I loved THE GIRLS so much so the bar was pretty high, but I enjoyed THE GUEST enormously. Cline is excellent at getting into the realities of what being a young woman in the world exactly entails. I appreciated Alex, for all of her mess, because she felt like a real person in a tough situation. I found myself rooting for her, but I wasn't sure about what exactly, considering the ending was not the biggest surprise (not a knock on the story, but rather a note to myself -- what DO I want for Alex?). I suppose I'm rooting for her later future, the one that looks back on her early 20s as tumultuous but necessary to turn her into the woman she ultimately becomes. The woman is resourceful, I'll tell you that much! Great read, will continue to look forward to Cline's future work.

Thank you to Random House for the opportunity to read this book in advance of its publication. I loved The Girls and Daddy (Cline’s 2021 short story collection), so I was especially eager to see what she would do for her second novel.

In The Guest, she gives us an opportunistic escort named Alex, gliding amongst upperclass society on Long Island—and routinely leaving trouble in her wake. A fish out of water, except this fish isn’t afraid to be a great white shark.

The plot, like Cline’s prose, moves smoothly, Alex molding and remolding herself in order to both please and manipulate each new person she encounters. There were several instances where I expected one thing to happen and was surprised (and excited) to be taken elsewhere. In the end, this book was everything I wanted. I actually tried to delay finishing it because I was enjoying it so much.

Alex planned to spend her summer, and hopefully beyond, with the older man she's been staying with in the East End of Long Island. But then after an incident at a dinner party, Alex is sent away with nothing more than a train ticket. Left with little money and only the few clothes in her bag, Alex spends the week trying to find ways to stay in a town that does not seem welcoming to those like her who are often on the outskirts even when they are in the room.

This was a tense thriller, with well drawn characters and a strong sense of place that will keep you turning the pages until the very end.

Highly recommended!

Such an interesting story! I liked how Cline drew it all together. I was entertained and invested in what the MC was doing. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Four stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for gifting me an ARC of Emma Cline’s newest novel The Guest. In exchange I offer my honest review.

Emma Cline possess a special gift. She is able to write characters who are messy and problematic, yet as a reader you are completely drawn to them. I found this especially true with Cline’s newest character, Alex, a 22 year old grifter getting by on her charms and sexual prowess. Having burnt too many bridges, Alex finds herself living with an older man out on Long Island, swimming & sunning passing time and avoiding former friends and lovers whom she’s scammed and betrayed. When Alex disappoints her latest mark she soon finds herself adrift with no place to return. In the course of one week, we watch Alex maneuver and exploit those she comes across never knowing what might happen next. I found myself consumed by Alex and this provocative story from Emma Cline.

I absolutely recommend you pick up a copy of this steamy book when it hits the shelves on May 16, 2023. It’s the perfect beach or poolside escape for a hot summer day.

In The Guest, Alex is a 22 year old girl who has spent the last month of summer staying with an older man, Simon, at his East End Long Island house. After acting out at a dinner party, Simon suggests Alex’s stay has come to an end, buying her a train ticket back to the city. Alex hasn’t been honest about her life back in NYC though – With limited resources and numerous burned bridges, she has few reasons to get back and more reasons to avoid returning, but Simon knows nothing about this. Alex decides to stay in Long Island, holding out for the next week until Simon’s Labor Day party. She knows with a little time to cool down, he’ll come around.

Alex has nowhere else to go in East End, so she manages to pass this interim time with fabricated stories, false friendships, and taking advantage of situations as they present themselves. Alex was shady and shameless, but despite my dislike of her behavior, I couldn’t look away! I was constantly curious to see what she would do next. Reading about Alex’s antics, I wanted to say to her, you need a reality check, and a shower, but I must give Emma Cline credit for captivating me.

I have thoughts about the ending of The Guest, but won’t detail much here in an effort to avoid spoilers – I can see why readers may or may not like this one, and look forward to hearing others’ thoughts about it!

