Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance reader’s copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I DNFed at 17%. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about Alex or whatever secret she was keeping about Dom and it felt like it was going nowhere.

I fell into this fast-paced novel, trying to figure out myriad dimensions of Alex, a woman who drifts from one bad decision to another. The author captures an elliptical flow of consciousness of an unreliable protagonist. The suspense grew as I kept turning pages, waiting for Alex to make one good choice. She manipulates men for a sense of security, but never quite creates a stable center of existence. Or does she? The end sparkles with ambiguity. Readers will find echoes of Gatsby here, and a panorama of vivid and alluring descriptions of the world that Alex inhabits.

While mysterious, The Guest does hold a certain kind of intrigue, where narrator Alex meets multiple people that seem to project their insecurities and loneliness onto her. That being said, Alex herself is perhaps too mysterious. Specifically, toward the end of the book, the story begins to break its pattern of cycling through various people onto the next, committing to a point of the story where Alex must finally confront her worries. But then, the story cuts off abruptly, right when it feels it's getting started. Perhaps Cline herself feels worried as to how the end of the story can be defined. While the story does bring up interesting thought provoking ideas, it can't seem to muster to the moodiness overpowering the story, or lack thereof.

A gripping social thriller from the author of ‘The Girls’

In Emma Cline’s latest novel, The Guest, Alex is 22 and has no one looking out for her. She’s the titular guest of the book, a drifter and a grifter without a home or a friend. But she does have wits and beauty, two things she’ll leverage in a bid to survive in the East End of Long Island. 

Alex finds herself there while on the run from an ex-boyfriend. She’s also moving on from a career in sex work that has informed her manner of navigating the world around her. So when she meets the older and wealthier Simon, she knows just how to reel him in, and quickly molds herself into his ideal version of a girlfriend. One mistake, however, and Simon is sending her packing. Alex sees an opportunity six days from then to get back in Simon’s good graces, but she’ll have to use her seasoned skills of manipulation to survive off others in Long Island for that long.

Cline has a compelling writing style that completely immerses us in the privileged and phony world of the East End, although she never paints a full picture of who Alex is. That’s intentional, however. The third-person point of view combined with Alex’s calculated thoughts about her surroundings create a distance between the character and the reader. We don’t know fully who she is–because not even Alex knows.

Alex’s experiences as a woman, a sex worker, and part of the lower class have all inextricably informed the masks she wears for any given situation. She picks Simon, for instance, in a calculated manner. She molds herself to his desires, then proceeds to mold her own desires to complement the life she’s created with him. In manipulating those around her to suit her needs, she’s also manipulating herself.

It’s no coincidence that the first time she truly acts on her own desires, she’s seen as stepping out of line and is cast out of the world she wants to be part of.

In the midst of its clever class commentary, The Guest maintains a strong sense of foreboding in Alex’s unorthodox survival story. Cline’s novel is a fascinating character study of someone who doesn’t know who she is–and doesn’t care to find out. All of this makes for a gripping psychological and social thriller about the conflict between genders, generations, and classes.


Our thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the advanced reader’s copy. The Guest by Emma Cline will be published on May 16th. You can preorder the book here.

In the span of one week Alex wanders around Long Island waiting out the days before returning to Simon’s party. Along the way she meets a few interesting people all the while fearing phone calls from Dom and worrying out her reunion with Simon.
…
Alex is a drifter flitting in-n-out of peoples lives. Her latest victim Simon gave her a one-way ticket back to the city instead she blended in with whomever she could.
…
Alex’s life with Simon is a lie. Readers are taken on a journey about a woman whose life is built around this grand idea of being who others perceive her to be. She molds herself into a character to fit a role. That role leaves readers with many questions. It opens the door to many possibilities. Readers learn about a man named Dom that Alex seems to be hiding from, yet keeps in contact with him. She has a task to pull off, yet it’s unclear what it all means. As a reader I’m left wondering who is Dom to Alex and why is she afraid of him knowing her location.
…
Emma Cline writes like no other author. Her unique storytelling abilities sets her apart from other writers. I enjoyed the easy breezy way Alex’s character flittered into other people’s lives so seamlessly. Each new character offered interesting insights into the way Alex perceived them. This Alex journey was by far unusual, yet fascinating. Alex’s purpose wasn’t anything extraordinary. In fact, most of the people she came across weren’t memorable. I really didn’t have a grip on who Alex was before she found Simon. Quite honestly I didn’t gain any better understanding of who she was while wandering around either.
…
The chapters were long and lengthy, yet surprisingly easy to read. The book itself only contained 11 chapters. However, the story wasn’t calling me. I didn’t have they urgent need to sit and read it all in one day. It was the type of read I could read take several breaks throughout the day and come back to.
…
I have no idea what to think about that ending. It just ended with no clarity or resolution. I’m confused. I need someone to explain to me what this all means. Because Alex wanders aimlessly through life meeting random people it felt a little wanderlust with very little direction.
…
Alex’s purpose wasn’t anything extraordinary. In fact, most of the people she came across weren’t memorable. I really didn’t have a grip on who Alex was before she found Simon. Quite honestly I didn’t gain any better understanding of who she was while wandering around.
…
Emma Cline brings readers an original story with unique characters that have you wondering the entire time what the heck is going on.

