My first and LAST Lucy Foley book I fear.

I really wanted to like this, but from the beginning I could tell it wasn't gonna be for me. The writing felt a bit dry and the pacing was so slow. The story didn’t really pique my interest until the last 30%.

Aside from a few surprises, this wasn’t all that exciting to me. I like my thrillers to consume me; to leave me breathless and questioning everything but this didn’t do that. I didn’t care about the mundane, everyday tasks being described. There were a lot of unnecessary details and I feel that this could’ve been a bit shorter.

There were a few things I did enjoy. I liked the alternating timelines between the present and the past (the past being told in the form of journal entries). I also liked the short chapters and multiple POVs. While I didn’t mind the journal entries, it was weird that they had timestamps and entire conversations included. I feel like it could’ve been written as a normal part of the book as no one writes in a diary like that. My gripe with the short chapters is that some were TOO short. Like someone’s POV would end on a cliffhanger and then the next chapter was a POV in a completely different setting with something unrelated happening.

I’ve seen some positive reviews and I agree with some of the points but good parts were overshadowed by the boringness of it for me.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc in exchange for a review.

Lucy Foley never fails to deliver suspense, betrayals, and twists, and The Midnight Feast is no exception. With locals angry about an unwelcome addition, it’s difficult to tell if it’s sabotage or something even more fearsome - something supernatural. I got engrossed by the twists and turns, and you will too.

2.5
Lucy Foley is a hit or miss for me (loved The Guest List, so-so on The Paris Apartment). Much like The Paris Apartment, The Midnight Feast had quite a slow start and ultimately suffers from major pacing issues.

The Midnight Feast is set at a fancy new resort created by Francesca Meadows- by and for rich people. It feels kinda White Lotus, but much more oriented around alternative medicine/drugs/crystals kinda stuff. The last 20% is where things finally start picking up for me--the mystery both starts appearing and coming together. The thing is, is that the first half doesn't even feel necessary. Like, it feels like it's just characters talking and moping around and then the actual mystery picks up at the very end. The tension felt nonexistent; the first half felt unnecessary. Even then, when we get to the end, I still felt unsatisfied/left with questions with the mystery component of "The Birds" which seem interesting but lack substance.

Anyway, some interesting themes and character ideas, but overall everything felt ... bland.

3.5 stars - I ended up enjoying this more than I thought I would at the start. The beginning was confusing but I liked the short chapters with multiple POVs. It had a decent mystery element that kept me entertained. If you enjoy resort/vacation based thrillers, this one may be for you.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me with an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Goodreads review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6187046359

I really loved other books by Lucy Foley but this one was really hard for me to get through, I’m glad I decided to finish the book because the ending was good.
I feel like there were too many characters and different POVs plus the journal paragraphs and it seems like too much. Overall the story was good especially if you enjoy reading from a lot of different POVs you will probably enjoy this book.
Thank you for providing the ARC for me to review!

I liked the multiple POVs, which Foley is known for. I also enjoyed the premise of people returning to a location in their shared history for a reckoning.

What didn’t work for me was that the character timelines didn’t really match up. The world-renowned architect was meant to be maybe 25? Bella suggests that she’s old enough to be Eddie’s mom when there’s only a 13 year age gap. It seemed unrealistic that all these characters wouldn’t recognize one another after 15 years, especially since they were all so deeply impacted by the events that brought them together.

I would have liked a POV from one of the birds to enrich that folklore, which runs throughout the book. The birds were meant to be scary but I found them pretty boring and kind of ridiculous.

Thank you NetGalley and HarpersCollins for an ARC of this book.

A manor goes up in flames, a body is found at the bottom of a cliff, and there are rumors that The Birds may be involved. Nothing and no one are quite as they seems. The story is told from multiple points of view and switches between before the solstice, after the solstice, and the summer of 2009. There are numerous twists as you try to figure out who the dead person is and who set the place on fire. Just when you think you know, here comes another twist.

I would recommend this book. Lucy Foley is the queen of suspense and thrillers.

This is the third book I’ve read of Lucy Foley’s. It was good, but I had a hard time following the story. There are several different narrators and also it switches from past to the present a lot. I kept forgetting who was speaking and would have to flip back and look. There are some twists that were surprising which I enjoyed.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley was such a great read! I love books that have a cult feel and I felt those vibes with this book. I loved the different timelines portrayed in the story as we read the main character's journal from the past in between chapters. In addition, the mystery element kept me guessing until the end. I really enjoyed that I was not able to figure out the ending early on and this book kept me on my toys.

Unfortunately I needed to DNF this one at about the 55% mark. I tried so hard to soldier through, as a friend had told me how much they loved it, but I still was finding that I was completely uninterested in the story. I am sad that I couldn’t love it as much as my friend.

This one redeems Foley for the Paris Apartment in my book. Sure there were minor holes like the others, but it was still a page turner with plenty of twists and satisfying explanations.

Much like her other books, we switch narrators often which makes the book fly by and her voice successfully changes to who is speaking. (It’s such a disappointment when all the characters sound the same). Francesca’s voice - bravo! Super fun and eerie in the right places. Highly recommend if you enjoyed Foley’s The Guest List.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this one! Interesting setting, characters, and reveal at the end. Lucy Foley’s books are always fun to read!

The first word that comes to mind for this book is CREEPY! The setting, the events, the characters were all creepy, and I loved it! The story takes place at a brand new resort, The Manor, located on the coastline outside of London. The hotel is selling itself as the ultimate in luxury and wellness, in a peaceful , wooded setting. The hotel has secrets from it’s previous life and those secrets come to life as the story unfolds.
The story focuses on five main characters , going back and forth in time, which is how we learn how everyone is connected from the past. It is also told using a journal entry throughout the book from when the characters were teens. And I can’t forget the birds, real birds, bird feathers, bird costumes!
The main story takes place during the Solstice celebration , which is also the opening weekend for The Manor. The guests, employees and neighboring locals have no idea what this weekend will bring. Such a fun ride!
Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me with this digital review copy of this book.

