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lina_petrina's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Eating disorder and Self harm
writtenontheflyleaves's review
dark
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley 🦌 [copied from insta]
🌟🌟🌟✨
🦌 The plot: A group of friends who met at Oxford University many years ago goes to a remote Scottish loch to celebrate New Year. On the surface, it's all fun and games, but in less than 24 hours, one of them will be dead, and as the authorities struggle to get there through the snow, one thing becomes certain: the murderer is still among them.
I don't read a lot of thrillers, but this was lent to me by a friend and proved to be an accidentally festive read as I read it over New Year!
The story is narrated from multiple perspectives across five characters: three of the friends who visit the loch, and two of the people who work there. (Interestingly, they're all told in first-person apart from the one male narrator - there's probably an essay on female subjectivity in there somewhere)
You don't find out who the murderer or their victim are until right at the end, and while in another book this might have annoyed me, here I thought it worked to keep me suspicious of everybody, especially in conjunction with Foley's characterisation.
While some books I've read make rich characters into caricatures, usually with some version of "I'm better than you, peasant" popping up in the dialogue to show that Yes, They're Bad, I thought this one did a good job of showing the different shades of ugliness and entitlement that are possible in characters like these. This heightened the drama because really, any of these people might have been capable of hurting each other - not because they were supervillains, but because they were spoilt or vain or desperate or all three.
I didn't see the murderer's identity coming until the last moment and they turned out to be such an interesting villain, too - I was really impressed! My only gripe is that after a really carefully-paced and -written main arc, the story wrapped up in a rush. It didn't seem that the emotional fallout from the murder was actually that big - [REDACTED]'s murder actually seemed quite convenient for a lot of the group - and I'd have liked there to be more reflection on what was actually lost in the course of the novel.
🦌 Read it if you're not usually that into thrillers (me neither - but I liked this!) And want something atmospheric with a critique of privilege and some really strong group dynamics between characters!
🚫 Avoid it if you prefer darker or more elaborate crime stories as this isn't that twisty. Also, it goes without saying, check TWs before reading
🌟🌟🌟✨
🦌 The plot: A group of friends who met at Oxford University many years ago goes to a remote Scottish loch to celebrate New Year. On the surface, it's all fun and games, but in less than 24 hours, one of them will be dead, and as the authorities struggle to get there through the snow, one thing becomes certain: the murderer is still among them.
I don't read a lot of thrillers, but this was lent to me by a friend and proved to be an accidentally festive read as I read it over New Year!
The story is narrated from multiple perspectives across five characters: three of the friends who visit the loch, and two of the people who work there. (Interestingly, they're all told in first-person apart from the one male narrator - there's probably an essay on female subjectivity in there somewhere)
You don't find out who the murderer or their victim are until right at the end, and while in another book this might have annoyed me, here I thought it worked to keep me suspicious of everybody, especially in conjunction with Foley's characterisation.
While some books I've read make rich characters into caricatures, usually with some version of "I'm better than you, peasant" popping up in the dialogue to show that Yes, They're Bad, I thought this one did a good job of showing the different shades of ugliness and entitlement that are possible in characters like these. This heightened the drama because really, any of these people might have been capable of hurting each other - not because they were supervillains, but because they were spoilt or vain or desperate or all three.
I didn't see the murderer's identity coming until the last moment and they turned out to be such an interesting villain, too - I was really impressed! My only gripe is that after a really carefully-paced and -written main arc, the story wrapped up in a rush. It didn't seem that the emotional fallout from the murder was actually that big - [REDACTED]'s murder actually seemed quite convenient for a lot of the group - and I'd have liked there to be more reflection on what was actually lost in the course of the novel.
🦌 Read it if you're not usually that into thrillers (me neither - but I liked this!) And want something atmospheric with a critique of privilege and some really strong group dynamics between characters!
🚫 Avoid it if you prefer darker or more elaborate crime stories as this isn't that twisty. Also, it goes without saying, check TWs before reading
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Drug use, Infidelity, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Vomit, Pregnancy, Alcohol, and War
Minor: Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Self harm, and Suicide attempt
kellflo's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Stalking
Moderate: Violence
Minor: Eating disorder
maregred's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Bullying, Death, Drug use, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, Stalking, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Classism
Moderate: Gun violence, Infertility, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Murder, Pregnancy, Outing, and War
Minor: Alcoholism, Body shaming, Bullying, Eating disorder, Vomit, Outing, and Gaslighting
amberrenfrey's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal death, Death, Drug use, Gore, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Blood, Vomit, Stalking, Murder, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Bullying, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, and Classism
uranaishi's review
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Bullying, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Sexual content, Violence, Stalking, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Body shaming, Cursing, Eating disorder, Gun violence, Homophobia, Infertility, Misogyny, Blood, Pregnancy, Outing, Gaslighting, and Classism
Minor: Addiction, Racial slurs, and Sexism
silver_lining_in_a_book's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Sexual content
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug use, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Infertility, Toxic friendship, and War
wildlifelane's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal death, Bullying, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Infidelity, Mental illness, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Stalking, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Addiction, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Infertility, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Pregnancy, Outing, and Gaslighting
nickoliver's review
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
It was certainly an interesting experience to read this book, because there was a lot I didn’t like and not a lot I genuinely enjoyed, and yet I couldn’t stop reading and really needed to know who the victim was and why it happened. It also didn't take me quite as long the way physical books do nowadays (I've been in a kind of reading slump when it comes to physical books since like, last October), which was kind of surprising. Usually, books I don't particularly like tend to take me longer, but nope, not here!
