This was my first time reading a book by Cline. I am disappointed in myself for not picking up any of her work sooner but now I know.

I enjoyed this book immensely, which might be strange because this is not a fun book. Although it takes place in the summer, you are not in for a fun summer beach. Instead, we follow Alex, a twenty-two-year-old who kind of sucks, through a week before a special labor day party that will solve all of her problems.

I like the fact that Alex doesn't want to change her ways. It makes her more human to me. She keeps getting herself into situations that aren't good for her, and in at least one situation, she is the problem. She is a big problem that she does nothing to fix and tries to use the situation to help herself. *Ahem * Please leave Jack alone. Alex keeps running away from her problems and to the arms of any random man. Her presence brings chaos and ruin but subtly. She ruins some aspect of every situation she gets into, then runs to the next man, and it starts over.

Alex is very messy and apathetic to the fact that she is this way. This makes her a fascinating character in that regard. It captures the energy of being a floundering person in their early twenties quite well. However, I hope most of us that age are not as problematic as Alex. It also emphasizes the attitude that people can have where if some random thing in their life happens, here the labor day party, everything will be great, and all the problems will be solved. This obviously is not true, but something very easy to think at times.

I also found it interesting that Alex has little to no background, something that Jack comments on. We don't know why she is the way she is, whether she's had a rough life or she's just not a great person. I'm glad the backstory wasn't added and is more left up for interpretation. The current events and story stand alone. It will be easy for readers to interpret their version of why Alex is like this.

This book confounded me and made me a bit depressed and nihilistic but in the best way. I think that was the point. Cline is a stunning and intelligent writer. This book hit all the right notes for me. "The Girls" has just made its way to the top of my tbr after this book.

"But maybe some things could never be erased. Maybe they tinted some cellular level of your experience, and even if you scraped away whatever part was on the surface, the rot had already gotten beneath."

Just didn't do anything for me--I adored "The Girls" but this one didn't seem to say much. I don't mind if a protagonist is unlikable, but I should have an opinion about her ultimate fate. I was interested to know how it all would end but I didn't care what happened to Alex or any of the other characters. It's unexpected to be in a person's head for an entire book and know so little about them--only how they survive. There wasn't any dialogue until (I believe) around page twenty, so Cline told rather than showed. Alex was the only character even semi-fleshed out, and the rest were cocooned by their money and given no apparent interiority. They all just existed as a help or hindrance on Alex's journey of survival.

Obviously Cline is an adept writer. But the plot? Just blah.

this book felt like stumbling through a thick, drunken fog. i think it made me dissociate a bit but i might've just been high. it took me a long time to read this bc i went through a reading slump, but this book got me back into reading...? so

i wish i had more to say on this, but...

thanks to random house publishing group for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Wow. As an Emma Cline fan, I'm not going to lie: I expected something good. And boy, did she deliver. I started this book last night around 11pm and finished at 1am. I couldn't put it down, staying up into the night to get to the final page. And that ending! Amazing how such a simple story with so many ambiguous details can draw you in. Such a talent. And the writing is incredible.

I rely enjoyed the disturbing story however my only complaint was the ending.

Thanks Netgalley and Random House for allowing me to read this book

All thoughts are my own and aren't influenced be anyone else

I could almost take my review of The Girls and paste it here. Different plot, but same strengths and weaknesses.

In The Guest we meet objectively despicable Alex. Alex is a grifter, possibly a high class call girl, and reminds me of the real life Anna Sorokin in some ways. Yet somehow, someway, Cline has me simultaneously abhorring this girl and hoping she survives her extremely tenuous situation. She's manipulative, but also desperate which somehow makes the reader empathize.

The focus of the book is a week in time in a wealthy area (the Hamptons?). Alex is living with her much older boyfriend. When things go awry between them, Alex is essentially homeless. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Alex uses her considerable charisma and looks to attempt to solve her problems and emerge unscathed.

Unfortunately, just like The Girls, Cline builds this dark, very suspenseful situation and brings the reader along for the ride. I couldn't put it down once I hit the two-thirds mark. But the ending. The ending was what took this book from 5 start territory down to 4 (and I suspect for some readers it will be even more impactful from a negative standpoint). The reader is left to interpret the finale, and in that way the whole novel reminded me of a short story. Short stories often leave a lot of the work up to the reader; and that's one of the things I really LOVE about short stories. But when the author does this in a novel, the reader is expecting the payoff. We have invested a lot of time and thought into the character, and we want to know what the author envisions happening to this woman. But alas, the reader is left to use their imagination to a great extent (think the Sopranos finale) . . .and while I still really enjoyed the ride, I wanted, needed actually a tad more resolution.

All that being said, I totally love Cline's writing. She is great at developing compelling characters and making the reader care and turn the pages. I'll read her next book and her next . . .even if I have to decide the endings for myself.

I was thrilled to see a new title for Emma Cline in the works, and "The Guest" absolutely did not disappoint. Alex's wanderings in an unwelcoming social sphere felt in turns both dream-like and hyper-realistic. Cline's ability to cautiously distribute details throughout the journey felt like breadcrumbs leading to an unavoidable chaos, a destination about which the reader feels increasingly anxious despite the protagonist's assumptions. I couldn't put it down.

