This book was sooo good! Completely caught me by surprise! Epilogue was longer than I would have thought, but the author did a great job of wrapping the story up nicely.

3.5⭐️ I didn't have many expectations going into this book but I thought the premise sounding pretty interesting. I really liked following the main characters and watching their relationships with others around them unfold. I thought it was an interesting story that was easy to get through. The end felt like it wrapped up a bit too quickly and gave much to be desired in terms of plot twist and the rabbit hole I expect in a thriller.

This one was just ok for me. I didn't hate it and I didn't love it either. The plot definitely had me invested wanting to see what happens in the end. But honestly the characters weren't likeable at all, especially Laure. Gracious talk about a house guest.
They all had something going on - being lonely, finding out about a secret child, disconnected marriages - but even so I couldn't find myself sympathizing or connecting with them. It got to a point where it seemed like the book was gonna wrap up after being slow and then I was surprised how it changed. I wish the book as a whole was more like the ending, because man what an ending it was! It definitely did a great job shedding light on everything.

I had the ebook and audio of this one and tandem read it. The narrator did a great job at honing in on the personalities in the story.

Thank you St. Martins Press, NetGalley, and MacMillan Audio for allowing me to read and listen to this advanced copy.

I loved this audiobook, it was simply addictive. Suspenseful, eerie, fast-paced, intriguing and unexpected, the ending really took me by surprise, just wow. Another fantastic book from B.A Paris.

Thank you Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for this complimentary audiobook.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 by B.A. Paris released yesterday February 20, 2024.

https://www.instagram.com/booksandcoffeemx/

Many thanks to Macmillan Audio, author BA Paris, and Netgalley for providing me the Advanced Listener Copy (ALC) in exchange for my honest review! This audiobook will be released on February 20, 2024.

4 STARS

Brief Summary: Iris and Gabriel are a seemingly happily married couple whose lives are disrupted by a surprise house guest. Their longtime friend Laure has left her husband Pierre after finding out that he had an affair and fathered a secret child. The longer Laure stays, the more it grates on the hosting couple. Gabriel is also in crisis over having witnessed the last moments of a dying boy named Charlie, who uttered final words that Gabriel has guiltily been keeping secret. Add to this new married friends and a gardener. Secrets are kept, and lies are told. The consequences are deadly.

The Guest was a solidly entertaining and engaging read. It's a domestic suspense rather than thriller. A lot of the story is rather low-key. The author dangles a lot of loose threads and spreads the plot across a number of mysterious focal points. I was kept guessing as I tried to piece all the blurry pieces together. The author did "cheat" some, as there's red herrings and withheld information from the narrative POV.

NARRATION: Emily Joyce does a 5/5 fantastic job. Her voice is very smooth, and the performance is appropriately lively.

Happy pub day to the newest BA Paris book! This one was super messy! Lots of different stories, not sure what’s true, who can you trust, and just an all around whodunit. 3-3.5 ⭐️ read for me. If you’re into classic whodunits, you’d enjoy this book. For me, I couldn’t love any of the characters, and I think k you could figure out the plot pretty easily. Thank you @netgalley for the ARC!

3,5 stars rounded up.

I really enjoy B.A. Paris' books. This one wasn't my favorite but it was still an intriguing read. I felt like the ending, especially the epilogue, really made up for it. This book was a bit of a struggle for me to get into at first but once it started picking up the pace, I couldn't put it down. Overall, I enjoyed it!

This book had a lot of twists, I liked it. It kept my attention and surprised me at the end, nice work!

Happy publication day!

Another effortless page turner from B.A. Paris, The Guest grabbed me from the start and kept me guessing right to the twisted ending.

Perfectly plotted and cleverly paced, I loved the slow burn of how things unraveled. Packed with an abundance of secrets and lies, and a plethora of unreliable characters, this addictive treat kept me guessing until the end. Did I say holy ending? It completely caught me off guard.

Emily Joyce did a fantastic job with the narration of this twisted tale, bringing life to these characters and creating a palpable tension throughout the story. I look forward to listening to more stories narrated by her.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to an advance recording of this publication. This review is given freely and the opinions expressed are my own.

This was my second book by B.A. Paris and it did not disappoint. The Guest is definitely character driven and it took me awhile to keep all the characters straight. The characters were well developed and very interesting. This psychological thriller takes place in the countryside and the short chapters kept me engaged the whole time. I was so invested in all the drama and I loved how various elements of the story were slowly unfolded! There’s secrets, lies, betrayal, and jealousy. I enjoyed the twists throughout the story and the epilogue absolutely blew my mind!
The narrator was great and did a nice job of portraying the tone and mood of the story. I also really enjoyed her accent which fit the narrative well.

This was a great audio book. I enjoyed the story but I did figure it out about halfway. The prologue definitely can’t be skipped!

The Guest was quite clever. These characters have so many secrets that there's something new around every turn. I certainly was kept guessing!

