank you Netgalley & St. Martins Press for an e-arc AND advanced audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this book! This was totally The Guest List vibes but… better executed! I have not read anything by Sandie Jones so this was a delight for my first.

I really enjoyed reading about the Portugal scenes and learning the connections between these 6 friends. Despite the build up of secrets and drama, there was a lot of love in this story!

However, that being said, I feel like the end was a little confusing/rushed. With all of the build up and drama, the end kind of fizzled out too easily for me. I had to sit and process after what actually happened and make sense of it.

I guess that just means I wanted more! The audio was narrated by Clare Corbett who did a wonderful job with all of the characters and personalities. Also, she nailed it with the annoying voice for Ali 😂

College best friends and their spouses travel for a wedding. Sounds simple enough except their is a web connecting everyone together in ways you may not expect. It will slowly untangle as you read but you’ll find untangling the web will just create more tension. This will leave you theorizing and guessing until the very end.


Honestly - not my favorite Sandra Jones book. It has intrigue and mystery but also a LOT of drama and secrets that kind of turn me off. I feel like bad the characters just been open and honest with one another the explosive ending never would have happened

The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones, narrated by Clare Corbett, tells the story of three couples on a weekend away for a destination wedding and the lies they've held secret for so long. The narration is honestly what helped me hold on to this story until the end. The first three quarters of the story seemed to drag on with no major plot coming to light until nearly the end. And the ending! What exactly happened? It went from hardly anything happening to everything all at once and it was challenging to keep up. This definitely wasn't a "have your on the edge of your seat" kind of thriller, and mostly didn't feel like a thriller at all until the very end. I would give this 3.5 stars if I could.
While I didn't love The Guilt Trip I would read additional books from this author.

Not my kind of read. The accent of the reader, the cheeky storyline was not enough to hold my interest. With the brief description I truly expected a more well-developed, less flimsy storyline.

I was excited to dip into a new book from Sandie Jones, and the audio performance was very good. I didn't like it as much as THE OTHER WOMAN, but would read her again. While the premise was interesting--six people sharing a villa for a destination wedding, and all their connections and secrets, past and present--I found myself getting frustrated with the main character, Rachel. She kept leaping to conclusions about her husband that didn't seem to be based on anything factual, and ruminating, and having visions of his betrayal. There was a great sense of foreboding and suspense, but the twists were easy to see coming. Jones did craft a satisfying resolution to the events, however, and is especially gifted at distributing karmic justice in her novels.

The Guilt Trip
By Sandie Jones

Thank you to #netgalley and Minotaur publishing for an ARC of this audiobook.

This story is about 6 friends who travel to Portugal for a destination wedding. Rachel & Jack, Noah and Paige and the Groom, Jacks brother Will and his bride Allison. Who is having an affair with who & who is telling the truth? Rachel and Noah have been life long friends in which Paige and Jack are not all to comfortable with. But Paige and Rachel are best friends.

When listening to this story, at first I found myself easily distracted by other things going on around me but about half way through I started to enjoy the story more. By the end, I was hanging on my every word.

Overall I give this book 3 stars! I enjoyed it but like I said, at first it was difficult to stay focused on the story.

Again, thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the audiobook for my honest review.

It’s a pet peeve of mine when female authors write really dumb protagonists. That might sound harsh, but I am not asking for likable characters, just ones who aren't totally oblivious. I had high hopes for The Guilt Trip, because I liked the author’s previous book, The Other Woman. Unfortunately, it was not what I had hoped. The plot felt predictably recycled and the characters like caricatures. Rachel in particular annoyed me with her blindness to what appeared obvious to me as the reader. It's got a very soapy quality, which can be fun at times yet didn't really work here. I'm sorry to write a negative review, but if you decide to read it, I hope you have a more enjoyable reading experience than I did.

3.5 Stars

This was an interesting one and having loved The Other Woman, I was excited to give it a go.

The book centers on 6 friends( 3 couples) going to Portugal for one of the couples nuptials. Things take a turn from there. This book really is great at keeping you guessing and wondering who is a liar and who is telling the truth.

My biggest gripe was that the last 10% was where all of the action was and I think I would have liked this better if it had been set up differently. It reminded me a bit of The Guest List- however I liked the format of that one better.

All in all- very quick read, great narration, and a fun thriller. I would recommend if you like twisty tales, gossip and lies, and a good amount of comeuppance.

This was very character driven. Once I got all the characters straight, I could follow the story.
Multiple relationship connections and one wedding. I almost gave up on this one, but stuck with it . It definitely picked up a little more than half way through. What a trip!

