This was a fun twist of a ride. I love her writing style I felt very emerged with the story and characters. The twist shocked me!

Thank you Netgalley for this audio edition of The Guest by B.A. Paris.

When Iris and Gabriel come home from a tense vacation, they are surprised to see that their home has an unexpected occupant. Receiving distressing news about her husband, Laure has come for some emotional respite. But over time, Iris finds herself overwhelmed with the needs and length of stay of her guest. But Iris could never bargain for how much chaos Laure is really about to bring into her life.

Gosh this was messy. That's honestly my biggest takeaway of this story, it was messy, hard to believe, and hard to invest. I had a hard time really liking any of the characters, or buying their super unboundaried relationships. I struggled to pluck the important details from a super scattered plot, the whole thing just wasn't for me.

3.5 stars. Thank you St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for my free ARC of The Guest by B.A. Paris — available Feb 20!

Read this if you:
🏡 find the idea of a 6+ week houseguest horrifying
🧑‍🌾 have ever thought about a fling with a hot gardener
🧬 love of a bit of a "you ARE the father" puzzle

Iris and Gabriel return home from a trip to quite a surprise — their friend Laure has been staying in their home, and she plans to stay with them indefinitely. They feel too guilty to make her leave, since she's in a feud with her husband over his confessed infidelity. In fact, he claims to have fathered a child with the other woman, which is devastating to Laure, who always wanted kids of her own. But when the new neighbor's gardener gets involved, things start to quickly spiral out of control.

I can always count on B.A. Paris for a pull-you-in plot and a fast pace, and The Guest did not disappoint here. There are several turns in the story that held my interest and kept me engaged, which is exactly what i want from my thrillers! I will admit that the ending wasn't my favorite — a little too neat for my tastes, with everything sort of happening off the page and impossible to guess at for the reader. Feels a bit too easy? Anyway, I enjoyed the ride nonetheless and definitely recommend this as a binge-able thriller.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

✨B O O K • R E V I E W✨

The Guest by B.A. Paris // Coming Feb 20, 2024

#ad I received a gifted advance copy of this book - many thanks @stmartinspress #partner

This one kept me guessing until the very last chapter. I was drawn to the characters and the mystery of the whole book.

With so many dead bodies, I didn’t figure out who the killer/killers was/were. The story itself was compelling and kept me intrigued.

I liked how each character had a little shady side to them - it made pinpointing who the killer/killers was/were.

If you love B.A Paris books then you’ll love this one! When a surprise guest shows up at your house be cautious when they stay longer than they should.

I just reviewed The Guest by B.A. Paris. #NetGalley

🚨 𝑨𝑹𝑪 𝑨𝑳𝑬𝑹𝑻 ‼️📖

👏🏼Starting off the year strong with my FIRST EVER ARC as a bookstagram reviewer! Thank you @netgalley for giving me the opportunity to give an honest review!

✨It’s a real full circle moment being able to review my first arc from the same author as the first book review ever on my page. Shoutout Behind Closed Doors!

📖 The Guest by B.A Paris
Genre: psychological thriller/suspense
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Summary: “ Some secrets never leave”

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐈𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐆𝐚𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞-𝐨𝐫-𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐚 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦. 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬, 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐫𝐞, 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 - 𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐝, 𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈𝐫𝐢𝐬' 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬, 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞. 𝐒𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐮𝐬𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐝 - 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝 - 𝐏𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝.

𝐈𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐆𝐚𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐧𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐬 - 𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭 ...𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐛𝐚 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫! (2/20/24)

🌟Review: She does it again! Another great thriller from the thriller queen herself! Although this book took some time to get into, and I found myself a little bored at first, once you hit 40% you certainly cannot stop. It’s a very easy quick read which I personally love! Great dialogue, twisty and a perfect setup for that epilogue 🤯

I loved this. If you liked Behind Closed Doors you’ll 100% like this. The breadcrumb trail to the twists was laid splendidly.

