The Engagement Party by Darby Kane #bookreview

Thank you to ThrillerBookLovers Promotions, William Morrow, #partner, for an advanced e- copy of The Engagement Party in exchange for my honest review.

Publisher: William Morrow

Published: December 5, 2023

Summary:

And Then There Were None meets I Know What You Did Last Summer in #1 international bestseller Darby Kane’s latest gripping and twisty thriller set on a private island in Maine where secrets piled upon secrets and lies upon lies are all revealed in one fateful weekend.

Emily Hunt went missing from her affluent liberal arts school on graduation weekend. Her body was found floating in a river, and a quiet loner who most people on campus really didn’t know committed suicide. A tenuous link—one text—bound the two dead students together and was enough for law enforcement to close the case. But they got it wrong and now someone is determined to set it right.

Twelve years later, college friends gather to celebrate an engagement over a long overdue getaway on a swanky private island in Maine—with only one way in and one way out. Sierra Prescott, invited as a guest and unconnected to past events, is the only person who soon senses not all is what it seems.

The tension in the air is ignited when they find a dead man in the trunk of a car with a note: time to tell the truth. And things only get worse. As a torrential storm strands them together, the group’s buried stories begin to surface and secrets are bartered. To survive this deadly party, they’ll need to stop a killer before they become prey.

My thoughts:

Somehow this is the first book I’ve read by Darby Kane but it will definitely not be the last one I pick up. It was such a thrilling ride from start to finish and one I read in a matter of hours…that’s how addicting and wild this one was! Once I started it, I just couldn’t put it down!

The locked-room trope is one of my favorites in a thriller and when you set it on an island in the middle of a storm, I’m all in! Talk about atmospheric and suspenseful!!! And then you have a group of people coming together for the first time in years and that just brings another layer of tension and to add to that, these characters aren’t the most likeable. And things just go down-hill from there. This book is so twisty and I loved that each character has their own set of secrets that you just cannot wait to find out. This book definitely gives off some major And Then There Were None vibes, so if you have read that, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t read that, no big deal.

I loved that even though I had some suspicions about a few characters, I still had no idea where this one was ultimately headed. And that kept me flipping the pages at a furious pace. There is clearly something that happened in the past that these characters do not want coming out and someone wants justice. It’s such a good mix of a cat and mouse game along with a revenge story and I couldn’t get enough of it.

This is a fast-paced, twisted story that I definitely recommend. And lucky for me that I have the rest of Darby’s backlist to read while waiting for her next book to come out!