Lucy Foley is a reliable author. I’ll start this review by saying that if you’ve read a Lucy Foley book, and you would like to read another, you will probably enjoy Midnight Feast. If you read Lucy Foley in the past and thought “this kind of thing isn’t for me,” you’re probably right, and you probably won’t like this one. Alright, with that out of the way let me address the remaining people. The people who haven’t read a Lucy Foley book yet, but are trying to decide two things. First, if they should even pick one up to begin with, and second, if they are going to start on a project, if Midnight Feast is the one to start with.

Lucy Foley writes what I would call domestic thriller mysteries. They are usually set among closed communities of rich people, in fancy luxurious surroundings. These rich people come together to form a seething mass of resentments, jealousy, and secrets, then things go wrong, and someone dies. They’re almost always told on a non-linear timeline (i.e. bouncing back and forth from before the person gets murdered to after the person gets murdered), and you generally don’t find out who dies for sure until most of the way through the book, when the before the murder and after the murder timelines converge to reveal all. The chapters are short, the plot is propulsive, and it’s generally more of a fizzy fun time than serious literature. If Agatha Christie wrote Crazy Rich Asians, that’s some idea of what it’s like to read a Lucy Foley book.

To be clear, I do not mean the above in any sort of derogatory way--writing a propulsive, fun novel that is a good time to read is not easy, and Lucy Foley has been churning these out at a remarkably reliable level of quality for quite a while now and that’s nothing to sneeze at. So now hopefully you know if you want to read a Lucy Foley book. As for which of the three best (The Guest List, The Paris Apartment, and The Midnight Feast) you should start with, I think it’s all a matter of what set dressing you’d prefer. This one really worked for me because the atmosphere was to my particular taste. There’s a hint of the supernatural and it has a Gothic Flavor, instead of the Paris Apartment’s seedy underground crime boss energy.

I’d recommend this for fans of Glass Onion, Murder she Wrote, and Gone Girl.

I got an advance review copy in exchange for this honest review.

(will post the first week of June and update links)

The last two books (You Will Never Be Me & If Something Happens to Me) I’ve read would be considered popcorn thrillers. This isn’t that type of thriller but it is just as interesting. Out of the 3, surprisingly, this one I had to suspend my beliefs the least, even though at times I wasn’t sure if people or the supernatural were the puppet masters.

This book is about an overzealous heiress who decides to renovate her late grandparent’s old manor/estate into a lavish zen retreat. As a child, she spent her summers there. The locals aren’t happy about The Manor and aren’t shy about showing their feelings. Her grandfa tried to warn her about The Birds curse but she ignores him and writes it off as him losing his mind in old age. With so many odd things happening over the opening weekend, everyone starts believing that maybe the curse is real.

I rate this 3.5 stars. Thank you to the publisher & Netgalley for this ARC. These are my honest opinions.

This was a NetGalley approved read!
Lucy Foley gets me again, with her multiple POVs and superb misdirection! Once you think you've got it down, who the murderer is and who was murdered you get caught off guard with a new perspective and I just love her style of writing! This is gonna be another hit I'm sure of it!

Although it took some time to get into the book, I ended up really enjoying it. I remembered from her other books that they usually start out slow, so I kept that in mind. I really enjoyed the diary entries, slowly learning more and more about what happened in the past. Even though there were multiple POVs, they were different enough that I didn’t get confused and I could follow along. I would definitely recommend this book, and I think it may be my favorite of her books.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow Books for the ARC for my honest opinion.

I made the mistake of trying to start a Lucy Foley book while I was on vacation in the Texas Wine Country. I totally disregarded the fact that Lucy Foley is the queen of multi-POVs. I went in thinking I was going to drink this book up immediately, and finish it while I was away....I did not, could not. I had to have my mind straight and I had to focus for this thrilling ride. After trying to read the first 15%, I had to put it away and recollect myself.

Once I got back home, I re-started The Midnight Feast, and gave Lucy my undivided attention, and I'm so glad that I did. I absolutely loved The Midnight Feast. It oozed with mystery, suspense, folklore and the rich behaving...rich. The Midnight Feast takes place at a fancy new manor hotel hidden alongside a wood full of lore and the beautiful cliffs of the sea. No detail was spared in the rebuild of the manor. The owners continue to rebuild and reimagine the manor to create an oasis for the people who can afford its extravagance. With Summer Solstice deadlines approaching, they choose to open up the hotel any way. The past never stays hidden, and someone does not heed the warnings of the locals and of the folklore that haunts the woods.

This book had me in it's grips after I chose to give it my undivided attention. There are lots of POVs and diary entries you have to keep track of, so if you are going to read this, be aware that you have to keep them straight. The pacing was great and the creepy factor of the "Birds" was A-1. The Midnight Feast was another of Lucy Foley's books that I really enjoyed.

What a delightfully twisty and well written book!

Excellent character development and a satisfying and shocking conclusion.

The backdrop of the story was unique and made for a dark and somewhat creepy mystery.

I enjoyed the different POVs and connected with the characters.

Highly recommend !

Mystery/thriller that goes back and forth between the present and 15 years in the past - to an incident that altered the lives of a group of friends. This is told from the perspective of several different characters, which made it a little hard to follow for me. I kept forgetting who the narrator was - I had to keep looking back at the chapter title to remind myself who was talking. This also made it hard to relate to one character more than another, in my opinion. To really “like” a character. It’s just a writing style I don’t read very often, so took some concentration. Good book, though, with twists I didn’t see coming.