The format of the story was weirdly arbitrary. There were five different POVs, of which one was in the present and the other four in the past, with one of the past ones told in third person and the rest in first person. Like I said, arbitrary. Plus, I didn't quite understand how Foley decided which characters would get a POV? The narrators were: Emma, Miranda, Katie - all part of the friend group who went to the Lodge -, Doug the gamekeeper, and Heather, who also worked at the Lodge. Doug's was the only male one, and the only one in third person, and Heather's perspective was the one set in the present. I found it a very odd choice of characters, mostly because there were some couples in the friend group who didn't get a perspective, and it made no sense to me.
In total, the friend group consisted of four couples - Miranda and Julien, Emma and Mark, Samira and Giles, Nick and Bo -, plus Katie, who was single. I understood why Mark and Julien didn't get their own POV, because they were developed enough through the eyes of their girlfriend and wife respectively. But there was absolutely no reason why out of the Nick/Bo and Samira/Giles couples, no one got to tell their side of the story.
This bothered me for several reasons. One, while Foley explored the other relationships, Nick and Bo's relationship as well as Samira and Giles's marriage was barely even mentioned. I would not be able to tell you anything about how they worked as couples. They were also virtually unnecessary to the story itself. Especially Samira and Giles were so unimportant that they didn't even have much of a personality to begin with (not that Nick and Bo were much more developed, but I did learn a few more things about them than the other two). Considering Samira wasn't just the only woman in the book that didn't get a POV but also the only person of colour, this really pissed me off.
Two, it made me question why especially Nick was friends with them in the first place. It is said at the beginning of the story that he was mostly just Katie's friend, but it made no sense to me why he would also hang out with the rest of them, because everyone was very casually homophobic. One of them had outed him to his fucking parents before he was ready, and the other men in the group (mostly Julien and Mark) constantly made little jabs at his masculinity. You know, doing things like insinuate that since he and Bo were gay, they wouldn't come hunting with the rest of them, and things like that. Why on earth would you want to spend your time with people like that? And everyone else just completely ignored that sort of homophobic behaviour and didn't call them out on it, and I just found it unnecessary to even add it to the plot in the first place. Maybe if we'd gotten an insight into Nick's thoughts, we could've gotten an explanation as to why he didn't ditch them all for better, possibly queer, friends.
I think it was also annoying that these people didn’t get POVs because they seemed the most likeable out of the entire cast? Well, at least Nick and Bo did; like I said, Samira and Giles were so underdeveloped it wasn't even possible to say if they were good or bad people. Actually, they weren't even the most likeable, just ... like ... the only likeable ones, really. It was admittedly a bit hysterical when you looked at all of their vices. You had cheaters, criminals, bullies, stalkers, and then there was Bo - whose only negative trait was basically "city boi who didn't do well in nature". Like, one of these things was not like the other ones.
Because the friend group was full of insufferable, snobbish, pretentious little assholes (seriously, having been at Oxford was their sole personality trait), I didn’t particularly enjoy being in their heads. I was angry throughout most of my reading experience. So the fact that I still couldn’t really put the book down and wanted to know who died and who did the killing was surprising. Though to be fair, I doubt Foley intended for you to like them, so I wasn't mad per se that I disliked the majority of them.
The two POVs that didn’t have to do with the friends, Doug and Heather, I didn’t quite enjoy. I did kind of like that there was a POV set in the present that dealt with the aftermath, but I didn't understand why I had to learn so much of their backstories, especially since they weren't part of the rest of the group. Them being so thoroughly explored made little sense to me. Why not develop Samira, Giles, Nick, and Bo a bit more instead? Plus, there were a few romantic undertones between Doug and Heather that didn't need to be part of the plot.
So, let me talk about something other than the characters.
The mystery wasn’t that hard to solve. I do have to admit I assumed at first that the victim wouldn’t get a perspective, so I didn’t expect the victim to be who it was for a while. Only after realising that there was overall a big focus on them did I realise they might be the victim (if they hadn’t been, it wouldn’t have made sense to tell so much about them and not quite as much about anybody else). But I also wasn’t completely surprised that they were the victim, especially after learning the gender of the dead person.
