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.

This book takes us into the mind of Alex, a grifter trying to secure a place among Long Island’s elite as she runs from past mistakes and makes a whole bunch of new ones. Alex isn’t a likable person and moves from one horrible decision to the next. Part of me couldn’t help but root for her, though. Maybe because she’s interacting with people who seem to be more together than she is, but in reality they are likely just as bad.

The writing here is foreboding and tense and works really well to keep the novel and character compelling. There’s also a certain “ick” vibe that I can’t explain…but like I was here for it, maybe?

While not a plot-driven story, I can still see this being the kind of book you could easily read on a beach or poolside in one sitting. It’s a beach read, but for sad girls.
Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC!

Sadly this book was not for me. The story seemed to meander aimlessly and by the end I was left completely confused as to what I’d just read.

3.5 A train wreck of a character, with strong resonance to Wharton's House of Mirth. While a propulsive read with a straightforward narrative style, I missed some understanding of the character's motivations beyond her seemingly choiceless choices. A sad statement for someone just 22 years old.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the Advance Reader Copy.

Thank you NetGalley for a chance to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review. “The Guest” by Emma Cline was one I ravished very quickly. With an electric style of writing, Cline makes you want to absorb every moment our main character goes through, and you’re left to wonder what happens next. I fell in love with the way Cline wrote, and how she created a clearly dislikeable character. However, this book did not do much justice for me. I felt extremely uncomfortable with the sexual themes with an underage boy, who was very clearly a young teenager from the start. It did not help that those themes somewhat continued after our main character’s awareness of this fact. It felt like everything and nothing happened in this novel all at once. Although I was pushing through the story quickly, I found myself wishing that something more would happen. While there was tension sprinkled throughout, it wasn’t enough for me. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading morally gray characters, loves a poetic writing style, or isn’t a big thriller fan. I would have rated this book higher if it wasn’t for the underage child, and I found myself thinking about the ending for a long, long time. It will definitely not be a book I forget.

I was disappointed. I really liked The Girls and had anticipate liking The Guest just as much. But, I felt like it never really got started. We follow Alex, a professional hustler/maybe prostitute, this was never spelled out only left to the readers interpretation, through a wild week of survival on an eastern seaboard vacation island for the rich (no names, please) after her "boyfriend" asks her to leave. Determined to get him back she remains on the island hustling her way through meals and lodging all the while popping stolen pills and stealing her courage and belief that she can fix the mess she has made.
The problem is that the story left me flat. I didn't care for Alex. Her character wasn't developed enough to evoke compassion or hate. All the characters seemed half-formed, but not in an intentional way. Disappointing.

This was a slow paced meandering book. Lost of angst and repetition. I still found myself engaged and wanting to read more. Single pov and long chapters. If you’re in the mood for a slow dark and slightly disturbing read this will fill the bill. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher’s for an early copy in exchange for an honest opinion. 3.5⭐️

Since I read The Girls way back in 2016, I have eagerly awaited Emma Cline’s next novel. And The Guest did not disappoint.

It's a mood piece following a young grifter as she waits out a week for her former sugar daddy’s Labor Day party with a plan to recapture his heart, or at least his attention. The prose manages to be both languid as Alex drifts from place to place and situation to situation, but also tense as she makes increasingly worrying decisions.

I don’t always put mood over plot, but the vibes were just right with this one.

Read if you like: lazy summer days, not paying for shit, living in the moment

TL;DR Goodreads Review

the epitome of gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss

-- Some Thoughts --

Emma Cline is an auto-buy, auto-read author. It's both impressive and wild to me that she has managed to create a character portrait in which the reader is not privy to the character's backstory, and it's only revealed in short glimpses. A paragraph or two, a sentence thrown the reader's way. All the while the character, in this case Alex, wanders around Long Island doing horrible things for her own selfish needs and letting her own decisions guide exactly where she's going.

