The Book:
The Guest by Cathryn Grant, 2020
The Characters:
Married couple Ellie and Seth and their children Brandon and Simone; their houseguest Ace
The Plot (from the publisher):
Life has been good to Ellie – she owns a successful art gallery, is deeply in love with her husband, Seth, and has two beautiful children, Brandon and Simone.
But not everything is perfect.
Lately, Seth seems to have something on his mind and has become cold and distant. And things don’t improve when he invites the mysterious stranger Ace to stay in their home.
Ace is charming, but Ellie can’t help feeling there’s more to him than meets the eye, that he has some kind of agenda. She’s also aware that she is dangerously attracted to him.
Then a girl at Brandon’s school is murdered, and Ellie is beyond devastated when the police tell her they think her son might be involved.
Ellie knows in her heart that Brandon is innocent and she feels certain that Ace is somehow connected to the disturbing things that are happening. She starts to dig for the truth and uncovers the terrible secret that will change her life in ways she can’t imagine.
The Twist:
Ellie finds out early on that Seth has lost his job, but he begins acting strange and does not seem to be looking for a new one. She also finds out that Ace is a convicted murderer out on parole.
Ellie goes on Seth’s computer and notices some strange transactions. She finds out that he no longer wants to be married to her, but since they have a prenup Seth would be broke if he divorced her and would most likely lose custody of Simone.
She finds out that Seth has been concocting a plan to murder her and blame it on Ace.
Instead of going to the police, Ellie figures out a way to thwart Seth’s plan. Seth pretends to go out of town, sneaks into their house in the middle of the night, and attempts to murder Ellie. Ellie is waiting for him and kills him instead.
Ellie pretends to the police that she had thought the intruder was Ace. She is not arrested since she killed him in self-defense.
The real twist is that Ellie was planning to murder Seth all along. Basically, she killed anyone that was mean to Brandon. She had killed her first husband for bullying Brandon. She then killed Jasmine (the murdered girl from Brandon’s school) for the same reason. In the end, we find out she was planning to leave Seth since he and Brandon never got along.
The Ending:
Ellie begins a relationship with Ace since both her kids like him and she sees him as a good next husband.
The Review:
I had a bit of trouble staying focused on this book. A couple of times I put it down in favor of a few other titles that held my attention better. I found the middle of the book dragged on a bit–the middle 50% was a lot of slow character development.
The author spent way too much time describing every ingredient of the family’s meals in intricate detail. This only served to make me put down the book and go looking for a snack.
I stuck with it because I was still interested in getting to the end and finding out the twist. I was intrigued by the fact that in the first chapter, Jasmine definitely knows her killer.
Things began to pick back up about 80% of the way through the book. The ending was great, and I’m tempted to go back through the book to find the hints I missed.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC of The Guest in exchange for an honest review.