That's something I liked about the mystery, though: that you didn't know for a long time who the victim even was at all. Foley even kept their gender to herself for a while, so it could've literally been any of them. It was admittedly a lot of fun to guess, even if it wasn't that hard to figure out. Though it did make the writing a bit weird at times - the way the characters talked about the victim while avoiding specific pronouns, for example, felt clumsy and unrealistic.
There was also a stalker angle that was pretty predictable. I didn't suspect who it was from the start, but I also wasn't very surprised; I had always a certain hunch that proved to be right, and I don't think it was hard to have that hunch to begin with.
I do think that even though it was easy to figure out who the victim was, Foley did choose the right person to die. They were very polarising and rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, so even after learning they were the one who had gotten murdered, you didn't immediately know who the killer was. Everyone had been insulted or threatened or hurt by them, so everyone had potentially a motive to kill them. So learning who the victim was didn't immediately make you suspect the right person per se.
An annoying aspect about the suspense of the story was that Foley put many things in there as red herrings, but literally none of them worked. For example, every once in a while, it was mentioned that there was a serial killer in the area who hadn't been caught yet, and it was obvious that you were supposed to be led astray by this news. But it didn't make you think, 'Oh my God, maybe this person had been killed by this random serial killer!', because that would've made the story too nonsensical.
Another time, the victim was shown fighting with another person who made threats at them, but it didn't lead to thoughts of, 'Ah, so this person is obviously suspicious!', because the relationship between them had not been explored before, therefore this interaction just felt random and misplaced. This other person being the killer would've made no sense at all.
There was also a completely random subplot that attempted to add tension ( the whole thing with the Icelandic couple and the drug dealing ), but it didn't fit into the story at all.It felt ridiculous and unnecessary and was eye-rollingly bad.
After I finished the book, I looked up some reviews on Goodreads, and something they mentioned that I wasn’t aware of was how badly researched it was. It was set in Scotland, and apparently, Foley got a lot of things wrong about it. I can't confirm that, since I'm not Scottish nor have I ever been there, but it's certainly something to keep in mind if you plan on picking up this book.
So, while I did have a bit of fun and really wanted to know what happened, it wasn’t exactly a good book. A lot was pretty predictable, the characters weren't developed to the same degree even though they were all supposed to be important, and they also didn't seem to like each other all too much? There was a lot of bullying, and a lot of justifying of that. The unchallenged homophobia made me extremely mad, and the red herrings were fucking useless. I really do want to pick up Foley's other books, but this one was mostly a bust.
The format of the story was weirdly arbitrary. There were five different POVs, of which one was in the present and the other four in the past, with one of the past ones told in third person and the rest in first person. Like I said, arbitrary. Plus, I didn't quite understand how Foley decided which characters would get a POV? The narrators were: Emma, Miranda, Katie - all part of the friend group who went to the Lodge -, Doug the gamekeeper, and Heather, who also worked at the Lodge. Doug's was the only male one, and the only one in third person, and Heather's perspective was the one set in the present. I found it a very odd choice of characters, mostly because there were some couples in the friend group who didn't get a perspective, and it made no sense to me.
In total, the friend group consisted of four couples - Miranda and Julien, Emma and Mark, Samira and Giles, Nick and Bo -, plus Katie, who was single. I understood why Mark and Julien didn't get their own POV, because they were developed enough through the eyes of their girlfriend and wife respectively. But there was absolutely no reason why out of the Nick/Bo and Samira/Giles couples, no one got to tell their side of the story.
This bothered me for several reasons. One, while Foley explored the other relationships, Nick and Bo's relationship as well as Samira and Giles's marriage was barely even mentioned. I would not be able to tell you anything about how they worked as couples. They were also virtually unnecessary to the story itself. Especially Samira and Giles were so unimportant that they didn't even have much of a personality to begin with (not that Nick and Bo were much more developed, but I did learn a few more things about them than the other two). Considering Samira wasn't just the only woman in the book that didn't get a POV but also the only person of colour, this really pissed me off.
Two, it made me question why especially Nick was friends with them in the first place. It is said at the beginning of the story that he was mostly just Katie's friend, but it made no sense to me why he would also hang out with the rest of them, because everyone was very casually homophobic. One of them had outed him to his fucking parents before he was ready, and the other men in the group (mostly Julien and Mark) constantly made little jabs at his masculinity. You know, doing things like insinuate that since he and Bo were gay, they wouldn't come hunting with the rest of them, and things like that. Why on earth would you want to spend your time with people like that? And everyone else just completely ignored that sort of homophobic behaviour and didn't call them out on it, and I just found it unnecessary to even add it to the plot in the first place. Maybe if we'd gotten an insight into Nick's thoughts, we could've gotten an explanation as to why he didn't ditch them all for better, possibly queer, friends.
