The Book:
The Club by Ellery Lloyd
Published March 1st 2022 by Harper
Date read: February 27, 2022
The Characters:
Jess, new employee/head of housekeeping
Annie, head of membership
Nikki, PA to owner Ned
Adam, Ned’s brother
Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon
The Plot (from Goodreads):
Envisioned as a luxurious home-away from-home for Very Important People, The Home Group is a collection of celebrity members clubs dotted across the globe, from London to Lisbon, Malibu to Manhattan, where the rich and famous can party hard and then crash out in its five-star suites, far from the prying eyes of fans and the media.
The most spectacular and exclusive of all is Island Home–a sprawling, closely-guarded complex of faux-rustic guest cabins, spas, bars, and restaurants just off the English coast. To mark its opening, Home’s mercurial CEO Ned Groom and his team have planned a glamorous three-day launch party, easily the most coveted A-list invite of the year.
But behind the scenes, tensions are at breaking point. Years behind schedule and vastly over budget, the project has stretched a long-serving and long-suffering team to their limits. There’s Ned’s trusted PA, who has over decades maneuvered her way from coat-check girl to Home’s inner circle; Ned’s younger brother, who has sacrificed his marriage and morals to be Ned’s right-hand man; the Head of Membership keeping the world’s most spoiled and jaded individuals entertained using any means necessary; the Head of Housekeeping, who plays silent witness to the guests’ very worst excesses. All of them have something to hide – and that’s before the beautiful people with their own ugly secrets even set foot on the island.
As tempers fray and behaviour worsens, as things get more sinister by the hour and the body count piles up, some of Island Home’s members begin to wish they’d never RSVP’d at all.
Because at this club, if your name’s on the list, you’re not getting out.
The Twist:
Jackson had killed Jess’s parents in a hit and run. Jess thought that Georgia was in the car with him, but really it was Annie. Jess drugged Jackson and thought she killed him, but he turned up on the night of the big party
Nikki got her start by having an affair with Ron Cox when she was 15. He got her pregnant and Kurt was her son. Ned had arranged their affair to get dirt on Ron, and also arranged Ron’s adoption of Kurt after Nikki gave him up.
Ned was recording Home members in their rooms and using the footage to blackmail them. Annie approached Keith and Freddie about killing Ned to get rid of him. They accidentally killed Adam instead. Ned was already dead: Nikki had pushed him into the water and watched him drown.
Keith got into the car with an extremely intoxicated Jackson after he killed Adam, and Jackson killed them both in a car accident.
The Ending:
Jess kept the footage of Annie and Jackson covering up what they had done, and used it to end Annie’s career after the drama with Island Home died down. She got her old job back.
Nikki finally decided to get in touch with Kurt.
The Review:
The Club was like the plot of The Guest List but written like Big Little Lies, where the reader knows something big has happened. We know someone is dead or missing, but we don’t know who or why. We also know that Island Home is a place where celebrities with too much money for their own good go to let loose away from the prying eyes of the media, and that something crazy is bound to happen.
This book has a lot of characters, and it takes a few chapters to start to get them all straight. There are four POVs: Jess, Nikki, Annie, and Adam.There are countless secondary characters, mainly the guests at Home, some of whom are important to the storyline but not all. In addition to the four POVs, the story is interspersed with sections of a Vanity Fair article that came out after the big incident.
I thought the story was well-told, but definitely got bogged down in places with some of the fake celebrity gossip. I admittedly skimmed a few passages to get to the meat of the chapter.
I really enjoyed how the different plot threads in The Club came together, and the ending was a satisfying one in which all the worst characters got what they deserved. If you like a twisty thriller with lots of moving parts, pick this one up!
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