This book had me all over the place...but in a good way. It's hard to write a review without including spoilers on this one because honestly, almost every little detail, no matter how insignificant they may seem, eventually ties in to something else.

I thought this book was unique in the fact that all the characters were essentially stuck with each other. Sandie Jones does an amazing job of describing the characters so you like some and can't stand others. Much like "The Other Woman", you think you have everyone all figured out.

This novel is filled with drama, drinking, love, sex, and so much more. I really did NOT see the ending coming, though once it happened, it really did make sense. Kind of like a "Big Little Lies" type of novel, so I would recommend, but only for older audiences.

*I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my honest review.*

Secrets and a destination wedding... It sounds like a book I've read before, but I would definitely hit this party again! Messy secrets that could destroy any family - what is better than this for a novel? The misdirection is fantastic throughout the unfolding of the story and you never know who to trust. Jones is the queen of the misdirection and I wasn't expecting anything that happened.

The narration was wonderful! The audio version was spot on for what I expected the character to have.

This was only okay for me. The story was interesting and somewhat kept my attention, but I felt like I'd heard/read this story before and I didn't care enough about the characters. There were some twists and reveals that were surprising and I didn't see coming and I was engaged enough to complete the book to find out the end.

Another big bummer of a book for me! I'm sad to say that my expectations were high for this book, but they were not met. There were many elements of this that didn't work out in my opinion, and the biggest beef I have is the number of characters that are introduced so fast with very little distinguishing each one from another. I had to keep consulting the Goodreads summary to remember who was who, who was married to whom, and who hated whom. I didn't actually like ANY of these characters, especially not our character who was the protagonist/narrator for the first half of the book, Rachel. I could have done with a lot more backstory and exposition to explain their relationships, rather than being dumped into the very start of their Portugal wedding trip with no context.

So, we've got two characters, Rachel and Noah, who were best friends (maybe more?) in college, who are now in their 40s and married with kids to two other people. Rachel's husband's younger brother is getting married to a young, floozy-ish girl named Ali. The six of them all go to Portugal together for the wedding. Here's a little diagram:

Rachel -----friends----- Noah
| |
married married
| |
Jack Paige
|
brother
|
Will --getting married to--Ali

That's basically all you need to know. There are some dislikes in the group, but the whole novel is just people speculating as to others' secrets and becoming distrustful of each other.

Look, I feel like I'm a seasoned reader, but I had a hard time keeping track of everyone, especially given that you don't know any of them from Adam, they all have very basic names and are white with nothing to identify each of them except maybe their jobs, and there are unresolved feelings between some members of the party. I couldn't fully understand why Will and Ali invited these other four to their pre-wedding cliffside suite - it didn't seem like Will and Jack are all that close, and none of the others really even knew Ali at all.

What drove me nuts about this book was that I was expecting so much more action, drama, secrets, suspense, or something from these characters, but what you get for a good chunk of the book is Rachel spinning out over who her husband may or may not be having an affair with, meanwhile dealing with her not-so-latent feelings for her friend Noah. It all goes on inside Rachel's head and it's extremely frustrating when you just want the plot to move forward. Then, when it finally does, you get introduced to a whole bevy of new characters at the wedding (when I didn't even get to know the original six!!) and things just go downhill from there.

Overall, I really wished I liked this book more, but it was simply not for me. Thank you to Minotaur for the ARC via Netgalley.

The Guilt Trip follows 3 couples, Rachel & Jack, Paige & Noah, and Ali & Will, as they go on a weekend trip for Ali and Will's wedding. Rachel and Noah have been friends for years and have a secret history that no one on the trip knows about, but secrets come unraveled as their weekend abroad progresses.

The premise of this book greatly intrigued me, and I was interested due to its similarity to The Guest List by Lucy Foley, which is one of my favorite books. Although I did enjoy the writing style and narrative structure, the execution of the story fell flat for me. The characters were extremely unlikable, judgemental, and quite immature for them being in the early 40s. The plot also seemed very slow moving and contrived at times. Because of my lack of empathy for these characters and lack of interest in the actual storyline, I found it difficult to feel fully immersed in the story.

I was sucked in immediately, but I struggled a bit in the middle of the book. My issues were mostly with the characters. The author did perhaps too good of a job picking them apart and displaying their faults. So much so that I struggled reading on to find out how things would ultimately pan out. I just didn't care enough about them.

But then I forced myself to push through it, and I'm glad that I did. Most of the characters redeemed themselves, and actually turned out to be wonderful people. It definitely does a nice job of illustrating that first impressions can be wrong.