This mystery could never happen. ( )

B. A. Paris has written a great thriller with The Guest!
Iris and Gabriel have returned from vacation to find their friend, Laure, in their home. She claims her husband, Pierre, has a secret child, and she plans to leave him. They reluctantly allow Laure to stay with them, but her stay becomes longer and longer. Then Pierre is found dead, and Laure is a suspect. Meanwhile, Iris starts to admire the gardener, Joseph. Yet, when he doesn't return her feelings, she becomes jealous. A young boy dies, and things start to come up from the past. Secrets may be revealed, and someone must stop that from happening.
This will keep you guessing. ( )

This is a slow burn thriller that can be taken as a warning to house guests who overstay their welcome. Iris and Gabriel find themselves hosting an uninvited guest, an old friend who has learned something upsetting about her husband. They try to be supportive but as the weeks pass by and boundaries are crossed their sympathy wears thin. I have to admit I was a little frustrated with the slow pace and the spineless characters right up until the part I don’t want to spoil - the thing I did not see coming. For a story with unlikable characters this ended up being hard to put down.
My thanks to Goodreads Giveaways and the publisher for a copy to review. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. I read Behind Closed Doors and absolutely loved it. This book was no different. It started off with a bang (literally). I loved the various layers to the story. It was so many separate elements with a lot of mystery surrounding them. I really struggled to put this down once I started it because it hooked me so easily. I think all the characters were written incredibly well. I honestly wasn't sure who to trust the entire time. I had so many theories and everytime the book would do something to discredit it. It was actually a super enjoyable reading experience because of that.

I loved all the different ways the characters were connected and the reveals the author would give at random times to make you suspicious of another character. I really thought I had this one figured out. It was not at all what I thought. And I loved that. Once we got that reveal it made sense and you could see how the pieces tied together. I will say that I thought some parts were going to be much more important than they were... but they just ended up being elements not completely necessary. It felt like they existed simply to distract you from the major drama that was unfolding.

Mostly though I just loved how this one sucked me in and made me want to keep reading. The author is pretty good at ending chapters on that give me more point. Not to mention who doesn't love short chapters! I would recommend this book for people who like a nice psychological thriller with a twist you didn't see coming. ( )

The Guest, B. A. Paris, author; Emily Joyce, narrator
The discovery of a teenage boy, dying at the bottom of a quarry with his twisted bicycle around him, by Gabriel, has a traumatic effect on his life. Once he had been the boy’s coach. The once idyllic life of Iris and Gabriel, even after two decades, was now scarred by this discovery because of a message the dying boy asked Gabriel to pass on to his mother with his last breath. When the police asked Gabriel if the child had any last words, he had lied and was haunted by his actions.
Then another discovery came crashing into their lives. Gabriel and Iris had met a lovely couple on their honeymoon, Laure and Pierre, from Paris. Even after the twenty years, they were still great friends, as close as family. Pierre and Laure decided to have no children, but Iris and Gabriel had one daughter. Laure is their daughter Beth’s Godmother. When they returned home from a vacation, they found Laure in their home, without any prior notice. She was bereft. She said she discovered that Pierre had a child from a one-night stand. No further information was forthcoming to Gabriel and Iris, but of course, they allowed her to stay with them as long as she wished. In the past, they had gone to each of their homes often.
Laure was heartbroken, since she would have wanted to have a child, but Pierre did not. Now he possibly wanted to have this child in his life. She did not know if she could cope with it, and he refused to fill in all the blanks about this discovery. Her mind had created all sorts of conspiracy theories. She had few clothes with her and said she would only stay for a few weeks. Then she decided to get a divorce when he called her to reconcile, but was not at home when she arrived. She decides to stay longer with Iris and Gabriel, and the situation gets a little tense with the lack of privacy. Although Gabriel has tried to reach Pierre on numerous occasions, he responded rarely, and then not at all. The situation was really unclear and not getting any better. It began to cause a bit of friction in the household along with all the other issues they were facing. Laure’s influence on their home sometimes felt too intrusive and too controlling. Iris felt a distinct lack of privacy and space. Iris and Gabriel’s once close relationship had also grown more and more distant with Gabriel’s grief over Charlie, and since he found himself unable to be warm and loving toward her. Iris was struggling with her own emotional issues, as well as Laure’s and Gabriel’s.
Meanwhile, a new couple had moved into town. Esme and Hugh, and Gabriel and Iris, hit it off as if they had been friends for years. Esme is just around 40, close to the age of Iris, and she was having her first child. One of her old childhood friends, Joseph, is helping Hugh get the garden ready for the newborn and is living with them temporarily. He is a recovering alcoholic with anger issues. A wonderful swing has been installed in a tree on the lovely property, and that is how Iris discovers Esme. Soon Joseph is hired out to help Iris and Gabriel restore their walled garden, and to help get Gabriel back on his feet. He is a doctor who left his practice to recover from the effects of finding the dying teenager, Charlie. So many of the characters are struggling with traumatic events in their lives.
To complicate matters further, Maggie, Charlie’s mother has been advised to meet with Gabriel to achieve some kind of closure after the death of her only child, but Gabriel does not want to meet her because of his lies about Charlie’s last words. Her disclosures shine a light on many of the unknowns, but do not solve the mystery.
As the story gets more and more complicated, and as the coincidences become more and more common, the many themes might seem to be a bit contrived and convenient, but this author has a gift for knitting them together so seamlessly, and so without guile, that they flow smoothly and meaningfully into the narrative, keeping the reader on the edge of the seat, always guessing, never criticizing. I always await her next book eagerly!
In the end, there are so many secrets revealed and so many accusations considered, that the reader is made aware of the fact that we all accuse others of our own sins, one way or another, in most situations. The end is a surprise to some, but perhaps not to others. Misinterpretations and misjudgments often led to the wrong conclusions and unnecessary suspicions so that the characters could not see the forest for the trees. ( )