Laure, the houseguest who overstayed her welcome, had me anxious for Iris and Gabriel. There's nothing quite so uncomfortable as wanting your space back to yourself when someone just won't leave! The storyline did get a bit bogged down with the day-to-day of these characters' lives, but from the prologue the reader knows something fascinating is coming. It's worth it to stick out the slow parts!

While not my all-time favorite from this author, I enjoyed the read and will certainly pick up her next novel.

Well… B A Paris has done it again!

Although I wish the first half of the book would’ve gone a bit quicker, it was building up to all that would happen in the second half.

Iris and Gabriel are married and have a daughter (who does not live with them). They live in Britain, and she in Greece ( I think…)

They have friends who they’ve known for years, Pierre and Laure, who live in Paris. They vacation with them often. They have no children.

One day Laure arrives at their home stating that Pierre has fathered a child…and she’s just found out about it… She’s distraught…
But worse than that, she’s moved into their home!! And has no plans to leave! 😮

Add to this that Gabriel goes for a run one day and finds a young man who has fallen to the bottom of a quarry…and dies in his arms. (Did I mention, he’s a doctor?!?)

And this is all in the first few minutes of the book!

We branch out into their daily lives and all that’s going on around them…as well as how the boy’s death affects Gabriel…

And then people start to go missing…
And then people are dying…
And the police are involved…

And the book ends…and you say. Wow…really?

And then the epilogue begins…and everything literally falls into place…and holy sh**t…where do they come up with these things????

Thanks to #NetGalley and #MacmillanAudio for an ARC of the audiobook which releases today, 2/20/24!

#TheGuest by #BAParis and beautifully narrated with a British accent by #EmilyJoyce.

4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for me. Probably would’ve been 3 stars due to the very long/slow buildup, but the epilogue definitely made up for lost time! 😬

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Thanks so much for reading!📚⭐️📖

Don’t let the domestic suspense vibes fool you into thinking this story won’t deliver one stunner of a twist—the ending is so well-crafted and surprising, I can’t stop thinking about it!

About the Book | The Guest

Married couple Iris and Gabriel return home to their house in the English countryside to find their friend Laure in their house. Laure and her husband Pierre have been close friends with Iris and Gabriel for two decades, ever since they met on vacation in the Bahamas. But Pierre has done something that caused a fight, and Laure has fled to their home unannounced.

Recently, Gabriel happened upon a local teen named Charlie who had a tragic accident in the quarry near their home. Gabriel was with Charlie for his final words, and is haunted by what he saw and heard. Iris is doing her best to support him, but Gabriel hasn’t shared the whole story with her—or with anyone. So when the couple arrive home to find Laure unexpectedly in their home, the timing isn’t great for a guest. Especially one who has no clear timeline to leave.

Iris feels too guilty to turn Laure away when she learns that Laure discovered her husband Pierre had an affair that resulted in a child. Laure is cagey on the details at first, prompting Gabriel to reach out to Pierre and try to talk through what happened. Laure and Pierre are such a wonderful couple—Iris and Gabriel can hardly believe this isn’t something they can work through.

But their good intentions wear thin as Laure continues to involve herself in every aspect of their lives. Iris’s only break from Laure seems to be when she goes in to take a bath. Her other respite seems to be with a newer friend, Esme, who is expecting her first child. The only troubling thing seems to be their gardener, Joseph, who they refer to do some work with Gabriel. It appears Joseph has a checkered past, and there is more than one skeleton in his closet that is yet to be revealed.

Review | The Guest

The three storylines—Pierre’s affair and Laure’s unwelcome visit, Charlie’s death and what Gabriel is holding back, and Joseph’s shady past—are just the beginning of what will unfold in this book. The story moves quickly in my opinion, and before long the mysteries evolve and combine into a twisted web of lies, secrets, and deception. Iris finds herself at the center of it all, trying to repair Laure and Pierre’s marriage, help Gabriel work through his trauma, and find out what is going on with Joseph.

As the story progresses, twists and turns make the storyline even more complicated, and it’s clear that there are secrets being kept on all sides. Iris is a sympathetic character. She’s rational and level-headed, doing her best not to show her frustration with Laure or Gabriel to them. After several weeks of Laure’s stay, Iris and Gabriel set out to nudge her and Pierre towards a resolution. But there are more twists in store that may change everything… The narratives intertwine and become tangled as the story proceeds. The ending ties everything together into a beautiful final chapter.

There is a good amount of character-development which is almost always a pre-requisite for me to give a psychological thriller my top rating. The characters are all intriguing in their own way. Pierre is the least present in the story of the four central characters, but his figure also looms over the story. Laure absolutely fascinated me, and she was the character I most wanted to learn more about. Characters like Esme, Hugh, and Joseph start more in the background, but become more present as the story progresses. Esme was a good foil to Laure as a close friendship for Iris, especially since her relationship with Iris is still relatively new.

Sometimes the husbands in these stories can be throwaway characters, but that is not the case with Gabriel. The secret that’s eating him up regarding the death of Charlie and what happened in those final moments is the hook, but he also is a support to Iris and a close friend to Pierre who wants to resolve things.

