I read Cline’s short story collection, Daddy last summer, and I can see a common thread between that collection and The Guest. In both works, Cline paints males as detached, self-involved, and advantageous. Her males are privileged and always get what they want, with little thought of the consequences to others. (This might be a result of her own personal experiences with an ex boyfriend’s copyright lawsuit over, The Girls?) In The Guest, Alex is a young woman who is consistently taken advantage by these men, and as a result, she’s learned to disassociate and do whatever she needs to survive, even if it’s morally questionable. She’s a drug addicted grifter who lies to take advantage of and steal money from rich men. Despite her consistently making poor choices, you can’t help but sympathize with Alex, even if she’s hard to relate to. I mean, what’s the real crime here? Older men taking sexual advantage of a troubled young woman, or a young woman using the only thing she believes she has (her sexuality) to make it through the night? Of course, neither is “right,” but that isn’t the point. The point is that it’s complicated. It’s a brand of feminism that is messy, but gives power to female sexuality.

But it’s also a class commentary, as Cline wants us to understand just how out of place Alex is amongst these elites. She’s surrounded by indulgence, tranquility and easy living, but can never fully access it. Strings are always attached, but to Alex it is okay because it will end up working out. The ending is ambiguous, but we can read between the lines. It’s not a happy tale, but I really enjoy Cline’s style and the way she renders her characters.

The Guest by Emma Cline is a lot different than the first novel I read of hers in 2016. The Girls was right up my alley as a 1960s Manson cult-esque thriller. This is NOTHING like that story and honestly this premise did not entice me as much as the first.

We learn about Alex, a 20-something woman who essentially uses rich men and well...anyone to keep her
borderline vagrant lifestyle paid for. After many cringe-worthy moments of her sometimes alcohol & drug induced pool hopping, Alex's random encounters with mostly innocent bystanders are something I don't think I'd survive for more than 12 hours.

Throughout her antics, she alludes to a Dom person from another life who she owes a lot of money too, and who she suspects is closing in on her for his payback. Cline builds an ominous tension that kept me up way too late as these two are about to run-in with each other. Alex is an extremely unlikeable character, but I was very invested in what her fate was going to lie with both him, Simon and her other hosts.

*** SPOILER ***
If you're looking for closure on her story, this is not that book unfortunately. The reader is left to make their own conclusions on the rest of her journey with Simon & Dom.

Also, WHAT HAPPENS TO THE DOG!?

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. I read the author’s debut novel and enjoyed it. I can’t put my finger on my feelings about this one. It was a quick read and had an intriguing protagonist, but left so many unanswered questions. We learn very little about any of the characters and (spoiler alert) end on a cliffhanger. It left me wanting more while not liking anyone involved in the plot or wanting to spend more time with them. This book is for someone, but I’m not sure it’s me.
⭐️⭐️⭐️

After the older man she has been living with sends her off with a train ticket back home, Alex devises a plan to stay in Long Island's posh area for as long as she can in the hopes of a reconciliation. Through various encounters, she traverses the lives of the rich and discovers the intricacies that come with such affluence and what she would have to surrender to be a part of it.

This novel teeters on the edge of obsession in such an alluring way. It illustrates what it means to no longer be desirable and the way it leads one women to push the boundaries of sex and manipulation. The keen observations she makes concerning the male gaze and the human psyche leaves a bitter taste in your mouth knowing that all of alex's issues are ones that she has manifested through her own self-victimization.

Cline offers no redemption or blatant motive for alex's tendencies and it's one of the reasons why I loved this book so much. I would often be left to second guess the intentions of our messy main character: reiterating how Alex is a friend to no one but herself. When left to her own devices, Alex manages to weave a path of destruction with everyone she comes in contact with, showing just how far she will go to obtain the life she believes she deserves.

The storytelling is magnetic and makes you feel as if you're drifting through life alongside Alex. “The Guest” was a pleasantly immersive book and I look forward to reading more of Cline's work.
I would definitely recommend this to those who enjoyed “Days of Abandonment' by Elena Ferrante and “All's Well' by Mona Awad or any story about an apathetic woman attempting to regain a semblance of control in her life.

To say pill popping Alex is unmoored is an understatement. Having fled a man named Dom in New York City, twenty-two year old Alex is now shacking up with successful Simon in his fifties for the summer. She's become an expert at telling the lies she needs to survive and molds herself into who she thinks she needs to be in order stay afloat. But after crashing Simon’s car and then having a little too much to drink at a fancy party, Simon kicks her out, leaving her to fend for herself. This is a book for people who love interiority – getting to intimately know a character through and through. Alex is flawed, scrambling, lost, but I truly felt for her. I was swept up in these small moments in Alex's life. Reading The Guest felt a lot like floating in the ocean, bobbing along, at time, seeing what flotsam and jetsam float past and then being swept away by a riptide. Thank you to NetGalley and to Random House for the advanced review copy.

My conviction that Emma Cline can do no wrong lives on with THE GUEST.

Tense, glittering, and summer-sticky, this is a story about a young woman who exists on the periphery of where she doesn’t belong: gated driveways, designer bags, beach clubs. Alex knows enough about these people to cosplay as one of them for hours, sometimes a handful of days, at a time— flitting in and out of their pools and dinners— always just a hair’s breadth away from getting caught— but the anxiety of being found out eats at her. She can’t afford to slip up the way others do, can’t afford the sweat stains on her silk dresses or a red face or a maxed out credit card.

So what happens when she does start to make mistakes? What happens when she’s ejected from their midst?

I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to. Emma Cline has this thing where she understands girlhood so well— the heat of it, the yearning, the needing so badly to fit somewhere. Always looking in through windows, noticing the smear of dirt under your bare feet.

Happy pub week to THE GUEST, which comes out on May 16th. I loved every moment of this and will be recommending it to everyone for the unforeseeable future.

Thank you to @netgalley for the ARC 🤍

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.