Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for letting me access a copy of this book!

Just to start, I did really like this book. It had a fun plot. It had an interesting cast of characters and things moved pretty quickly. Now on to my complaints.
I frequently have a hard time with dual timelines, especially when there’s a large cast of characters. I appreciated that the author kept most of the stuff in the past focused on just a couple of characters. It was a little bit easier to track, but I would’ve really loved having a family tree at the beginning of the book that listed you know the adults who attended the dinner party back in the day and then like their current kids and kind of how their lives interacted/intermarried—there was a lot of crossover between families, and so there were characters that I could not keep straight to save my life. But overall, the mystery was pretty solid with some good twists, and I felt like the dogged determination of the mom to just ignore everything that told her that her hope of missing her sister, was really accurate to what people experiencing trauma sometimes do. I work in mental health, and I’ve had a lot of the kids that I work with and their parents who really cannot accept the reality of certain things and regardless of what you say or what you point out, they cannot accept it into them. The only thing that makes sense for them is believing that their truth is THE truth, and not a delusion we’ll say. That does not however take away my immense frustration with the mom every time she would absolutely ignore every red flag Billie identified and then would turn it around on Billie and blame her for causing problems. And, while I didn’t love the ending where Billie just kinda lets the mom continue her delusion, I also understood it. Given Billy‘s history of trying so hard to take care of her mom, I think she knew that her mom would never be able to accept that her sister was dead all this time and that for the mom’s mental health, Megan had to be alive somewhere.

Wow what a great read!!! Such a thriller with multiple twists & turns! It definitely kept me guessing the whole way through! A great read!!!

I thought this book was a brilliant read , got you hooked from the beginning by revealing things then going onto something else which made you just want to read it all in one go , I couldn’t leave it down but still finishing with everything explained but leaving you shocked to the end.

This was a brilliant book. Thank you to the publisher and author for this review copy. It was gripping, mysterious and kept me hooked until the very end.

I love books that have multiple POV and are a classic whodunit- and this was just that. Dinner parties always seem to end up in disaster! A great read

A baby goes missing while her parents are next door at a dinner party and her 10 year old sister is sleeping in the next room. 40- something years later a woman shows up at the sisters front door claiming to be the missing baby. The family is desperate to find out if she is really the missing baby. Many secrets from that night and from the interceding 40 years surface, changing everything for the family. Overall, a decent read. A few parts seemed fairly unrealistic but not a bad read

The cover drew me into this story as well as the title. I enjoyed the pacing and the writing style. It took me a bit to get through but overall it was a solid story.

I do love novels that have podcast elements so was keen to read this one. Overall I enjoyed the story but I struggled with the way it was told. There are so many characters and you never really get introduced to anyone properly so it's hard to get a sense of who people are and how they are connected, it also meanders quite a lot so loses the pace that could have been there. About halfway through I felt I'd found my feet with it a bit more and that's when the novel really started to grip me. I saw the twists coming but it was still good seeing how it all played out in the end.

Excellent read. A gripping tale of a baby who went missing 40 years ago and her families all consuming searc for her. It started at a dinner party for the adults which ended in a nightmare.

thrilling and heart stopping read, could not put it down, so well written, edge of seat thriller. highly recommended.

Thus is a slow burn physiological thriller mystery that attempts to deal with the events of a dinner party long away and solve the mystery of tge missing child.
Told via the here and now and an interwoven podcast. The pace is very slow in places but you are compelled to read on to find out. I did gueese the truth and was frustrated at the tune it took to be revealed. I like the twist. The characters were relatable and believable. The plot at times felt convenient and I gueese I wanted more for the ending. It was full of real emotion
Thank you netgallery and publisher and author fir this solid 4 star read. Perfect for readers who like a good mystery that takes a while to unwind.

is this my favorite mystery of all time? no. was it a decent read? sure. about a hundred pages too long and bloated with way too many characters to accurately track, this one won't be making my top lists of the year but i'm glad i read it! it had a lot of things i liked, such as the 1970s setting and a missing person mystery. the twists were not particularly shocking or anything, but that matters less to me than the journey to the reveal. i mainly had a lot of trouble with the authenticity of the characters, and for a book that has so many of them, it felt like something that really contributed to the slow pacing and the lack of urgency. that said, i'd definitely read another one of this author's books to give it a shot! i think there's a lot of potential here, this one just needed another couple of passes.

thank you to the publishers for a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
Really great fast paced domestic thriller. You have been invited to the dinner party that you will never forget. I loved this authors previous novel and this one did not disappoint either.
The ending had me surprised and the writing through the entire book was great.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC of this book. The author did a great job using the podcast type story format. The story had a lot of things going on at once and was hard to follow at times. The setting and characters were well done.

I really enjoyed The Dinner Party. I love that the characters were flawed. I loved the podcast aspect of the story that is woven into the story.

I loved the blurb from the beginning and the setting. I loved that it was written in a true crime podcast way.

However, there was just too many characters to keep a track of and felt myself getting confused at times of who was who.

Would still recommend though.

A child is missing! Omg the twists and turns. I had no idea who to trust. To me they were all suspects. I could not put the book down until the mystery had been solved.k

Literally EVERY character has a secret in this domestic thriller with WAY too many characters! I'm surprised the toddlers didn't have secrets! With four generations of characters, two timelines, and a podcast, this was a mind-bending amount of suspects, twists, and turns. I liked the Australian setting in the 1970s for the dinner party in a quiet neighborhood, but there was too much going on in this mystery to keep everything straight. I was surprised by some twists, completely predicted others, but in the end, I still had questions about some of the story lines. The podcast angle will draw true crime fans, and the mystery is compelling, but not my favorite.

So The Dinner Party was really a game of two halves for me. The first 60% was a real slow burn and several times I'd thought about putting it down, but I am glad that I was able to stick with it. Was it the kind of story that your tea went cold, the chores went undone and your eyes got tired from reading because you couldn't leave it alone...No, it wasn't.

Podcasts as a plot device have become exceedingly popular in thrillers in recent years and it's an element that I enjoy immensely. The Dinner Party was no exception and it allowed the reader to get all the back story without great big chunks of repeating of information. It was fun, and brought another element of tension to the story.

Missing babies/children is such an emotive topic. The ones that are left behind have the difficult waters of real life to tread. Just how do you move on when that child has left a big gaping hole that somehow you have to bridge. Mothers, aunts, uncles and grandparents have to find someway to keep the public's mind constantly on developments. You only have to look at the Madeline McCann disappearance to see that happen in real time.

So when Donna Novak turns up at Amanda Callaghan's door on the anniversary of baby Megan's disappearance everyone's sceptical, including Billie, who has witnessed her mum get her hopes up, time and time again. She only wants to protect her mum. I do think the character of Amanda was so bloody sad. She is so obsessed with finding her lost sister that she allows Donna to push her daughter away, for her relationship with Billie and her sister Eve's father to fall apart all because she couldn't let go.

The writing style was excellent and once we got to around the 60% mark, everything began to speed up like an oncoming train. The twists were revealed, secrets unleashed and I really enjoyed how the story came full circle.

The Dinner Party is the kind of suspense- thrillers that I usually gravitate, more specifically if the characters are neighbors that think they can trust each other. The gossip, the secrets, the betrayals and the uncertainty all together is a good mix for a perfect suspense thrillers.
Unfortunately despite having all these factors, the plot was just way to slow burn that it was boring and a struggle to finish.