The Guest follows Alex, a young woman with a questionable background who finds herself meandering about on Long Island for a week after a fight with her older "boyfriend." Alex is pretty awful and while I wouldn't exactly say I was rooting for her, I felt so anxious for her as she navigated her way through her week on Long Island. The author definitely makes the characters stand out in a way that you will feel for them in some way. I was entertained the whole way through and was even on the edge of my chair for most of it. Alex was a manipulative mess I couldn't look away from.

The Guest really showed how easy it is for scammers to latch on and get away with things once they know how to play the game. This is definitely the perfect summer book to throw in your pool/beach bag.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for a review copy. I can't wait to check out Emma Cline's backlist as a I loved her writing style.

UGH. I loved this book so much.

I am so thankful to NetGalley, Random House, and Emma Cline for the digital copy of this book, and I'm incredibly thankful to PRH Audio for the audiobook access to this messy piece of art. This baby comes out on May 16, 2023, and I'm so excited for the upcoming hype.

Alex finds herself unwelcome in her east-coast pleasures, jumping from man to man, with exciting and somewhat dangerous backgrounds, seeking to be noticed, cared-for (not too attention, though), and a free-pass to good drinks, potent drugs, and connections like no other. Alex is definitely a grifter, coasting on fumes and lucky passes in order to get to her end goal of a party at the end of the summer.

If you're looking for a hot-mess express that screams "Good for her" then The Guest by Emma Cline is the one for you!

It's a story as old as time, the story of a woman trying to make her way in the world with the "help" of men. It's the story of Lily Bart, Holly Golightly and a host of other women who slowly slip into being a sugar baby, an escort, a sex worker.

Alex is an enigma. She tells people she's 22 but I think she's lying. Not pretty enough to be a model, or so she says, she lies and steals to get by. She's a grifter who picks her marks carefully: people of any age who seem lost, needy, trusting.

The issue I had with the book is that it just drifts along with no plot or forward momentum. The only thing in the book that provides the slightest amount of tension is a guy who keeps texting Alex throughout the book, increasingly menacingly. She stole something (drugs? money?) from him and he isn't happy.

The writing is good but we get no insight into Alex beyond the present and, on top of that, the ending is unresolved. This is obviously deliberate, but gives the book a flimsy feel, as if it might drift away like a leaf on the breeze, as shiftless and flighty as Alex.

Loved this. Picture Cheever’s “The Swimmer” as told by Anna Delvy. This is an anti-trauma-plot novel: Alex’s survival-instinct grifting has this sang froid about it—an insistent immersion in present tense that refuses to engage or consider the past. And yet the novel itself is saved from any kind of coldness or psychological disengagement by its prose, which is at once sharp and warm-blooded. Emma Cline’s work is so precisely observed and executed. I admired this book a great deal.

I really enjoyed the third person POV but wow, Alex gives me a lot of anxiety. This is going to be a great summer read and I’m curious to hear and talk with others about that ending! Thank you Netgalley for the ARC

I thought this book was mesmerizing and I couldn't stop reading it! An interesting commentary on class, money and power. I enjoyed following Alex's journey, it felt very dream-like and surreal.

It was difficult to be enamored of a main character that is so engrossed in herself that she doesn’t realize or doesn’t care about the harm she causes others. Written in third person, the story progresses slowly as Alex stumbles through a week on Long Island high on drugs, doing a lot of swimming, and mooching on the good will of others. The writing style was interesting and the setting was perfectly described.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC to read and review.

While the premise of this novel seemed promising, the lack of plot and pacing made it difficult to really get into. An unlikeable protagonist can only take a novel so far without some form of deeper meaning.

I read the author's debut novel The Girls and loved it. When I saw this was coming out I had to read it. I am unsure how to explain this book. I am still unclear about the ending. That said even though it appears the book is about this girl trying to hang out in LI until a Labor Day party with little money and no place to stay you can't help but watch like a train wreck to see what she does and what happens. You think this will be boring but it draws you in.