Like always, Cline's writing is superb, if a bit subdued. There's something circular and repetitive about the writing in this book, though one could argue it was just Cline inhabiting Alex's mindset as she counts down the days to the big Labor Day party in which she will get her man back. I think the third-person POV worked well in terms of showing the distance that Alex holds the reader, and everyone else, at. However I do think that Cline's writing works best when she's in the first person and is allowing these sumptuous details to be filtered through the eyes of a specific narrator.

But, all in all, Cline absolutely slayed, killed, and murdered this book. There are so many passages highlighted in my Kindle copy because she manages to describe things perfectly, like so perfectly I can't even figure out if it's even possible to rewrite her work, which, to me, is the sign of a writer working at their highest power.

This kind of book is usually totally my jam but I reckon I read this at the wrong time :/ We didn't vibe right now but hopefully after it's out I can buy a copy and then we will connect haha

Alex, our main character, has minimal to no limits. She lies, steals, and manipulates to get what she wants and needs. She's a sex worker with a love for the power she feels when manipulating men, stealing their medications/money/etc and will stop at nothing to make sure she is taken care of. She has a pretty solid gig with Simon, a wealthy man in his 50's, until she acts out at a dinner party with his friends and he sends her packing.. only she never leaves the area. The Guest follows Alex while she uses whatever means necessary to get her back in Simon's good graces.

I was pleasantly surprised with how hard I was rooting for a character that does little to deserve that. Would I want her in my house? No. Would I want her around my kids? Absolutely not. But yet still I was captured by what would happen next. I didn't want to put this one down. I knew I loved it when I finished it last night but now that I've slept on it, I really really loved it. I will be going back and reading Cline's previous work for sure!

Very much enjoyed this new offering from Emma Cline. 22 year old Alex lives a precarious existence in NYC as a sort of escort or "sugar baby" to a series of older men, the latest of which has potential as a steady companion after he invites her to stay with him at his place at the far reaches of Long Island for the rest of the summer. Alex "the guest" is not a good person. She's an opportunist, a grifter, an interloper, a "tourist" that reminded me of Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) in Fight Club - she's LARPing for the summer at stable adulthood, hobnobbing among the quiet luxury of the Long Island elite, saying all the right things and carefully curating her public persona. As Alex's idyllic summer progresses we see her make a series of misjudgments, with the propulsive plot giving the reader nary a moment to consider which of her many faux pas will ultimately cause the whole carefully crafted persona to unravel. As the story continues we learn the circumstances from which Alex has escaped back in the city - and what's at stake for her were she to have to confront them at long last. There is a constant state of foreboding throughout and when you finally reach page 225 you'll be perplexed that just like that, it's over. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the early access to this quietly simmering thriller.

This book explores life living on the edge through the eyes of our Alex a young woman trying to keep in front of the debts and grudges she has accumulated. Alex is a bit of an antihero in that she is manipulative, self-centred, cruel and yet you can't help admire her tenacity. For a book where not a lot happens it is a compelling read as Alex struggles to make it to the end of week where she hopes her former sponsor will take her back. Emma Cline does a great job of communicating Alex’s state of mind through her internal dialogue. I got Sally Rooney vibes from this book but found it more interesting

"The Guest" shows Emma Cline's versatility as a writer, and that she can shine without a plot-driving motor like that of "The Girls." Here, we have a lovely and slowly unfolding story with a character who you want to shake and scold and times, but whose psychological makeup is comprehensive and believable. You'll come away from this thinking of Alex as a person and not merely as a character.

I wanted to like this, as I really enjoyed The Girls, but I just couldn’t.
Alex is a working girl who’s down on her luck. Her older ‘boyfriend’ sends her back home after an extended trip to Long Island, not knowing she doesn’t have a home to come back to. She decides to secretly stay and pretends to be who she isn’t, manipulating several people along the way.
I have a hard time with books like this. Stories that don’t have much of a plot, purpose, or resolution just don’t do it for me