Emma Cline's novels are a triumph of writing and plot for contemporary times. The story follows Alex, a Manhattan grifter who combs through the elite circles of summer east Long Island. She snags a wealthy man and clings to him and his house for all she can get. As she makes her way through each wealthy enclave for parties and dinners, the tale reminded me of John Cheever's famous story, "The Swimmer," about a suburban man swimming through neighbors' pools until he reached home in a wretched state. I reacted similarly to the pathos of the characters in both stories.

Emma Cline's work is a gift to readers. I applaud this new novel and recommend it to everyone!

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the book.

Thank you to NetGalley, the Publisher, & Emma Cline for this ARC! 2.75 for me, not my favorite.


Alex is a twenty something who gets by through using others one way or the other. She makes her way from her hometown to NYC to Long Island, and we see her journey through a week wandering around LI. We know very little about her past, and by the end of the book, we still know almost nothing.

Honestly I struggled to get through this book. I was waiting for some sort of character development (even if she got worse), but is just felt a bit repetitive and all of the characters were pretty stagnant. Additionally some characters were added to the story but didn’t help move the story forward (although the plot was not super fast moving).


The ending also felt super abrupt to me. I am fine with a slow burn if the burn leads to something and everything connects together at the end, but it kind of just ended. The story did keep me thinking about how Alex would pull off something next, but I didn’t find myself rooting for her one way or the other.

(This portion was not put on my Goodreads to avoid a spoiler but I found it a bit troubling to read through when she found out Jack was a minor and didn't think anything of it).

This was one of my most anticipated reads for 2023 and honestly I was very disappointed reading this. The premise started off being very interesting and sadly it felt like the plot never kept moving along when it could’ve escalated due to the situation of the main character. Overall I would dub this is a “light” thriller or slice of life book and I couldn’t connect with the characters or the story.

The perfect lazy summer read for the sad girls. Cline writes this book with a soft word but encapsulating everything that you want to do - mooch off others and get by with wit. But what happens when that is not enough? Cline gives insight to a summer breakdown of different ways - on the lamb, runaway, and obsessive you get Alex, the main character, whose life is "perfect".

This will be fine and on the edge of you seat. I could have read this in day but life happens. Prepare to fully dive into a mind of the cool mysterious girl.

The story follows a young woman and grifter named Alex who is trying to escape the demons of her past by staying with a wealthy older man at his vacation home for the summer. However when she gets dismissed by the man due to a misstep at a dinner party Alex needs to act fast. With limited resources, no home to go back to, and a damaged phone, she decides to stay on the island and navigate the affluent world by manipulating people's desires, drifting from place to place, and leaving destruction behind in her wake.

This was my first Emma Cline novel but definitely not my last. The novel is told in third person from the perspective of Alex, which can sometimes feel impersonal however the writing was so immersive that it kept me engaged throughout. Alex is not a likeable character – she manipulates everyone around her, lies and steals, however you can’t help but rooting for her. This is a perfect novel to read on a hot summer day because of its hazy and dreamlike tone. I do feel like the novel could have been shorter or a novella because it’s more or less the same throughout as we follow Alex travelling from place to place like a ghost. I also wish there was more back story about Alex so we can see how she got to this point in her life where survival and numbing each day with pills and alcohol is the only game plan.

Overall, loved the tone and writing of the novel and excited to read more from Emma Cline! (3.5 stars!)

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for providing me with a digital arc in return for an honest review.
The Guest comes out May 18th!

I could not put this book down! I was mesmerized and drawn into the story of a female grifter and how essentially she has to be a chameleon to fit into what ever situation she is in - it reads like a mystery/thriller because you don't know her backstory, and you always feel on the edge of some kind of danger - the writing is incredible (I really enjoyed her previous book "The Girls" )and this book did not disappoint! I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for an ARC and I left an honest review voluntarily.

I loved Emma Cline’s book The Girls and was therefore very excited to read The Guest. The basis of the novel is that Alex, an amoral, grifter, con artist spends August among the Hamptons elite while trying to avoid her spiraling disastrous life in the city. She is living (basically as a kept woman) with Simon, a much older man until he’s done with her (mainly because of her cringey ways). Much of the novel takes place during the week between her being kicked out of his house and her waiting out the time until his Labor Day party where she thinks she can win him back. She spends this time taking advantage of other Hamptonites and putting herself into horribly awkward situations in order to feed herself, find housing and remain drunk/stoned.

