Alex is a young woman with a drug problem (and a seemingly troubling obsession with pools/water). When she finds herself penniless and alone, she concocts an elaborate plan of deception to keep her afloat.

I'm feeling generous, so I'll give this three stars instead of two. The first fourth of this book is extremely slow paced and the very limited information about Alex and her past did not help. I never really cared for Alex because I felt like I knew nothing about her. Other than that she was in and out of apartments for the last two years because of her tendency to pop pills and steal money. As Alex's life continue to fall apart, her situation became a little bit more interesting (albeit not in any sort of enjoyable or entertaining way, more like a car crash you can't look away from). And the conclusion to this novel is not much of a conclusion it all, which was frustrating to say the least. This was an okay read in the end, but Cline's <u>The Girls</u>is far more superior in my opinion.

This is my first book by author Emma Cline and I’m sure it won’t be my last. This book was unlike anything else I’ve ever read. Most of the characters you meet within this story aren’t very likable. Our protagonist is Alex is a grifter. In the beginning of the book she’s staying with Simon and things are going great for her spending her days laying out by the pool or going to the beach until one day Simon decides to send her back to the city. Alex is unable to go back to the city because of some unknown personal reasons so she drifts around leeching off of whoever she can. I was intrigued by this story and didn’t want to put it down because I needed to know what happened. I’m a little disappointed at some of the loose ends within this story and how the book ended. But overall I enjoyed this book! Releasing May 2023
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

I thought this book was a very good read. I kept wondering where the story would go next and what the main character, Alex, would do to survive. However, I was quite annoyed and dissatisfied at the end of the book because it kind of just stopped when it felt like it should have kept going. It was a book that ended ambiguously and I didn’t really like that. I wish I had gotten to read what happened after Simon saw Alex at his Labor Day party.

This was very fun and interesting but it got a little old by the middle. It doesn’t feel like there is a climax and it’s pretty predictable. It wasn’t completely unenjoyable though. The ending was alright even though we see it coming from the beginning and it’s intriguing to see how our narrator gets through the week. I know this author has a big following from her other books so maybe I just don’t get it.

Didn’t hate it tho!

Also I feel like I was too stupid to understand the very end or I’m just making it more complicated than it needs to be.

If you want just a simple book this would be great. I actually read this through my work day (shhhhh) and it was nice having a simple story with nothing crazy happening to read.

This is the first Emma cline novel I’ve read and I have to say I’ll be looking for more of her books. Engrossing from the start! The main character is scheming to get what she wants out of people who are either clearly aware of her schemes or just taken for a ride. Such a well crafted story and as aggravatingly entitled as the main character is, you feel empathy for her because of how richly drawn she is.

Review: The Guest by Emma Cline
Publishing 5/16/23.

Rating: 4/5

The Guest follows a young grifter named Alex who is dating an older, wealthier man named Simon. They’ve spent the better part of the summer together at his Long Island home when a sudden misstep causes him to dismiss her back to the city just as quickly as she’d arrived.

With nowhere to go and no one to call (and a waterlogged phone to boot), Alex spends the week leading up to Labor Day on the move, setting off a series of scams that always seem to backfire.

Alex is difficult to root for. She lacks any sense of morality or remorse, but that’s precisely what makes her so interesting to read. She is driven by her own instinct to survive, a desperation that she is convinced she conceals well, but that everyone else can spot immediately.

That particular dissonance is something I love about this book. Alex’s perception of self is so often disconnected from the way others view her, and I think this showcases just how intent she is on believing her own lies. What she wants more than anything is to belong, to assimilate into a lifestyle of wealth and security.

I find this book interesting in that nothing happens, and yet it’s gripping from start to finish. Emma Cline creates a mounting tension that lingers long after the book ends, and I enjoyed it as a slice of life narrative. I’d recommend it to anyone that enjoys reading unlikeable female characters, specifically those committing crimes for the sake of it.

I liked The Girls by Emma Cline a lot, so I was eager to read this one as soon as possible.

Thank you @netgalley and @penguinrandomhouse for the digital ARC!

I loved Cline's The Girls but have found none of her other books have quite lived up to that for me. This one came pretty close. I loved reading about the tricks and scams, but the tone felt pretty removed.

A perfect follow up for fans of THE GIRLS. Like THE GIRLS, Cline digs into the weirdness of fast-formed relationships, this time with a shyster heroine used to stealing her way from one place to another. There's a perfect ticking clock of tension in this book: deadlines in the background of deals gone wrong and parties that she plans to crash, and while each chapter reads like a short story in the falling-apart life of a young woman, together they make a narrative that is a perfect storm of tension. If you're looking for a beach read (about beach life) that's not at all your typical beach read, this is it. This is the one.

