The plot was okay(ish) overall, but the vibe is super inconsistent. As a result, this took me so long to read I started forgetting who characters were when the turned up out of context, which, like, just doesn't happen to me.

Title: The Guest Room
Author: Tasha Sylva
Pub Date: July 11, 2023
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for the opportunity to read this ahead of its release in exchange for an honest review.

📚Thoughts/Review:
For me this was a rather slow burn. I had hoped for something a little faster paced with more gripping exchanges and situations but that fell a little flat. I didn’t feel as though any sort of heart drumming action happened until the last 10-15% and even then, I had expected it; it wasn’t surprising.
I will say, since I kept hoping for edge of your seat suspense, I kept flipping page after page in search of it.
I would certainly read future works by this author though. I’m an eternal optimist!

There are slow burns and there are very slow burns and this novel falls into the latter.

Tess is still mourning the unsolved murder of her sister, Rosie, when she takes in handsome Arran as her B&B guest. While she's living in Rosie's apartment and trying to solve the murder mystery herself, Tess also indulges in her habit of snooping through her guest's belongings.

Tess can't help but read the diary she discovers, a diary that outlines Arran's stalking of a young woman. So what's a girl to do but stalk Arran and the woman he's potentially following as well?

Tess' mental health, already poor, severely declines throughout the novel as there are no leads in Rosie's death. There is a plea from the detective for her to get help, but instead she follows her sister's ex-boyfriend, alienates her family and friends, and falls for Arran despite the dark side she's glimpsed in his diary.

As Tess and Arran become closer, his secrets permeate both her past and present, leading her to answers she's not sure she wanted. The cast of odd neighbors also swirl around Tess, neighbors that knew Rosie, and could bring Tess the closure she needs - but at what price?

The story itself picks up in the second half of the book but needs a bit more suspense at the very beginning to really catch the reader's interest.

Thank you Netgalley for this preview!

The Guest Room by Tasha Sylva is a crazy twisted read.
This was full of suspense, and twists and turns!
I thought the writing was well done.
I wished it had more to it. And didn’t drag on too much.
I enjoyed the premise of the story. Very interesting and intriguing.
I will definitely pick up another book written by Sylva in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review

Tess’s sister died a violent death four months ago, and now Tess is nearly drowning in paranoia and grief, obsessed with finding her sister’s killer. She’s also staying in her sister’s flat and renting out the spare room for short-term stays. Arran is her newest guest and will be staying for four weeks. She begins snooping through his belongings and soon becomes obsessed with him, too.

This book sticks very closely to Tess as the first person narrator, interspersed with entries from Arran’s diary as they are read by Tess. The reader also sees some brief entries from another mysterious source, so we are privy to some information unknown to Tess. I had to remind myself of this when I found myself irritated with Tess for obsessing too long over particular characters in the book.

The author effectively drew me into Tess’s psyche, her instability and unraveling, although I found myself getting tired of following Tess on endless stalking episodes around London. The other characters were a bit boring, although they all served a purpose in the story by the end. The twist at the very end of the book was juicy. Overall, this was a decent thriller and a fine debut.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

** TikTok review coming on publication date.

So, I wasn't a fan of the writing style with this one. I felt confused most of the time and bogged down by the author's abundance of flowery word choices. It has to be just me and this particular story not connecting.

This was an interesting debut novel. Twisty and kept me guessing. Will check out more books by this author in the future.

Review in progress and to come.

I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review

Tess's sister Rosie was murdered a few months ago. Tess has moved into her sister's flat and taken a job at the gallery where Rosie worked.. She walks along Hampstead Heath at night ( where Rosie was found ). Looking for clues and also playing with danger as a means to coping with her sister's death. She also rents out her sister's room on a B&B website and snoops through her guests belongings. Enter Arran and his diary. Frankly, Tess annoyed me but the diary entries kept me reading. There's a lot of stalking going on here and some storylines that were just dropped abruptly with no real resolution. A disappearance, a creepy neighbor, a convenient ex boyfriend, and an overworked police detective who seems to try harder to get Tess into therapy than he does at finding Rosie's s killer. This book was a 2.5 to a 3 for me until the end I did not see that villain coming at all. The plot could have been a little tighter. Worth picking up especially if you're into the stalker trope. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of The Guest Room.

I'm always interested to read debuts, and The Guest Room had an interesting premise.

Sadly, it didn't capture my interest, and I think the main issue is Tess. I didn't like her.

I realize she was mourning the death of her sister, the sociable, gregarious one favored by her parents. Naturally, Tess is not popular just much is made of her attractiveness, and how popular she is with men.

At first, it was fun, suspenseful, when Tess would snoop through Arran's things, reading his notebook in secret.

But, that quickly grew tedious, as Tess's obsession with her renter evolves into stalking and hoping she's the one he's writing about in his journal.

At the same time, Tess is mourning the loss of her sister, frustrated with how the investigation has stalled, and convinced her sister's ex is the murderer.

Then, the stalking begins. Not just Tess, but apparently everyone is a stalker not-in-training.

How many wackadoos live in this neighborhood?

It wasn't difficult to figure out Arran's connection to Tess.

Also, what was the point of Luke? A red herring?

Tess was an annoying and frustrating character; I get she's grieving her sister, but her personality is unpleasant.

I could see why she's not her parents' favorite; she's standoffish, almost snotty to people, like she's better than everyone, or she can't be bothered.

The writing was good, but the narrative went on for too long; Tess' stalking Arran and Joanna, other people watching and stalking each other, Tess wondering what happened to her sister, bugging the ex-boyfriend and the detective in charge of the case, on and on, it was so repetitive.

