Synopsis:

The USA Today bestselling author of The Au Pair returns with another delicious, twisty novel—about a grand estate with many secrets, an orphan caught in a web of lies, and a young woman playing a sinister game.

1988. Beth Soames is fourteen years old when her aunt takes her to stay at Raven Hall, a rambling manor in the isolated East Anglian fens. The Averells, the family who lives there, are warm and welcoming, and Beth becomes fast friends with their daughter, Nina. At times, Beth even feels like she’s truly part of the family…until they ask her to help them with a harmless game—and nothing is ever the same.

2019. Sadie Langton is an actress struggling to make ends meet when she lands a well-paying gig to pretend to be a guest at a weekend party. She is sent a suitcase of clothing, a dossier outlining the role she is to play, and instructions. It’s strange, but she needs the money, and when she sees the stunning manor she’ll be staying at, she figures she’s got nothing to lose.

In person, Raven Hall is even grander than she’d imagined—even with damage from a fire decades before—but the walls seem to have eyes. As day turns to night, Sadie starts to feel that there’s something off about the glamorous guests who arrive, and as the party begins, it becomes chillingly apparent their unseen host is playing games with everyone…including her.

The Perfect Guests is a mystery reminiscent of Agatha Christie, but the tightly woven plot that kept me entranced through the first half of the novel seemed to grow convoluted in the second half. 

“You are cordially invited to play a Game at Raven Hall.”

Emma Rous, The Perfect Guests

Let’s start with what I liked about this twisting mystery. Typically when I read a novel set in two different time periods, I usually prefer one over the other, but I was as equally invested in Sadie’s present-day storyline as I was in Beth’s—set in the late 1980s. In the first half of the novel, it was easy to follow the two separate stories—Sadie’s odd acting roll at a mystery dinner at Raven Hall and Beth’s even stranger arrival as a teenager to the grand manor. 

And I enjoyed both characters, never really questioning their roles.