It is winter at an idyllic inn nestled in the Catskills. A small group of people has retreated to this inn for a variety of reasons. Some are there to rekindle their marriage, another couple is therefor a romantic getaway. One woman is using the weekend as a writers retreat, and others are just there to get out of the city for a weekend. They all have to battle mother nature to get there and once there they are a prisoner of her anger. They wake up in the morning snowed in with no electricity, but they also wake up to find one of them dead at the bottom of the stairs. When the guests of the Mitchell Inn realize that her death was not an accident, they become on edge and wary of the other guests. Before the day is over three more people end up dead and a fourth runs out of into the brutal snowstorm, never to be seen again. Was it the lawyer once accused of murdering his wife? Or was it the person who has been sleeping in the locked room at the end of the hall? Will the remaining guests of Mitchell's Inn survive the weekend?
There was something about An Unwanted Guest that reminded me of an old Agatha Christie novel. A snowy weekend, guests cut off from the outside world, bodies start to pile up. I listened to the book from Audible and one thing I noticed was that there wasn't a whole lot of dialogue and it jumped narrators quite a bit but was read by the same person. It may have been a little less confusing had they used different narrators, or even different voices, to signify the different characters. But even that was a minor irritation and didn't distract from the good ole fashioned mystery novel. The author did a good job of creating an eclectic group of guests and put them in a difficult situation with all contact cut off and trapped by mother nature. It prompted me to think about how I would behave if I were in that situation. I had a hard time figuring this one out, I had figured out part of it, but couldn't put all of the pieces together. So when everything was revealed it provide me with a true "aha" moment. CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS
Bottom Line - An Unwanted Guest is the kind of mystery that you can curl up with on a cool Fall night. It is perfect to read by the fire with the hot beverage of your choice.
Details:
- An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena
- On Facebook
- Pages: 304
- Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
- Publication Date: 8/7/2018
- Buy it Here!
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