I didn’t really enjoy much of the book because I spent large chunks of it being uncomfortable with almost every situation she put herself into. I kept waiting for something to happen to redeem Alex but nothing did. The story fell flat for me but the best part of the book was the writing and for that it is a three star review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the chance to review this novel

This is one of those books that I can’t figure out whether to give it 4 stars or 2 stars. It’s the story of Alex, a very young woman who lives with a very wealthy older man (rich) who finally tires of her and sends her packing. She’s a drifter, grifter and all around user, so she’s a very unlikable character. We don’t get to see why Alex is this way, why she’s on the run, what happens to her former friends - all of that is up to your own imagination. But it’s also an interesting book and one I couldn’t put down.

A story about a woman pretending to be someone she isn’t. Once she starts, she keeps trying to fake it.

I just couldn’t get into this one. I was excited because I enjoyed The Girls but this one didn’t give me those vibes sadly.

Based on Emma Cline's previous work The Girls, I came into The Guest with an idea of what to expect, but my expectations for this book were subverted in a good way. The book takes place in real-time over about a week and a half at the end of the summer in the Hamptons as the protagonist Alex makes increasingly irrational and sometimes outright bad decisions to try and get back together with her much older boyfriend/sugar daddy. Alex is a homeless 22-year-old who makes a living as a part-time-escort and full-time-grifter and much of her past is a mystery to the reader and the other characters. Some of Alex's choices made me feel physically ill, and I had to skim more than a couple parts to get past my extreme cringe. She is only looking out for herself and at times it is painful to see how others continually give her the benefit of the doubt that she hasn't earned and doesn't deserve. By the end, it's not entirely clear whether Alex has grown - she is self-aware and yet can't seem to stop herself from taking advantage of others' kindness right until the last page. I appreciated the deliberately ambiguous ending - it was much different from The Girls where the author's fate is known the entire time as the story is told through flashbacks. Overall, I would give it a 3.5/4 out of 5 stars - while I didn't always understand or enjoy reading about Alex's escapades, I was sucked into the narrative and I wanted to see what she would get herself into next.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for this great ARC! All opinions are my own.

The Guest is the story of Alex, a twenty-two year old grifter, who is staying with an older guy, Simon, hoping to get away from her shady past. After a falling out, she is sent away, but finds herself interacting with all sorts of people, each one telling her something about her life, as she prepares to be with Simon again.

From the first moment I read this book, I was pretty much hooked. The prose just flows and the diction is perfect! The pacing, the character development, the descriptions, the everything was just great. It was so refreshing to read a book as good as this one, with a plot that I’ve never really seen before.

For Alex, I would never be friends with this character, but I couldn’t help just loving this character even if I didn’t really support her choices—at all. The word I constantly thought of while reading this book was: self-destruction. She may not be conscious of what she’s doing at all times, but every path she crossed was doomed from the beginning. This character’s perspective was so enthralling and just kept me glued.

I love love loved this book! Definitely recommend this to anyone who can actually sit down and enjoy this kind of book.

This book was strangely mesmerizing; a can't-look-away commentary on gendered power, money, class, and what it means to have or not have agency. This is the second book I've read by Emma Cline, and the contrast between the sluggish, lazy summer setting and the main character's tense, desperate situation is perfect. While the novel does have a slower pace and relative lack of plot, I didn't want to put this down and found myself tense trying to determine what might happen next. I saw a few reviews that did not enjoy the ambiguous ending, but I personally love an abrupt ending, where the reader is forced to use their imagination as to the resolution. I highly recommend this one. Thanks to NetGalley for the early digital copy.

The Guest by Emma Cline was a quick read about a grifter making her way amongst the rich elite - I was eagerly turning the pages but the resolution left me wanting more.

I previously read The Girls so I was excited to get a chance to read Emma Cline's new book early. Emma's writing is engaging and her tone is perfect to align with the plot. I could really envision the drunk/drugged life Alex was leading, drifting from beginning to end. The only part of this book that I did not love was the lack of resolution. I didn't feel like we really saw Alex deal with her issues, nor did we see a big downfall. I would still definitely recommend this one as an intriguing read to friends.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House UK, Vintage for providing me with an ARC of The Guest.

This is the kind of book that you want to talk about when you finish so totally frustrated that I can’t ruin the ending! It felt like a story you somehow joined part way through but it sucked you in. I read this in less than two days as it crescendoed to the ending.

There is no background for the main character, Alex, but you learn a little bit about her throughout the book. She is not a highly likable character but she is just trying to survive. I got the impression she almost had Asperger’s as there was an awkwardness to her, but maybe that was desperation.