This book follows a 22-year-old woman named Alex, who is living with her rich boyfriend in a wealthy beach town. After he kicks her out, she decides to stick around for a week, despite having nowhere to stay, no money, and no working phone, so she can try to win him back. She survives by stealing, lying, and manipulating people.

The premise sounded interesting, and when I read Cline’s THE GIRLS back in 2016, I remember being hooked. I was a different reader back then so it’s hard to compare, but I think THE GUEST is a big decline from that.

I will say that the writing style made it easy to fly through this book, and it was a good one to dip in and out of when I just had a few minutes of reading time. There are some windows into the lives of the ultra-wealthy, which can be fun to read.

However, nothing really happens in this book. It lacks a clear narrative arc and meanders for 300+ pages. The lack of plot might have worked if it was instead an interesting character study, but it fell short in that regard too. Alex makes terrible decisions, including avoiding the options that would actually help solve her problems. We don’t get enough of her backstory to empathize with where she came from or understand her motives, which you really need if you’re going to write an unlikeable character.

The other phrase that comes to mind is “lack of specificity”. This book loosely touches on a lot of sensitive issues, but instead of digging in and exploring them in a fresh way, it felt like the author hand-waved over all of them and didn’t say anything new. The lack of details made it hard to feel like Alex was a real person or to feel grounded in the story.

I stuck it out until the end, hoping that’s where the payoff would be, but let’s just say I was unsatisfied (read: I wanted to throw the book across the room). In a world of sky high TBRs where there are so many other good books to read, I just can’t recommend this one.

Emma Cline does a brilliant job of drawing you into her world almost instantly. Her characters and settings are so richly rendered, you can't help but dive right in. As usual, her characters are complex and flawed, in a way that makes them both intensely relatable and not entirely lovable. A wonderful read!

I loved Emma’s first book, so I was really excited to read this. And boy, was it a wild ride! We follow the main character, Alex, as she drifts without money and much on her, through the social standings and parties in Long Island. This was a slow burn and then writing was well done.

I fell in love with Cline's writing while reading The Girls. Just as in that book, the writing here is beautiful and gauzy. The sense of place and time is immaculate.

I'm not sure how the plot (as much as there is one - this is more of a character study) will hit with most though. If you love watching someone constantly make bad decisions while having no idea why then this is for you. Cline keeps us at a distance and in the dark for much of the story. It did help create tension, but the repetitiveness of the week and abrupt ending break this.

Weeks later and I still question what the point of it all was. It was a wild ride though.

I think this would be better as a summer, all in one sitting read. The feeling of listlessness is captured perfectly, but maybe too much so as I found it difficult to get invested. The ending was a bit too abrupt and perhaps a little too open for interpretation. While I noted bits of foreshadowing throughout, it was almost as an after thought and left the plot really feeling weak. I wish I could've had a bit more of Alex and Jack, or more of a resolution as that was the plot line I found the most interesting.

Emma Cline is a talented writer, but I am still waiting for her to tackle something a little more weighty. This book is entertaining and at times funny and interesting, but it never seems to arrive at anything even hinting at profound.

Emma Cline has written a full and messy quite rage woman. This is an unlikeable but human character that takes you on rides of not understanding why she’s doing what she’s doing.

as a fan of Emma Cline I really enjoyed this, I love her pacing and her ability to write books that feel anxiety inducing but realistic at the same time, for me the perfect comparison would be that this book makes you feel exactly how the film Uncut Gems makes you feel

thank you NetGalley for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest feedback

This book started out really good and was intriguing. The middle sort of lost me a bit and felt a little repetitive but I liked the ending a lot because it was thought provoking. I found myself searching for others opinions on the ending to see if what I thought happened really happened. Overall ,it was a quick, entertaining read.

I felt let down by the ending and wanted more after making it to the end. Alex's user behavior got old fast to me and it's hard to feel any sympathy without any backstory or reasoning as to why she acted the way she did.

Kindly received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

At first I thought this was going to turn into a pulpy page turner without a lot of depth. The turning point was in how the author steered clear of tropes and pity. I never felt sick of this character who keeps making bad decisions. Great, fun read.

This book swept me away with its focus and almost hypnotic character and setting. The impending sense of self-destruction amidst the glittering Hamptons resulted in a feverish and stylish read I thoroughly enjoyed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for an advanced electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Alex is 22 and getting by on beauty and acting ability - as in, who she can pretend to be. She knows how to find someone to take care of her, and she knows when things aren't working and she needs to leave. With nothing and no one to fall back on, Alex is at a loss when her "boyfriend" kicks her out. She only has $400 to her name, so she's gotta win him back... she can figure it out, right?

This book is all character and atmosphere with no plot, and I didn't think I had strong negative feelings about that kind of book, but after reading this... maybe I do. I only pushed through this book because I knew it was less than 200 pages, but I wasn't really interested in what happened to the main character. The ending didn't make sense either. Basically, I wouldn't recommend it. The only reason it isn't zero stars is because I liked a couple side characters.

CW: mental illness, drug and alcohol use