I'm not really sure what to think of this book. The main character is pretty unlikeable, which doesn't usually turn me off as long as there is some backstory and subtle psychological analysis to help explain why the character is the way she is. There was none of that here. It just seems like Alex is a narcissistic leech, moving from one person to the next to get her needs met. I found her escapades interesting/appalling enough to keep reading. I wanted to know what was going to happen with the Simon reunion. The book ended very abruptly so what I was waiting for didn't really materialize in a satisfying way. Cline is, no doubt, an excellent writer. I wish there was more meat to this one.

I received this a copy of this book to read from Random House and NetGalley. I rated it 3.5 out of 5 and chose to round up to 4 for goodreads. I enjoy how Emily cline writes. I found it hard to identify with the main character and spent the entire book feeling badly for the web of lies in which she entangled herself. The ending threw me off a little. I would still say read it and I will read more of hers.

Of all of the grifter/scammer stories I've consumed lately (there have been many), this was the most literarily and unsympathetically rendered. It was also one of the few that focused its POV on the scammer rather than the people left in her wake--which automatically made even this sometimes cruel, always calculating character more deserving of the reader's empathy. Extremely propulsive, with its peering in from the outside into the world of the exclusive moneyed Hamptons crowd, this psychologically twisty exploration into the things some women are driven to--or choose--to do to survive is a welcome addition to this genre of story. I would have welcomed a little more understanding of how Alex became this person, but also appreciated that Cline didn't hand the reader a stereotypical backstory that neatly led to Alex's actions in the present.

However, while I admire Cline's choice to end the book in an abrupt and enigmatic manner that is befitting of the style of the novel, I also found it deeply unsatisfying as a reader to have so much murkiness introduced at the end of a much more clear story.

thank you netgalley and random house publishing for an advanced copy of this book. i went into this one with thoughts of emma cline’s ofher book, “the girls”. quickly i realized it would not be similar, except for the writing flow and the feeling of wanting to keep reading to figure out what is going on. i do wish the ending had more to it, but overall i really enjoyed this story. alex was relatable in ways and her character posed big questions on belonging and permanency. she made some rogue choices, but her feelings were easy to also feel. it kind of felt modern day catcher in the rye to me. i would read this again.

I… don’t get it.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to feel after reading this book. Skin crawly and confused?

My visceral reaction isn’t completely fair because the text was beautifully written and addictive. But in the end, I’m left with a huge cloud of question marks where my brain used to be.

The story follows Alex, a grifter with a troubled past. Although the book is written in third-person, it’s also entirely in Alex’s POV so you get a glimpse at her motivations for being a pretty terrible person. She’s never quite sympathetic enough to make you root for her — and her circumstances are mostly creepy, not compelling, so I rushed through hoping to get some sort of closure.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get it though.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the early copy!

Reading this book was such a wild ride! The entire time I was wishing that the main character would do one thing and she always did the exact opposite. I was hoping it would end in a certain way but of course, it ends exactly as you'd expect. The main character, Alex, is a bit delusional and engages in a lot of self-sabotage. You can't help but sympathize with her situation and hope that things turn out well for her.

DNF. Unfortunately, this was a book I started multiple times but could just not get into. I appreciate having the opportunity to read this book, it was just not a good fit for me as a reader. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my gifted review copy.

I enjoyed this second novel. A perfectly tense and psychological book, interested in a looming sense of dread and what is left unsaid hidden between the lines.

Strangely, I'd never read Emma Cline until "The Guest." I was aware of all of the excitement around her debut novel, and I recall that she was one of the first people to be dubbed a truly great "millennial" writer. But still, I hadn't read her work until now. I'd been missing out. She's a truly magnificent writer.

"The Guest" tracks one young woman's odyssey around a beach town. She has little means or resources, except that she can read people very well. Importantly, she cannot return to New York; she must find a way to stay on the island. So she attaches herself to various other lonely and desperate people who provide food, shelter, and safety (and drugs and alcohol). It's a perfect beach read (though it's far from being light and fun); it just evokes that end-of-summer malaise and heaviness, as well as the unreal quality of a vacation town, just so well.

I didn't particularly like the main character, nor relate to her. But she is written so well that I sympathized with her, and I felt that I understood her. And I definitely wanted better for her. Cline's writing style is spare, a bit detached, a bit dreamlike, a little bit haunting. It was, frankly, beautiful, with no sentences gone to waste. When the novel ended, I was actually a bit sad. I just felt so immersed in the story and the plot. I highly recommend it, and I'm going to go read her other work now.

