Genre: Whodunit, Thriller

Synopsis: During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirty-something friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.

The trip begins innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps, just as a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.

Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead. . . and another of them did it.

Keep your friends close, the old adage says. But how close is too close?

Content/Trigger Warnings: Drug and alcohol usage, Graphic injuries

I was really impressed by The Hunting Party. I read Lucy Foley’s The Guest List first and felt it was really overrated. I think the hype kind of skewed my expectations going in, but I hadn’t heard too much about The Hunting Party. Or maybe I read it so long after its release, it was old news at that point.

Anyways, I really enjoyed it. The story itself was so engaging and each character’s storyline was built really well. It was such a fun experience not just trying to figure out “whodunit” but also who and what was done. I really appreciate a thriller that doesn’t give you all the information up front because it just gives you so much to try and figure out.

The setting was unique and so quietly haunting, and the outlier couple was such a great addition to the story’s overall cast, in such a very subtle way.

I did figure out pieces of the twist (or twists… there were many), but there were so many twists that all really played into each other, it was disappointing to solve part of the mystery. It was unusually satisfying. I think, if not done well, multiple twists can ruin a good book, but Foley integrated each together in a really seamless way. I’d love to see this as a miniseries.