This is the kind of story where both nothing and everything happens. A look at the lengths someone will go to in order to keep her life afloat and the extent with which people use each other for their own gain. A slow-moving car crash.

Taut and intoxicating, Cline’s latest novel follows twenty-two-year-old Alex, a drifter and grifter who becomes lost in a world of addiction, privilege, and wealth. Alex has been staying with an older man named Simon, however after a misstep at Simon’s friend’s house, she finds herself on the train platform with a one-way ticket back to where she came from.

Alex has worked hard to reinvent herself, and returning to the city comes with a hefty price tag; one that means facing an abusive ex-boyfriend and the debt she’s racked up. What if she could stay put and work it all out?

And so begins one young woman’s menacing and manipulative operation on the East End of Long Island as Summer draws to a close, and she races to take back what she believes will set the cards in perfect order.

My heart was in my throat, racing, my stomach churning as I followed Alex from one place to the next, each scene teetering on the edge of catastrophe. The Guest is by turns unsettling and enthralling, add it to your list.

First thank you to Random House and Netgalley for the arc!

The Guest follows Alex a grifter who survives on the outskirts of people’s lives. A failed modeling career finds her into the field of sex work. Here she’s inserted into Simons life, a 50-something super rich guy who appears to fix all of Alex’s problems until a small misstep has him sending her back to the city. With nowhere to go and an angry ex searching for her Alex decides to stay on the Island. If she can last just 6 days, then surely she can reconcile with Simon at his party and all will be right. The story is a slow burn as we see how Alex adapts to people to give them what they need in order to survive these days ahead. There’s a looming worry throughout the book over whether she’ll find shelter, food, outrun her ex, and the carousel of characters she encounters and relies on is such a wild mash of people. Emma has a way of captivating of moving you through the dark summer haze of this story. My only compliant is the abruptness of the ending that begged for one final chapter/epilogue.

THE GUEST was one of my most anticipated books of the year. It’s a novel you drop all your other books for the second it’s available, one you go into semi-blind & end up starting & finishing all in one day. It’s a novel that you come out of blinking your eyes, shaking your head, like it’s a hot summer day, & you’ve fallen asleep on the beach & had the weirdest fever dream that you’re still trying to wrench yourself from.

We always talk about supporting women’s wrongs-but don’t we draw the line somewhere? The MC Alex is a smart girl who just keeps making really. bad. decisions. It’s hard to tell which of her actions stem from bravery, which from desperation, which from pills. She is a sex worker on the run from a previous client she’s pissed off, & finds herself stranded in the Hamptons where she continuously makes immoral choices. In her own words, “She’d been almost jealous of the people she’d known in the city who’d totally cracked up, spiraled into some other realm. It was a relief to have the option to fully peace out of reality.”

On that note, we see Alex disassociating more as this story goes on. I kept questioning why she continued to put herself in the situations she did-the reader is aware of her implicit privilege & it’s easy to get fed up with her poor decision-making. (case in point: at one point, she basically covertly kidnaps a child just so she can get into a beach club…like, girl) We see a young woman on the edge, desperate to use her feminine wiles to get what she wants, & realizing, maybe for the first time, that not everything is accessible through th trade or promise of sex. Her mess was stressful & tension-filled, but captivating. It’s that feeling you get when you see someone you care about doing something really stupid, but you don’t quite know how to help them, & know they probably wouldn’t even listen to you anyways.

I found this novel so enthralling, even if Alex is a hard person to like. I love Emma Cline’s writing style but was slightly let down by the ending. That being said, I couldn’t put it down & need to talk to someone who’s read this! 4.75 ⭐️. Out 5/16!

