It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; crystal pouches for guests’ healing have been placed in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule” cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.

But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. Something’s not right with the guests. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered.

SO GOOD. I absolutely love Lucy Foley novels and this one did not disappoint. There were so many small reveals along the way and that kept up until the last page. This was such a clever and creative book ... is it weird that it makes me want to go to a remote forest retreat? Thank you so much to netgalley for the advanced copy. I'll be thinking about this one for a while.

Another tried and true win by Lucy Foley! A beautiful unraveling of characters and the ties that bind them. I love how Foley paints the setting of this book, I wish I could go there, breathe it in. I can picture what it feels like so clearly. Couldn’t get enough of this book, found myself sneaking away to take in even five pages at a time.

Holy hell. Herculean effort to get through this. It got good at about 85%. All the bird shit was RIDICULOUS. The birds were an attempt to add an occult vibe but it didn’t deliver. And the journal stuff—so boring and really dragged the story rather than move the plot forward. I did like how the mystery came full circle at the end. Spoiler—I wanted more for Bella and Jake so that was disappointing. Thank you to NetGalley for a digital copy

Thank you to William Morrow for the digital copy to review.

I really enjoyed this one, and Foley is up there as a must read author for me. Give me all the secrets, lies, cover ups, and dysfunction you can whilst in a locked room setting, it always makes for a grand ole time and this one did not disappoint. Foley did a good job with this, turning everyone against each other when a body turns up opening weekend of The Manor, and things slowly start to fall apart. Told in multiple POVs, there are plenty of shenanigans and unlikeable characters to go around, and even a folklore element with birds that when all put together, it made for a very entertaining read and was smartly done throughout.

I enjoyed Lucy Foley's last book quite a bit and was excited about this one but found it a little slow and altogether too unrealistic.

As with her other books, this one has a lot of narrators. I did enjoy Bella's character, and felt for Eddie and Owen.

The chapters are short and with the many narrators the pace of this book is pretty quick. I guessed some of the twists but that didn't take away from the plot.

The sense of place was really well written -- it was so creepy and I could picture the the Manor and all the characters there.

I will continue to read Lucy Foley in the future but this one was not my fave.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!

I typically like books by this author but something was a bit off on this book for me. It seemed a bit to out there to be a realistic could happen type thriller

I wasn't the biggest fan of this book. I thought the mystery was predictable and it felt like her other books with a slightly different plot

I know going into Lucy Foley's books that I am not going to know precisely what's happening from the get-go-- and I am totally fine with that! It takes a long time to put all the pieces together, and that is part of the fun in reading her books for me.

In previous books, I've been able to suss out some of the major components fairly early on, but this one kept me in suspense for a long time. I had fun really disliking one of the major players, Fran, and seeing the quaint English village with its corvid vigilantes. Solid read!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC of the Midnight Feast

Lucy Foley writes the type of thriller I can get in to. It’s not always my favorite genre but I have really enjoyed her other books. The plot line in this one was interesting and the multi characters and viewpoints kept me entertained. I did find it a bit slow to start but Lucy knows how to pull you in! Another fun thriller from Lucy Foley!

Wasn’t a big fan of this one. Never really connected with any of the characters and the revelations at the end felt too far off

It's opening weekend at an exclusive resort and while the guests expect pampering and decadence we get secrets, lies, deceit and murder.

Lucy uses multiple timelines and POVs to tell this story of murder, retribution and morally gray characters. While I found it entertaining, I wasn't blown away by it. maybe there was too much going on with the multiple timelines, POVs, folklore, journal entries, etc. at times it felt a bit disorienting which may well have been intentional but instead of engaging me it made me feel disjointed in a way that I can't quite put my finger on.

Overall, this was definitely an atmospheric mystery but the reveals never shocked me and it felt a bit too slow for my personal reading preference.
I enjoyed it. I just didn't love it as much as I thought/hoped I would.

Came for a spooky thriller, stayed for unhinged people. They say watching a train derail or a car crash is hard to look away from, that's what reading this book felt like. Not because it was bad, but because the characters kept making increasingly unhinged decisions and revealing wild facts about their pasts. I didn't find the storyline particularly engaging but I did need to know how everything was going to play out.

There's a lot to juggle in this story with dual time lines and multiple POVs but I thought Foley handled it very well. The different POVs were all very distinct and easy to keep track of. The past time line was sprinkled in sparingly enough that I didn't get bored reading it, and it left me with just enough questions to keep wanting more. And the way everything came together at the end of spectacular.

Details kept coming to light that made the story more and more fascinating. It was a fairly quick read because the pacing was increasing through out the book. It started slow and built up and up until it reached the climax. And what a climax.

DNF @40%. Nothing was happening- I was unfortunately incredibly bored and didn’t feel sucked in to the story. I found myself not wanting to pick it back up. I really loved Lucy’s “Paris Apartment”, but this just didn’t reel me in.
I did really love the atmosphere of The Manor, though!

The Midnight Feast was one of my most anticipated reads I’ve loved this authors other mysteries!

I was expecting intrigue, creepy atmosphere, and a gripping locked-room mystery. But I was so bored reading this.