It is a simple enough premise for the book but it really does draw you in.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for a digital galley in exchange for my honest review.

The trials and tribulations of a sugar baby doing her damnedest to find herself back in the good graces of her benefactor after being sent away.

Alex’s latest boyfriend Simon, decades older than her, brings her along to cottage country in Long Island for the summer, but he quickly tires of her after a series of faux pas. Under the promise that they will speak soon, he buys her a train ticket back to the city. With nothing except a bag of expensive clothing, $400 in her account, and a broken phone, she decides not to return to the city where a dangerous former flame may be waiting for her. She decides to surprise Simon at his garden party in four days and apologize after he’s had some time to miss her.

The resulting novel is the ins and outs of surviving in cottage country with no place to go. From pretending to be a long lost friend on spring break, but accidentally sleeping with someone’s boyfriend to doing cocaine with Simon’s friends house-sitter and ruining a priceless painting, to pseudo-babysitting a random child to gain entrance to a country club and eat hamburgers on the parents tab. She manages to spend days near the beach without a car or a place to stay. But she keeps picking herself up at the expense of her dignity. Meanwhile, stealing and making judgments on the poor suckers she’s lying to for food or a ride.

This novel is a character study. It lacks plot. The writing is interesting, but it’s just writing. It doesn’t convey a story. It’s a snapshot of a life, but not an interesting one.

I loved The Girls when I read it, and still do. I think with a heavier plot, I would have enjoyed The Guest more than I did.

Despite my personal enjoyment, I think The Guest will become a kind of modern classic. It is to 2023 what The Catcher in the Rye was to the 1950s. It will find a home with fans of A24 films, Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and Lisa Taddeo’s Animal.

Tense, palpable, and addictive.

Cline's writing is always a rare treat. I enjoyed her last two books, The Girls, being my favorite, and, Daddy, a book of short stories earlier this year, so I couldn't wait to get my hands on a copy of her second novel. The Guest isn't like anything I've read before. It's tense in a subtle way, leading the reader through a series of bad decisions as the protagonist, Alex, navigates the Hamptons one summer after being dumped and left at the train station by the older man she's been dating. Described as, “a cipher leaving destruction in her wake,” Alex lives a parasitic existence, bouncing from one person to the next, relying on the kindnesses of others to pass the time.

I felt somewhat conflicted reading this book, finding her detestable while at the same time completely hooked, curious how her story would turn out. The scenarios she found herself in where cringe-worthy but I couldn't put the book down, immersed in the affluent world described by Cline. I enjoyed the fast pace and unpredictability of the scenes as she met random people, using them until Simon's Labor Day party when she could make amends and he'd take her back. Hopefully. Adding to the tension was her last 'relationship' in which a man called Dom was actively stalking her, even threatening her, adding to the suspense until the cliff-hanger ending.

4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

For readers who enjoy underlying suspense, complex characters, and addictive prose.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. I previously read "The Girls" by Cline and I thought it was well-written, but it didn't make a big impact on me. This book, however, I couldn't put down. It was like watching a car crash in slow-motion. Alex is a great character - hard to love and hard to hate. By the end I felt like I was trying to will her to stop doing stupid things, and yet... I think the sort of amorphous existence of Alex is part of the appeal of this book - there's a lot unsaid here, but enough to make Alex feel very real.

I seriously considered DNFing this book for the first half of it. I was bored by the plot (or lack thereof), annoyed with the main character, and had no emotional connection to the story or anybody in it. While the book did pick up by the second half, I just couldn’t look past all of the things I disliked enough to enjoy it. For one, the main character, Alex, was insufferable. She was so incredibly selfish and kept justifying her actions while hurting everyone around her. And she had ZERO character development (if anything she had the opposite.) There were several parts of this book that were unnecessarily gross and disturbing, so I spent quite a bit of the book cringing. I was also very disappointed by the ending. I pushed through the entire book for none of my questions to be answered and for there to be absolutely no resolution to the story. One thing that I did appreciate about this book is that it was a fairly quick read and entertaining at times. Overall, I’m so sad that I didn’t like this, because it sounded so intriguing, but ultimately, this was not the book for me.

what this book feels like:

a midnight rerun you've already seen with that nagging blue light from the TV, but you're too irritated to go to sleep and too lazy and bored to move from the couch surf of a guy of a friend you met at a frat party that your friend was invited to because they're cute and somehow charming when they're drunk.