Romance, friendship, family, drama and murder.. a delicious recipe for a great thriller! Iris has the life every woman covets, but is it all it seems to be? Laure, though annoying at times, makes you feel compassion and sympathy for her. Gabriel.. poor Gabriel. The man who bears the burdens of all. What a mix of characters and with each, a different path of ups and downs! Trust your circle or trust no one.. be careful what you choose! #stmartinspress #netgalley #arcreview #theguest #baparis

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an advanced readers copy of The Guest By B A Paris.

When our main characters, Gabriel and Iris, return home from their holiday, they found out that they had a guest. Their friends, Laure and Pierre, whom they met on their honeymoon many years ago, are having marital problems. So, Laure left Pierre and made herself completely comfortable in Iris and Gabriel 's home. She had went as far as sleeping in their bed and wearing Iris' clothes and shoes.

Iris and Gabriel are having their own marital issues. Gabriel had went out for a run not too long ago and found 18 year old Charlie lying at the bottom of the old limestone quarry surrounded by his bikes tangled metal. Charlie had been alive when he first found him but the boy died before help arrived. Even though Gabriel was a doctor he could not save him. Maybe if he did not know Charlie from the past it might not have hurt Gabriel so much. Charlie relayed a message before passing away but it was not the same message that Gabriel relayed to the Boyes mother. This whole situation played hard on Gabriel and he took a sabbatical from his job. He had begun to distance himself from his wife and problems began in their marriage.

When Laure overstays her welcome and begins to ask questions about Charlie's death, Iris begins to reach her breaking point.

Then there is the new young couple who just moved into the neighborhood with their gardner is thrown into the storyline.

As always the author kept me on my toes the whole time and never guessing the ending. One shocking epilogue!

This book was a bit too slow for me. I have an extremely hard time getting into it. I did enjoy the ending, it made the book worthwhile!

The Guest by B.A. Paris is a quick read that kept me guessing!

Gabriel and Iris have returned from vacation to find Laure, a family friend, living in their house. She and her husband are going through a rough patch and she needs somewhere to stay indefinitely. Their lives are turned upside down.

In the meantime they have recently made friends with a new couple in town who have recommended a gardener to help with a backyard project. I held each of these characters under the microscope as secrets started unraveling and as people started turning up dead.

I was definitely along for the ride during this book and the pages turn easily because of the very short chapters. B.A. Paris is great at creating tension in her books and the tension definitely built in this one. After a certain point I felt like that tension broke and didn't ever quite come back.

While the book ends abruptly, all of the secrets and twists are revealed in a very long epilogue. This was a bit disappointing to me as all of the other chapters are short and I typically like books to conclude outside of the epilogue and for the epilogue to serve as an added bonus. I would recommend this to the thriller fans out there as I think B.A. Paris writes interesting books.

B.A. Paris is becoming one of my go-tos for psychological/ domestic suspense. I was so excited when I found this available in NetGalley! It did not disappoint. It kept me guessing and had a twist that totally threw me for a loop! I read it in two days. Highly recommend if you like psychological and/ or domestic suspense.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
The Guest is the next book from the great thriller author B.A. Paris. It is about Iris and Gabriel who come home from vacation to find their best friend Laure in their home waiting for them. Laure has taken refuge in their home after finding out that her husband had an affair and has a child from the affair.
I usually love B.A. Paris' novels but this one did not keep my attention. I was so excited to get an arc from one of my favorite authors and it pains me that I did not enjoy this novel. This book was just not suspenseful to me at all which is a necessary part of mystery thriller novels. Even domestic thrillers should have me thinking and questioning. I felt like this book was just a few basic mysteries in a row with no seeds of questioning the answers that we were given. <spoiler>The end of this novel just felt like a massive info dumb. The twist was good but the way it was delivered was just miserable.</spoiler>
When it came to the characters I did not feel connected to any of them. The deaths felt like they had no meaning because the author leads you to not like anyone by the time they die. The high school student who died (not a spoiler because it is talked about right at the start) is the only sad death but we know nothing about him so there is no connection. It was disappointing by the end to learn everything all at once. It felt like the author forgot she was supposed to make a suspenseful twist and threw something in at the end. The 'seeds' throughout the book just felt liked they were thrown in and were so unnecessary.
If you want a good thriller I would recommend other B.A. Paris' novels, like Behind Closed Doors. I would suggest to skip this one unfortunately.

