The Book:
The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones
Published July 1, 2021 by Dreamscape Media
Date read: July 9, 2021
The Characters:
Rachel and her husband Jack
Noah and his wife Paige
Ali and her fiance Will (Jack’s brother)
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The Plot (from Goodreads):
Six friends.
Rachel and Noah have been friends since they met at university. While they once thought that they might be something more, now, twenty years later, they are each happily married to other people, Jack and Paige respectively. Jack’s brother Will is getting married, to the dazzling, impulsive Ali, and the group of six travel to Portugal for their destination weekend.
Three couples.
As they arrive at a gorgeous villa perched on a cliff-edge, overlooking towering waves that crash on the famous surfing beaches below at Nazaré, they try to settle into a weekend of fun. While Rachel is looking forward to getting to know her future sister-in-law Ali better, Ali can’t help but rub many of the group up the wrong way: Rachel’s best friend Paige thinks Ali is attention-seeking and childish, and while Jack is trying to support his brother Will’s choice of wife, he is also finding plenty to disagree with Noah about.
One fatal misunderstanding . . .
But when Rachel discovers something about Ali that she can hardly believe, everything changes. As the wedding weekend unfolds, the secrets each of them hold begin to spill, and friendships and marriages threaten to unravel. Soon, jumping to conclusions becomes the difference between life and death.
Rachel and Noah had hooked up, and Rachel doesn’t know whether he or her husband is the father of her child. Rachel suspects Jack of cheating on her with Ali, but he’s actually cheating with Paige. Ali tells Rachel this, and she doesn’t know whether to believe her. Ali has been trying to get Jack to come clean.
At the wedding, someone runs into the crowd of guests with a car, injuring Ali and Jack. Later at the hospital, the police tell Ali that Paige’s body was found in the car and that someone else may have been in the car with her. Jack tells the police he was going to leave Rachel for Paige. The police find Jack’s watch in the car.
The Ending:
Ali’s mom had overheard Paige break up with Jack. Jack got angry.
Ali and Will have another wedding ceremony, Rachel becomes a teacher, and Jack is Josh’s biological father. Jack is convicted of manslaughter since his watch was found in the car, but we find out at the last second that Rachel put Jack’s watch in Paige’s bag.
The Review:
The Guilt Trip takes place at a villa in Portugal, where Ali and Will are getting married. Talk about an amazing destination wedding! I’m also so in love with this cover.
Ali annoyed me from the first page (as was intended!). She was the embodiment of all my biggest pet peeves: bad traveler, fake drunk, damsel in distress. I would’ve left her at check-in at the airport and said see ya at the gate!
I’m all for drama in my thrillers, so the beginning of this book had me hooked. Three couples, all with secrets to keep from the other members of their group? Sign me up. I was eager to figure out which secrets were just run-of-the-mill drama, and which would cause the blowup you know is coming. The ending, though, wasn’t quite as twisted as some of Sandie’s previous novels. I read her first three books back to back about a year ago, and I remember being absolutely blown away by the twist in The First Mistake. That was a five-star read for me, so I think I was holding The Guilt Trip to that standard.
On audio, it was a bit confusing to get a handle on who all the characters were and who was married to/related to whom, so I’m glad I had the physical book to follow along with. The audio production was great overall, and I really liked the narrator.
If you liked this book, try:
Her Dark Lies by JT Ellison
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