The premise had potential to be darker, and if Tess wasn't such an irritable character, the story could have been really shocking.

This book is about the obsessive nature of grief and love. Tess's sister has been murdered and she desperately needs to find out what has happened, stalking suspects, stalking her tenant, who is stalking someone himself. Taking risks to her own life by being out in the park late at night. While one of the twists was pretty easy to guess, it didn't take away from the book for me, there were moments where the stalking descriptions got a bit much but it also made sense given her obsession. Overall I liked this quite a bit.

Is snooping an obsession, can it get you in trouble ?
You know the answer !

This was a very interesting read - however, sometimes it dragged a little...

Still good - would recommend !

Thank you Netgallery!

I really liked the first part of the book it was interesting, I really liked the story-building. But things keep getting repetitive, I get that Tess is feeling grief about her sister but her calling the police every other chapter because her sister looked at a man on the street got old real quick. I guessed one of the big twists without even reading the book, I was pretty confident so any attempt of the author trying to throw me off didn't work. It also made the main character seem really dumb.

But overall I did enjoy the story of the sister's murder, it was my favorite part of the book.

Talk about missing the mark....

Everyone is stalking everyone, and there's no real plot. Tess, the main character, is out of her mind, and frankly, I don't know how anyone could stand to be around her. Her neighbors were weird. Her sister's ex-boyfriend is a jerk. Tess's lodger is a weirdo, and don't even get me started on his diary.

I think there could have worked had there been a stronger story. Tess's sister's unsolved murder was a good thread but everything else kept piling on top.

Overall, this is a pass for me.

I didn't love or hate this book. It was slow and dragged in certain parts. I was just hoping for more. I will however, try another book by this author in the future!

Thank you NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for my ARC!

Thank you to netgalley for providing me with a digital version of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The plot is basically nonexistent it just consists of weird encounters with Tess' neighbors and basically everyone stalking each other this book is full of a bunch of stalkers. The plot itself was also very convoluted. Even at over 80% of the way through the book there was no clear plot direction and nothing really made sense or fit well together. I don't think that a book should go that long with absolutely no clear answers or bearings on the plot.

The characters were not very likeable. Ill be honest, im not a very character driven reader im definitely more plot driven but for those who are more character driven none of these characters are likeable and i do mean NONE usually im okay with this if the main character has SOME redeeming qualities but Tess had none she was very impulsive and irrational and very unaware of herself altogether which was grating to read . She was just all around a creeper and not even that good at it to begin with.

The writing style was decent it was okay it was never very captivating or engrossing and I never felt tempted to go past my self assigned page goal for the day but the writing style made the story easy to get through and is probably the only reason why i didnt dnf the book which i was so tempted to do. I do feel that a lot of the smaller details could have easily been omitted and not have impacted the readers comprehension of the story at all.

As previously stated, this book is highly repetitive in nature and remained this way throughout its entirety. It consists of the same encounters over and over again just at different points in the story. Tess THINKS she has something important to add to her sisters murder investigation and calls the detective then he brushes her off because her suggestions are flimsy at best and then it washes rinses and repeats. In addition to that we have ,multiple characters that have adopted stalker behavior and it happens so often and in a ROW that it gets old pretty fast. There were even some points where someone was stalking someone and then a third person was stalking the first stalker it just got ridiculous after a while and even more convoluted in the process. It's funny because for the amount of stalking that Tess did she didn't even glean that much useful information and yet still continued doing it seemingly just for fun and almost completely aware of how dire her obsessiveness was becoming which was maddening to read as well.

All in all this repetition in events and lack of good characterization along with not having any answers until the very end made for a story that unfortunately felt very devoid of purpose.

I was given this book by NetGalley for an honest review-
Tess’s sister is murdered and she struggles to deal with her loss and who would murder her and why. She moves into her house but must rent out a room in order to make ends meet.
Her biggest problem - she loves to snoop- so she sneaks into her renters room browsing through his things, reading his diary which she becomes obsessed with. She feels the girl he is writing about could be her. Could it? She starts following him . Is he the man she thinks he is? Is she the woman in the diary? Could there be a relationship between them or is she imagining it?

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for the eARC The Guest Room by Tasha Sylva.

I was pleasantly surprised that I ended up liking this book. The beginning starts slow, but it turned out to be a good book that I could not put down. A couple of twists that left me speechless. I recommend this book.

The Guest Room had me hooked from the start. If “You” and “Fatal Attraction” had a love child it would be The Guest Room. It was suspenseful and engulfed the reader into solving a who done it; find Rosie’s killer through a sister that never gave up or gave in. It may also have you think twice to ‘B & B ing’ your home. Ha! In all seriousness though, a well deserved 5-star ARC read review, but don’t take my word for it-go read this author’s debut (hopefully not last) novel.

Thank you to Net Galley and Macmillan publishers for allowing me to provide my open and honest review.

Tess is greiving the loss of her sister Rosie. Rosie was murdered but it remains unsolved. Tessa is working in the same place Rosie did. She moved into her apartment. She wants answers and she also wants the killer to try to attack her. Tess walks the dark streets of London late at night alone. She thinks maybe the killer will target her. She doesn't trust anyone. Tess is also renting out her sister's bedroom in the apartment to Air B&B guests. She's leaving herself very open and vulnerable, but remains incredibly on edge and guarded as well. She'll stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the murder, even if it risks her own life in the process.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a bit predictable, yet over the top dramatic. I really enjoyed the development of the surrounding characters. I feel like we got to know more about everyone except Tess. The story progresses well and I really like the way there are many possible suspects right until the actual killer is revealed. I love the ending. Some books don't give you any glimpse into the aftermath and I love that we got that here.