ARC REVIEW

The Guest
By B.A. Paris

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5

Publishing date: 2/20/2024

REVIEW:
Ok. The twist? I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING. Like...at all. I actually went, "OHHHHHHHH WHAAAAAT!" When I made the connection. I'll give credit that I think the twist was done VERY well.

However, NOTHING.... And I mean NOTHING is revealed until....THE EPILOGUE.

As soon as I got to the epilogue, I was confused because there were NO answers given up until that point, but all was revealed in the epilogue.  But it took the entire book to get there , and I definitely lowered my rating because of this. It felt very slow and drawn out. The short chapters were nice to keep it moving, but the story felt long and unnecessary.

Honestly, I still recommend it because of the twist but prepared for no answers until the last possible second. 

Thanks to @stmartinspress and @netgalley for the arc! Always appreciative!

Laure comes to visit her good friends, Iris and Gabriel, and inserts herself into their lives. Laure has had trouble dealing with her husband, Pierre, who she believes has had an affair and fathered a child. How long will Laure avoid dealing with Pierre and continue to stay with Iris and Gabriel? What will happen with Laure and Pierre's relationship? In a second story, Gabriel is traumatized by a young man’s death message. Are these two stories related? If so, how? I am curious and read on.

During parts of this suspenseful domestic drama, the plot is slow-moving. I continue reading out of curiosity to find out what happens, but I feel worn out a little until reaching the conclusion. I am glad I stuck with this book until the end.

A weirdly structured mystery in which there doesn’t appear to be a mystery for 90% of the book and then the last 10% rips back the curtain to tell us what Really Happened. However, I felt the author cheated a bit by hiding things in and from the main narrative that turn out to be crucial, making the resolution seem undeserved.

When Iris and Gabriel return to their country home after a short break, they discover that their friend Laure has moved in after her husband revealed that he’d had a child with another woman.

The author does a great job of showing Iris’s growing irritation at their guest who apparently is never leaving, as well as the growing void between Iris and her husband, Gabriel. Gabriel, a doctor, was present at the death of a local boy who had had an accident on his bike in the local quarry and since then has been unable to connect with Iris.

Add into this mix, a new couple in the village - pregnant Esme and her much older husband Hugh - plus their Lady Chatterley’s Lover-esque gardener, Joseph, and it all looks ripe for a decent domestic thriller. But somehow the plot just doesn’t gel and the characters never really lift off the page.

I have enjoyed some of the author’s previous thrillers and, within the constraints of the genre, I find them usually quite original and interesting. This one just didn’t work for me but it was still pretty readable.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

This is the second book I’ve read from this author and while it was my favourite of the two I didn’t find it to be a bit slow and repetitive during the first half.
Filled with lots of twists and turns I found the premise very interesting and find that the author has a very readable writing style.

This one is hard to review. Although I like B.A. Paris, this is not one of my favourites. I think this will be an easy read for anyone but I just found it lacking. I feel like the synopsis of the book acted like there was more to the story then there actually was. Even when the twists came, it just felt meh to me.

If you like domestic thrillers then this might be more up your alley.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this eARC!

This is my 2nd by author and although I preferred Behind Closed Doors, I did really enjoy this one as well.
Truly enjoy authors writing syle and found this to be one I didn’t want to put down.

Pacing a little slow at times and the mystery lacked a little excitement for me but overall a quick family drama mystery that I enjoyed.

I truly appreciate the opportunity for the advanced reader copy and look forward to reading more by author,

,

I have read several BA Paris books and found this one to be quite slow in comparison to the others, There were several characters to follow and combined with the slow pacing- it just wasn’t my favorite. But in BA fashion- the ending had great twists! I encourage you to check it out next month. Thank you to NetGalley for the arc!

Just like all BA Paris novels I’ve read I didn’t see the twist coming! I was lulled into thinking I had it all figured out just to have the carpet ripped out from me! Incredible! A must read for thriller fans!