Edit: I forgot to add that I received an advance copy of this novel from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.

Alex has always had to manipulate and lie to people to get by in life. She has never really had a real job, but has found a way to survive by using others. She feels like she has finally hit the jackpot when she meets Simon, a 50 something wealthy bachelor to her 22 years. She is invited to accompany him to his beautiful Long Island home for the summer, where she lives a pampered, privileged lifestyle, all be it short lived. Attending a party at another wealthy couples summer home, Alex oversteps and finds herself being handed a one way ticket back to the city. But does she really have to go back? She decides to wait out the week so she can get back in good with her ex-lover at his end of summer party and retain the ritzy lifestyle she has grown accustomed to. As the days go on, Alex finds herself using and disposing of multiple unsuspecting victims in order to get by and survive the week. Her manipulations and deception spiral into a fast approaching climax! This was an exceptional novel that I completely devoured. It was a car crash that one cannot look away from… I gave this book a solid 5 stars.

The Guest is great name for this book, as I felt like a guest in the mind of Alex, our protagonist who wanders around life hoping for some sort of safe landing.

Alex is a young waif, who doesn’t seem to have specific plans in life, but wants to survive and will steal, connive, and give her body just to have one more shot at getting it right. She gets bounced from her older boyfriend’s house in the Hamptons, and instead of heading back to the city on the train, she decides to stay a week, and hope that her boyfriend cools off and she will resume the relationship. The problem is, she has no money, no place to stay and no plan with a dead phone and an ex-boyfriend harassing her over money she took from him.

The story follows Alex for a few days before Labor Day weekend. She needs to make it through until then as the house party at her boyfriends will be her ticket to get back into his good graces. Despite stealing his watch, she knows she can cover that and make it work. Her goal if there is one is to make it work this time.

Alex is an intriguing character. She is so well drawn and aimless. She is modern, ruthless and wants what she wants. We are drawn to her because she is ruthless and can’t believe the things, she does to achieve her desires. Nothing it seems is off limits.

I read most of the book in one sitting, almost couldn’t put it down. At the end, after all she has endured, she literally marches into her triumph. But there is no reflection about the week, what it took from her and all the other people she engaged with. I guess the point is to reflect on the shallowness of her reality and know that these types of people exist. Like small fish that feed off whales.

All in all, I think it is an interesting book. Well written and captures the tone of a young aimless girl beautifully. I just wish there was a bit more.

Genre: Psychological Fiction
Publisher: Random House
Pub. Date: May 16, 2023

I enjoyed other novels by Emma Cline. “The Girls” centers on teenage girls in a commune in 1969. The commune leader is modeled after Charles Manson. It is basically the plot of the movie “Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.” The film came out in 2019. The novel was published in 2016. Wonder if there is a connection. “Daddy,” published in 2000, held my interest with ten edgy slice-of-life tales exploring human nature.
In 2023, “The Guest” will be coming out. The fact that I didn't enjoy this one surprised me. The novel is written as a character study with a fascinating protagonist, a pathological liar, and an expert grifter. Alex is in her early 20s. We get a good feel for her from the beginning. Her NYC roommates kick her out for not paying her share of the rent. Alex goes into hiding out on Long Island while evading a city boyfriend from whom she stole money.

When Simon, a wealthy older man, moves her into his beach house, she believes she has it made. When Simon kicks her out, she aimlessly walks around Long Island to wait for Simon's party on Labor Day. She believes that Simon will take her back once he sees her. In her usual state of self-interest, Alex lives with the help of a teenage boy who falls in love with her. The author expertly captures her apathy towards others. Cline even somehow manages to make Alex almost sympathetic. She is so lost and without a home that she bounces between men in the hopes of making a relationship with one who will provide for her. Cline ensures the reader that Alex is unaware that she might be capable of independently finding a way to live not involving sex.
With such a compelling narrative, I expected to be enthralled by the story. However, because the plot's theme is overused, the novel loses its appeal. The book ends abruptly, ruining the excellent tension I was experiencing while waiting to find out what would happen on Labor Day. I was left wishing there was an epilogue. While "The Guest" is just as edgy as her other books, it lacks significance. Eventually, I started to wonder what the point of this story was. Is it researching the mentality of a sociopath? Is Alex really a sociopath, or is there some underlying trauma influencing her behavior? Either way, there is no denying Cline produces such strong writing that it took me a while to realize that the plot isn't worth getting invested in. A shorter version of the tale, possibly a novella, with fewer repetitions would have been more effective.