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for a free ebook in exchange for a honest review!

This book was such a fun and unhinged read. I devoured this book in one go.

The pacing and structure really painted Alex’s mindset and madness. There were abrupt shifts in time and focus that really helped establish her desperation and listlessness.

My only critique is that it feels like some of the questions set up about Alex were left hanging and the ending felt rushed. I finished the book and kept flipping pages looking for more.

Overall a great read.

Emma Cline’s The Guest is an uncomfortable read for all the best reasons. With a plot which emotes feelings of awkwardness and embarrassing lack of morals, one is drawn into the life of a young woman who is lost in so many ways.

Alex is a young, beautiful woman in her early twenties who is a grifter. That’s all she’s ever known. It’s the end of summer and having just come from New York City where she scammed her roommates as well as her last “boyfriend”, who is still trying to get in touch with her, she is now living it up on Long Island with an older man, Simon she met at a party where he invited her to stay at his house near the beach with him until his annual Labor Day party. Perfect. Her summer is secure.

Until she makes a few mistakes. First, she damages his car and quite frankly could care less and then she makes a fool out of herself at a party he takes her to and embarrasses him.

The next day, she is given her walking papers…a train ticket back to the city and a ride to the station. But Alex knows what awaits her back there, with no money, nowhere to live and an ex stalking her she decides to stay in Long Island and await Simon’s infamous Labor Day party. It’s only in a week. She is positive once he sees her there, all will be forgiven.

But, before that can actually happen, she must somehow survive the remaining days somewhere with someone. Thus begins her biggest scam yet, surviving on greed, damaging both items and innocent people. With no moral compass, she destroys whatever is in her path without looking back. Always able to justify her behavior while waiting for what she considers her happy ending.

The Guest is an incredibly intense, but fascinating look at one person’s obsessive greed and selfishness to get whatever she wants no matter what it takes and no matter who she may have to destroy in the process.

Thank you #NetGalley #RandomHouse #TheGuest #EmmaCline for the advanced copy.

I was really intrigued by this one. Cline’s writing is evocative, a tad mysterious and sucks the reader in. I enjoyed The Girls, her previous book as well. This has a similar unusual vibe if I remember The Girls correctly.

The character development for Alex was so good. It’s amazing that I was so invested in her, yet we don’t know any of her backstory. Cline worked some magic there, keeping the reader invested. Why was she the way she was?? I would’ve loved to know.

The ending was a bit ambiguous but overall I enjoyed the book. I think this one be divisive . Looking forward to seeing where everyone lands.

Pick this up if you can handle a little literary weirdness.

Emma Cline is drawn to toxic masculinity. Her debut novel, The Girls (for which she reportedly received a $2 million advance), depicted an ultimately murderous California commune modeled on the Manson family, and her recent short fiction has targeted figures including Harvey Weinstein and Wim Hof. But she is less interested in the psyches of the bad boys than she is in the young women who get caught in their wake. Will they continue to tether their orbits to powerful men, or will they launch into their own trajectories?

Evie, the teenage narrator-protagonist of The Girls, is less interested in the charismatic cult leader Russell than she is in Suzanne, arguably the real leader of “the ranch.” At the end of the novel Suzanne goes to prison while Evie escapes both the ranch and the law, winding up at a fancy boarding school in Carmel. But it’s unclear whether Evie is the real victor here: “Suzanne got the redemption that followed a conviction, the prison Bible groups and prime-time interviews and a mail-in college degree. I got the snuffed-out story of the bystander, a fugitive without a crime, half hoping and half terrified that no one was ever coming for me.”

Evie’s privileged plight is typical of the young women featured in Cline’s marvelous output of short fiction over the past ten years. Daddy, a collection of stories published in 2020 (which was a more impressive work than The Girls but received less fanfare), summons the spirit of Sylvia Plath but gives it a Joni Mitchell twist: You’re a mean old daddy, but I like you.

Of the ten stories in Daddy, the strongest is arguably “The Nanny,” which was originally published in The Paris Review in 2019. Here a young woman, Kayla, is hired by Jessica and her movie star husband, Rafe, to be a full-time nanny for their son. But Kayla begins sleeping with Rafe, and the tabloids expose the affair—briefly conferring celebrity status upon Kayla. Kayla seems not to feel any remorse as a homewrecker—and why not? Perhaps she’s the real victim here, coerced into sex by her rich and famous employer. At the end of the story, staying with a friend to avoid the frenzying paparazzi, she scoffs at the notion that she should be learning a lesson and imagines that her own star is ascending: “Maybe there was a photographer, hidden out there in the darkness, someone who’d been watching her, who’d followed her here, someone who had waited, patiently, for her to appear.”