I think it was also annoying that these people didn’t get POVs because they seemed the most likeable out of the entire cast? Well, at least Nick and Bo did; like I said, Samira and Giles were so underdeveloped it wasn't even possible to say if they were good or bad people. Actually, they weren't even the most likeable, just ... like ... the only likeable ones, really. It was admittedly a bit hysterical when you looked at all of their vices. You had cheaters, criminals, bullies, stalkers, and then there was Bo - whose only negative trait was basically "city boi who didn't do well in nature". Like, one of these things was not like the other ones.
Because the friend group was full of insufferable, snobbish, pretentious little assholes (seriously, having been at Oxford was their sole personality trait), I didn’t particularly enjoy being in their heads. I was angry throughout most of my reading experience. So the fact that I still couldn’t really put the book down and wanted to know who died and who did the killing was surprising. Though to be fair, I doubt Foley intended for you to like them, so I wasn't mad per se that I disliked the majority of them.
The two POVs that didn’t have to do with the friends, Doug and Heather, I didn’t quite enjoy. I did kind of like that there was a POV set in the present that dealt with the aftermath, but I didn't understand why I had to learn so much of their backstories, especially since they weren't part of the rest of the group. Them being so thoroughly explored made little sense to me. Why not develop Samira, Giles, Nick, and Bo a bit more instead? Plus, there were a few romantic undertones between Doug and Heather that didn't need to be part of the plot.
So, let me talk about something other than the characters.
The mystery wasn’t that hard to solve. I do have to admit I assumed at first that the victim wouldn’t get a perspective, so I didn’t expect the victim to be who it was for a while. Only after realising that there was overall a big focus on them did I realise they might be the victim (if they hadn’t been, it wouldn’t have made sense to tell so much about them and not quite as much about anybody else). But I also wasn’t completely surprised that they were the victim, especially after learning the gender of the dead person.
That's something I liked about the mystery, though: that you didn't know for a long time who the victim even was at all. Foley even kept their gender to herself for a while, so it could've literally been any of them. It was admittedly a lot of fun to guess, even if it wasn't that hard to figure out. Though it did make the writing a bit weird at times - the way the characters talked about the victim while avoiding specific pronouns, for example, felt clumsy and unrealistic.
There was also a stalker angle that was pretty predictable. I didn't suspect who it was from the start, but I also wasn't very surprised; I had always a certain hunch that proved to be right, and I don't think it was hard to have that hunch to begin with.
I do think that even though it was easy to figure out who the victim was, Foley did choose the right person to die. They were very polarising and rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, so even after learning they were the one who had gotten murdered, you didn't immediately know who the killer was. Everyone had been insulted or threatened or hurt by them, so everyone had potentially a motive to kill them. So learning who the victim was didn't immediately make you suspect the right person per se.
An annoying aspect about the suspense of the story was that Foley put many things in there as red herrings, but literally none of them worked. For example, every once in a while, it was mentioned that there was a serial killer in the area who hadn't been caught yet, and it was obvious that you were supposed to be led astray by this news. But it didn't make you think, 'Oh my God, maybe this person had been killed by this random serial killer!', because that would've made the story too nonsensical.
Another time, the victim was shown fighting with another person who made threats at them, but it didn't lead to thoughts of, 'Ah, so this person is obviously suspicious!', because the relationship between them had not been explored before, therefore this interaction just felt random and misplaced. This other person being the killer would've made no sense at all.
There was also a completely random subplot that attempted to add tension (
After I finished the book, I looked up some reviews on Goodreads, and something they mentioned that I wasn’t aware of was how badly researched it was. It was set in Scotland, and apparently, Foley got a lot of things wrong about it. I can't confirm that, since I'm not Scottish nor have I ever been there, but it's certainly something to keep in mind if you plan on picking up this book.
So, while I did have a bit of fun and really wanted to know what happened, it wasn’t exactly a good book. A lot was pretty predictable, the characters weren't developed to the same degree even though they were all supposed to be important, and they also didn't seem to like each other all too much? There was a lot of bullying, and a lot of justifying of that. The unchallenged homophobia made me extremely mad, and the red herrings were fucking useless. I really do want to pick up Foley's other books, but this one was mostly a bust.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Infidelity, Mental illness, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, Stalking, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
Moderate: Animal death, Bullying, Gun violence, Homophobia, Vomit, and Pregnancy
Minor: Addiction, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, and Blood
lipstickitotheman's review against another edition
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Fun ride, disappointing ending.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Stalking, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
Moderate: Ableism, Addiction, Animal death, Bullying, Death, Drug use, Homophobia, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, Fire/Fire injury, and Outing