The Disinvited Guest
A Novel
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3.4 • 29 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From two-time Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author Carol Goodman comes a new mystery, about a group of friends isolated on a remote island with a history of foul play.
"Carol Goodman is a brilliant writer, and she shines here.” —Gilly Macmillan, New York Times bestselling author
Lucy Harper still has traumatic memories and lingering health problems from the 2020 pandemic. So, when a new virus surfaces years later, she and her husband, Reed, seek refuge on his family’s private island off the coast of Maine. Ostensibly safely sequestered with their five closest friends and family, Lucy should feel at ease. So why does she feel the weight of the island’s dark history pushing down on the group?
As Lucy uncovers Reed’s family secrets and the island’s history as a quarantine hospital for typhus patients, she becomes obsessed with the past and feels her own grip on reality slipping. Tempers flare, strange signs appear in the woods, and accidents turn deadly. Is the island haunted by the dead? Or is someone amongst the living taking their revenge?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Years after the 2020 pandemic, and ahead of a raging second, even deadlier plague, writer Lucy Harper, the narrator of this unsettling gothic thriller from bestseller Goodman (The Stranger Behind You), and her husband, Reed, escape to Maine's Fever Island, which Reed and his sister, Liz, have inherited. During the 1850s, the island served as a quarantine site for Irish famine ships overflowing with dying typhus-infected migrants. Despite the dire circumstances, the first days on the island feel almost festive as the couple and their various guests, including Liz, are well supplied with food and drink. But the island begins to cast its spooky spell on everyone, particularly once Lucy, who has been unsuccessfully seeking a subject for her next book, immerses herself in the wrenching journal kept during the typhus onslaught by Reed's physician ancestor. Things swiftly fall apart as possessions start to disappear, and escalating incidents of sabotage threaten the group's survival. Never mind Goodman's stumbles sustaining convincing characters, especially through the fantastic final twists. This smooth cocktail of refreshingly chilly suspense is sure to win her new fans.
Customer Reviews
Works for half the story
About midway through the spell of the journal in the past begins to unravel. At the same time, the attempt to tie supernatural events to the events in the present feels unconvincing, unnecessary and ineffective.
Pretty awful
If this got published, anything can be published. I rolled my eyes at the dialogue, the stupid and repetitive questions, and the fear based characters so many times during the reading that I got a headache. There was nothing in this book that a healthy person could relate to or be entertained by, I’m afraid. I only paid $1.95 and feel ripped off. I can’t get my time back. Where’s the Tylenol ?