* * *

Alex, the 22-year-old protagonist of The Guest, is a more mature version of Kayla. The novel scrupulously avoids labels like “sex worker” or “prostitute,” but Alex is very aggressively in the business of attaching herself to older men with money for casual flings that will result in cash and gifts. She is a liar and a thief—but she has convinced herself that her lies and thefts are part of a larger game in which all the actors are complicit. Her own sense of identity flickers among alternatives; she prefers to make herself into whatever another person will find most desirable.

Trying to make ends meet in New York City, she’s down on her luck—teetering on the brink of destitution, despite her designer clothes—when she hooks up with Simon, a wealthy man in his fifties who takes their relationship seriously enough to invite her to his beach house on Long Island for all of August. When Alex makes a fool of herself at a party near the end of the month, Simon breaks things off, but Alex can’t really return to the city—she’s burned all her bridges and has nowhere left to go. Imagining that she could be reconciled with Simon at his Labor Day party, Alex takes a week to wander the wealthiest parts of Long Island, hopping from house to house by pretending that she belongs there, always a friend of a friend. It mostly works.

The book plays with Alex’s mysterious background and adaptable personality (the narration is third-person but focalized through Alex), yet it retains a very cinematic quality. It’s not hard to imagine Alex as a character on White Lotus—perhaps one of those Italian girls from the second season. In fact, if you want a sense of the vibe of The Guest, imagine Aubrey Plaza starring in a new film adaptation of John Cheever’s classic 1964 short story “The Swimmer.” (Like Cheever’s Neddy, Cline’s Alex seems obsessed with swimming in other people’s pools. She also flirts with the idea that she is some kind of ghost.)

Cline’s fine sense of humor—Brandon Taylor has praised her “withering deadpan”—is on display in the descriptions of the moneyed elite and their properties. The residents of these beachside mansions are “tanned to the color of expensive luggage”; they eat at “restaurants that only served steak, pink but flavorless and thick as a hardcover book.” Simon “listened to summaries of famous self-help books while he exercised with giant ropes.”

In other words, “These were the type of people who assumed that there were rules, who believed that if they followed them they would one day be rewarded,” writes Cline. “And here was Alex, naked in their pool.”

Needless to say, Alex’s house-hopping scheme starts to unravel. While she arguably starts the novel as a victim of circumstance, her character becomes harder to defend by the time she has sex with a troubled 17-year-old boy. She’s the kind of person who’s always somehow ruining everything. But Alex’s real problem (a good one for a novel’s protagonist) is that she is too perceptive; so attentively conscious about what others must think of her, she constantly worries that everyone else sees what she really is, an actress playing a role rather than the genuine article—a knockoff of a leisure-class elite. As the paranoia kicks in, her skill for reading people starts to deteriorate. Miscalculations accumulate.

Alex’s most intriguing trait is her skepticism of families. With no real family of her own, she only sees other individuals. “Love” is clearly a sham, and she only has scorn for those who behave “as if love were something you deserved and didn’t have to scramble to earn.” Alex isn’t exactly greedy, but she so badly wants the trappings of wealth. And she knows that she can have them, if only as a guest.

I was expecting Emma Cline’s newest book to be weird and propulsive, and The Guest did not disappoint. The story follows Alex, a young woman who drifts her way around Long Island after being kicked out by the older man she is seeing. This had everything I could want from an Emma Cline novel. Her writing has gotten even stronger since The Girls, her dreamlike, hazy writing is impeccable. We follow Alex through a third person narration and we feel like we are lingering right behind like a ghost tethered. Alex’s actions are often morally grey, yet we don’t hate or love her, but are compelled to see what will happen next. Reading this felt like opening a gift and then not being sure if there’s a trick inside.

Reading The Guest by Emma Cline had me questioning the main character’s every decision, and yet I was completely captivated.

Alex is a twenty-two-year-old woman drifting from place to place and burning bridges along the way. Hiding from an ex, Alex is looking forward to spending the month leading up to Labor Day with her new beau Simon at his home on Long Island. She has observed what Simon does and doesn’t like and responds accordingly. But after one ill-advised decision, Alex finds herself thrust out of Simon’s house and left to her own devices.