There are five POVs, none of which are interesting. The more POVs added, the more watered down the characters are. Other than Francesca, the characters merged in my head. Unfortunately, Francesca only stood out because of how awful she was. If an author wants to write a large cast, they need distinct traits for each character. Otherwise, you get what you have here: main characters that provide no grit to the story and make it supremely uninteresting to read.

Maybe I could have forgiven the lack of personality if there had been a plot to follow. Mostly, it was just bullies, immature adults, and random folklore bits (which were the best part.) The actual murder victim isn't revealed til nearly the end%, which annoyed me so much. I trudged through so much just for the victim reveal to be lackluster and anticlimactic.

The last 1/4 of the story was easier to digest. All the random plot points and boring characters wrapped up into an ending that would have been satisfactory, even clever if the first 3/4 was slow and difficult to get through. As everything came full circle, I felt relief that the story was over and didn't care how it came together.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for the advance digital copy.

Lucy Foley interweaves the vacation thriller with a folk horror vibe. I thought this was a smart and interesting commentary on the vacation thriller trend that Foley herself started with The Guest List. In The Midnight Feast, she looks at vacationers as an invading species that must be rooted out and destroyed. A bit out-there, but I kind of loved it!

Dnf for me. Too slow & not what I expected, not what I expected from this author especially. I do appreciate the ARC, thank you NetGalley & the publisher William Morrow!

The Manor is a high end "glamping" resort that is deep in the woods in a small English town called Tome. It is owned by Francesca Meadows who has spared no expense in creating a unique experience down to the charged crystals given to each guest. It is opening week for the resort and Francesca wants everything to be perfect. Told in multiple viewpoints and timelines, Foley has returned to her recurring theme of rich people versus poor and greed versus human kindness. Along with Francesca, we have narratives from Bella who is attending as a guest but has a secret she doesn't want revealed, Eddie, a young server who lives in town, Owen, the husband of Francesca and D I Walker, a police officer. There are also diary entries from a teenage girl who lives in the lower class caravans and has recently befriended a rich girl that lives in the manor.

The story had a slow start and it was sometimes frustrating that every time something scary happened, the story moved to another person and the spell broken. Most of the story is about the actions in the past of the young rich girl who collected poor friends and treated them well initially but then betrayed them when she was bored. There is also a historical element as this town had some legends about some things called "The Birds" who protected the forest and the trees. Themes of ecology, gentrification and greed are brought to light as Francesca and her staff prepare for a solstice party to celebrate the opening. The last third of the book was quite exciting and made up for the rather slow start. There were lots of twists and people who weren't who they said they were and the author did a good job with the ending. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this ARC for review.

3.5 stars

Amidst the ancient forest behind the Manor, an exclusive, new resort, guests wander the grounds draped in linen, wandering past wooden sculptures and sipping cocktails laced with CBD oil. Francesca, owner of the manor, grew up on the property. She’s transformed her childhood home and planned everything to be perfect- a midsummer’s night’s feast where guests feel like they have stepped into a magical world.

She doesn’t realize an old friend is among her guests, waiting to expose old secrets. She doesn’t realize her husband has dark secrets of his own. And she could never anticipate how her actions might bring about the horrors that will unfold before the rising of dawn.

Like other Lucy Foley books I have read, the tension and suspense grows out of the multiple character perspectives. Foley’s strength is in dishing out just enough secrets and information from the various characters to keep her readers wanting to learn more.

Most of the time, the author is great at creating a sense of atmosphere, although I still wanted more description about the layout of the resort, the interior rooms, the forest. Still, it was an improvement for me over The Guest List and The Paris Apartment.

While I enjoy thrillers that focus on several character perspectives, I found this one a bit too ambitious for the story that was told. There were lots of different plot threads that, while they weren’t left hanging, felt underdeveloped and glossed over. With so many characters, it was hard for each character to feel as fleshed out and developed as I would have liked.

Still, I always have fun reading a Lucy Foley book and The Midnight Feast was no exception. I enjoyed the flashback chapters and how they helped develop some of the main characters. The novel also had some nice, spooky forest vibes. And reading about messed up rich people behaving badly? Well I’m always here for that!

I recommend reading The Midnight Feast if you have enjoyed Foley’s books in the past, like your thrillers to have multiple character perspectives and enjoy a spooky forest setting.

*Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the digital arc. All opinions are my own.

This was such a great thriller. Lucy is a great writer that really brings out the characters and keeps you on the edge of your seat about what will happen next. I know this book will be a huge success.

The Midnight Feast is about The Manor, a wellness retreat is having it's opening day weekend. They are getting ready for their midsummer celebration. However things start to not go as planned. There are secrets from the past that still lurk around the Manor.

Overall, I didn't love The Midnight Feast. It's a very slow burn suspense. You find out at the beginning of the story that someone died but you have no clue who. The story takes you between the past and present to unravel everything. It also is told between 4 different perspectives. I think that was the main problem for me, I didn't like the narrators. I only enjoyed Eddie's perspective. I really didn't like anyone else. Plus I found the ending very predictable.