This book feels like you are trapped in the Triangle of Sadness film. It follows Alex, as she is unceremoniously kicked out of her boyfriend’s house in the Hamptons. Trying to hang on, Alex surfs from situation to situation, sure if she can just make it to the Labor Day party, everything will turn out fine. The ending will probably frustrate some people—there’s no real closure.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Look for it in your local and online bookstores and libraries on May 16th.

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

This novel is mesmerizing as it tells the story of Alex, a 22 year old grifter who has been invited to spend the month of August with her very wealthy and much older boyfriend, Simon, at his beach house on Long Island. After getting into a fender bender in his car and then embarrassing him at a dinner party, Simon summarily dismisses Alex with only a train ticket back to the city and a ride to the station. Alex has burned all of her bridges in the city, so she convinces herself that Simon just needs a few days to cool off and then she can walk back into his life at his Labor Day party.

Told in third person from Alex’s perspective, we drift with her from place to place as she does what she must to stay on Long Island until Simon’s party. We never learn much about Alex’s murky past, but you still get the sense that you know her and what she’s about. Her story unfolds in a hazy, drug and alcohol-fueled, almost dream-like narrative. It is compulsively readable, a train wreck that is impossible to look away from as Alex sets a collision course with her destiny.

I love Emma Cline and her latest novel "The Guest" is tremendous! A really exciting story of a woman who is basically a "stoweaway" in the Hamptons. Alex tries to scam her way into various social circles and it's legitimately thrilling as you wait to see if she's going to be discovered.

Cline is a master at capturing the details of the world around us--the people and their possessions. Read it.

Netgalley provided me a free e-galley in return for an honest review.

I was looking forward to this book, as a fan of Emma Cline's 'The Girls' and her sparse, yet powerful, style of writing. When #NetGalley provided an advance copy, I dove in immediately and stayed captivated through the final page. The book exceeded expectations. It is subtle, enigmatic, and very dark. The main character, Alex, navigates through the lives of, primarily, men by becoming the woman she believes they desire. Her dreamy thinking resembles a fairy tale, but the reality described is the opposite of anything magical or glamorous. It is very, very lonely and tense. Unfortunately, she is a stranger even to herself and cannot effectively gauge her own emotions and how she comes across. From the beginning, it is obvious that she has suffered tremendous mental and emotional damage in her past, and is detached from others and from herself.

Many lines point vaguely to her inner experience: "Alex had the sick sense that she was a ghost. Wandering in the land of the living." "[She] just needed to be seen with anyone who had already been approved, and that would be indication enough that she belonged." She was in "The game of convincing people how much things were worth..."

Also dark and notable is her damage to those around her -- people and things. She found that "people were mostly fine with being victimized in small doses." Scattered throughout the novel are vague references to an earlier life -- in the company of other girls who "cried for faraway mothers" some referred to as "anorexic Eastern Europeans." She alluded to learning how to maneuver herself around men from these types of women. Other parts of the novel make it plain that she falls short of these aspirations and is even distanced from and excluded by the very women with whom she "worked."

Her flaws and misperceptions, and how she haplessly and unconscionably ends up entangled in the lives of even those who cannot protect themselves, is what's most gripping and kept me, as the reader, constantly awaiting what would happen next. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. I just love this writer. Fans of her writing will not be disappointed. And I can absolutely see this being brought to a larger screen.

Have you ever just felt the tension jumping off the page in a story? This book had me at the edge of my seat and I did not want to stop. It’s not a thriller, but you will be asking yourself where is this going? (Amazon calls this psychological fiction.). In this novel, a 22-year-old women with an ambiguous sense of morals and self drifts through the beaches of Long Island after her older lover has his assistant dump her off at the train station after she makes a series of bad decisions at a party. This book made my skin crawl, but in a good way.