The relationships are complicated and intertwined. Some relationships seem so strong to start out and eventually reveal how fragile they were all along. Others move in the reverse direction, growing stronger as the secrets, lies, and betrayals unfold across the pages. They are also filled with moments that lend authenticity—sometimes they are grateful for their friend or partner, and other times exasperated by them.

I wish I could spoil this book because this is a twisted, dark, character-driven psychological suspense novel with an absolutely jaw-dropping ending! I re-read it twice to make sure I captured all of the delicious details that Paris dropped in. The suspense was high by that point in the book, with tension mounting from the very first chapter. The last line (which I won’t reveal here) is absolute perfection. I savored it! I thought about it again and again…

A tense, gripping psychological thriller about secrets, lies, and betrayal, and how no one escapes unscathed by them.

Audiobook Narration | Emily Joyce

If you’re an audiobook listener, this is a book I definitely recommend grabbing the audio copy for. Emily Joyce brings her extensive acting experience to her work on this book, and she captures Iris brilliantly. In the book, Iris has quite a bit of internal monologue, particularly as she is navigating sensitive moments with other characters like Laure or Gabriel. Joyce shows the exasperation Iris feels with Laure’s extended visit to perfection, balancing the kindness she feels for her friend with the frustration this imposition has caused. Joyce’s excellent narration combined with Paris’s expert plotting make this book impossible to set aside!

Thank you to MacMillan Audio for my copy. Opinions are my own.

Thank you NetGalley, Macmillan Audio & B.A. Paris for this audio arc in exchange for my honest review.

B.A. Paris is one of my all time favorite thriller authors and once again she didn't disappoint! This one kept me engaged the entire way through and I couldn't put it down. I love how she throws in lots of twists and turns, but the story is still easy to follow along with! I think the narrator did a fantastic job of telling the story and I loved every second of this one. I cannot wait until B.A. Paris' next one! Solid 4 stars for me!

This felt like more like a domestic drama than a suspense novel even though people kept dying. I know, I know that sounds weird but it really read a little laid back about Iris and Gabriel's life and I was never concerned for anyone's life. Even though maybe I should have been.

It's filled with secrets and lies and no one telling the truth to each other. None of the characters are very likable in this slow burn. I was ready to give this one 3 stars because of the slow pace and my apathy for the characters, but that twist. I am not normally a fan of having things explained to me, but I will seriously forgive this one for pulling the wool over my eyes. I'll add a star just for that ending.

Emily Joyce is a new to me narrator and I enjoyed listening to her. She voiced all of the characters and hit the ups and downs of the story well.

Know when you pick this one up that it is a slow burn drama with a bang of a twist at the very end.

What a wild ride. Didn't see that twist coming! This is my first B.A. Paris book and it definitely won't be my last. Great book. Thanks net galley for the opportunity to listen.

Excellent narration makes this fast paced mystery difficult to stop listening to. Iris and Gabriel seem like a happy couple. A beautiful home in the countryside, a successful daughter, and good friends. Things soon change when a tragic accident occurs and an unexpected house guest arrives. Although Iris is fine with the new pregnant house guest, things soon change. With many twists and turns, this novel is not to be missed.

"It doesn't get easier. It just gets different."

It isn't easy to stay alive in this slow burn web of secrets and lies in the domestic drama The Guest by psychological thriller author B.A. Paris where everyone fears losing something or someone.

Iris and Gabriel are shocked to find Laure in their English countryside home when they come back from holiday. She's left husband Pierre, who has confessed to fathering a child with another woman. She's sleeping in their bed, moving their furniture around and has no plans to leave.

As Laure seems more unhinged with time, Iris makes friends with pregnant Esme and much older Hugh, who also have a guest, Joseph, helping them with their new home's landscape.

Meanwhile, Gabriel is wrestling with a moral dilemma after he finds a young man, Charlie, lying in a quarry, who dies in his arms. Charlie's last words haunt Gabriel. He's debating telling them to Charlie's Mom. It's caused him to be closed off and is hurting his marriage to Iris.

Got it?! So we have 3 tangled couples, a dead young man, and a guest gardener. By the end 3 of them will be dead!

I was captivated listening to voice actress Emily Joyce distinctly be each of these complicated characters who struggle with communicating the truth and the fear of loss; loss of themselves and the ones they claim to love.

The explosive epilogue put it all together, leaving me shell shocked with the WTF reveals. I knew one but the others were creatively hidden from my blown away brain. It's my favorite of the writer's thrillers and has left me changing the guest room into a library!

I received a free copy of this audiobook from Macmillan Audio via #NetGalley for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

I enjoyed this twisty novel and was surprised when my guesses weren't correct. I enjoy that about B.A. Paris; the story is never what it seems. But I don't like that it is the author's style to just spew all the answers in the epilogues. I would love to see pieces of these with in the book with the action on time. You don't have to give away everything at one time; twists can be separated and make an even better impression as readers have time to absorb them.
I received an Audio Arc for review and I have to say I really enjoyed listening to The Gues than just reading it. The narrator is great. She has the perfect accent for the story and her voice sounds buttery like I imagine the main character would be.