In her mind, Simon didn’t explicitly say they were over, so she has hopes she can return to his good graces. Over the next week, she inserts herself into other people’s lives on the island with the aim of returning to Simon on the day of his big Labor Day party.

This is a great novel to spend an afternoon reading. Alex is a wholly captivating character. She makes impulsive choices with little thought of the consequences for herself or others. She’ll test people’s boundaries, often going too far. But she does not do anything with a malicious intention. Essentially, she’s just trying to survive by using her looks to her advantage while under a haze of drugs and alcohol. And most of the people she comes across want something from her, so I didn’t judge her too harshly.

Emma Cline’s writing is immaculate. I felt like I was right there with Alex making one poor choice after another.

This novel looks at the insular world of the rich and those they employ to keep their lives running smoothly.

I haven’t read anything else by this author, but I’ll definitely check out The Girls next.

4.5 rounded up.

Thank you to Random House for providing an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

https://booksandwheels.com

Summer is coming to an end on Long Island and Alex is no longer welcome. A misstep at a dinner party and the older man she's been staying with arranges a ride to the train station for her and a ticket back to the city.

In spite of the fact that most of the chapters in this book are very very long (some 30 pages or more), I was totally spellbound by Alex and her stealing, lying and manipulative persona. A 22-year-old who uses her feminine wiles and her body to bend people to her will, she's like a train wreck that you can't look away from and yet in some ways I was rooting for her. I felt like I was watching the events in the book unfold in a dreamlike state as Alex drifted around the island, briefly worrying about past errors in judgement or what her future holds but then realizing that she's "always been good at maneuvering disappointment" and shoving her worries to the back of her mind. As far as the ending, my first reaction was 'Aw, no, don't do this to me!' and I think I'll be puzzling it out for a while yet. As you can tell by the wide-ranging reviews, this book won't appeal to everyone but I was totally engaged and read it very quickly. 4.5 stars rounded down.

My thanks to Random House Publishing Group via Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this novel. All opinions expressed are my own. This review will be posted on Goodreads as of today (May 3, 2023) as well as on amazon.ca after the publication date.
Publication: May 16, 2023

reading a new emma cline novel feels like a cosmic gift. her prose scratches an itch in my brain both as a reader and as a writer. though the pace can be occasionally stuttering, a few too many “Better to…”s and phrases repeated often enough to raise alarms, i always come away from her writing with a kind of verbal hypnosis; her descriptions are so pristine, so precise and jewel-like.

if THE GIRLS is about the desperation of clawing toward a non-normative life in response to an suffocating conformity, THE GUEST is about the reverse—the desperation of the classless outsider trying to claw her way in to the glossy polished lives of the 1% through any means available, transgressing a barrier that feels at once permeable and impenetrable; tenuous and susceptible to a convincing enough performance until it isn’t. THE GUEST takes place over five or six days, but i inhaled it in two, feverishly hurtling toward the inevitable implosion i assumed would meet me. it’s so gratifying to feel urself in the hands of a capable writer, moving all the pieces deftly along, and even more gratifying to be surprised by arrested motion, subversion, surprise.

I liked The Girls so I was looking forward to reading this one. It was a fast, breezy read, and the beach-y setting maybe furthered it feeling like a beach read. I thought the character of Alex was complex and there was something worth writing about with her, but the way the plot unfolded felt a bit random and lost me a bit. That was likely intentional since this woman is trying to find herself and do whatever she has to do to get by, but I wish there was more to grasp onto with her backstory and who she REALLY was. There's a definite sadness to her - also intentional - so I wish by the end I felt more strongly about what would happen by the end. The end itself was a bit lackluster, yet predictable.

Emma 👏🏾 Cline 👏🏾 Is 👏🏾 Back! This right here folks is from the woman who blessed us with The Girls all those years ago. This was that psychological mind twist that made me question my own belief system. She is the queen of artfully making you squirm with the notions of right and wrong. Complex female characters, a slow burn that made you want to read more, and a setting that was as much of a character as the actual characters. Each scene of bad behavior was so well done and I loved every delicious minute of it. The ending!?! WOW. I’ve been in a reading slump and this gave me the calming reassurance that yes, it is all going to hell. And I’m here for it!

It's absolutely no secret nor is it any surprise that this is a novel of the year contender, immediately.