The Engagement Party
A Novel
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
And Then There Were None meets I Know What You Did Last Summer in #1 international bestseller Darby Kane’s latest gripping and twisty thriller set on a private island in Maine where secrets piled upon secrets and lies upon lies are all revealed in one fateful weekend.
Emily Hunt went missing from her affluent liberal arts school on graduation weekend. Her body was found floating in a river, and a quiet loner who most people on campus really didn’t know died by suicide. A tenuous link—one text—bound the two dead students together and was enough for law enforcement to close the case. But they got it wrong and now someone is determined to set it right.
Twelve years later, college friends gather to celebrate an engagement over a long overdue getaway on a swanky private island in Maine—with only one way in and one way out. Sierra Prescott, invited as a guest and unconnected to past events, is the only person who soon senses not all is what it seems.
The tension in the air is ignited when they find a dead man in the trunk of a car with a note: time to tell the truth. And things only get worse. As a torrential storm strands them together, the group’s buried stories begin to surface and secrets are bartered. To survive this deadly party, they’ll need to stop a killer before they become prey.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kane (The Last Invitation) stumbles with this thin thriller about former college friends haunted by their classmate's murder. Twelve years ago, Bowdoin College senior Emily Hunt disappeared on graduation weekend. Her corpse, "partially clothed and tangled in weeds," was discovered soon after she went missing. The murder was never solved, despite rumors implicating her family, friends, and lovers. Now, four of Hunt's former classmates—Will Mayer, Mitch Andersen, Alex Greene, and Cassie Holder (now Alex's wife)—have reunited on an island off the coast of Maine to celebrate Will's engagement to his girlfriend, Ruthie. Shortly after the group (which also includes Mitch's business partner) discovers that they're cut off from the mainland by rising waters, one of them is murdered. A note found near the body reads, "Time to tell the truth." Stale prose (a setback is described as "the kind of horrible, unexpected thing that caused the air to go still and the trees to shake and bend as they telegraphed impending disaster") doesn't enhance the derivative plot, which offers a few short-lived shocks but mostly dissipates on impact. Closed-circle mystery fans have a bounty of better options.
