Meh. The Paris Apartment feels mostly like melodramatic dithering, but I guess I was somewhat entertained.

Jess needs a place to stay, so she hits up her half brother. When she arrives at his residence, she finds a fancy building with questionable tenants, but no sign of Ben. As she digs deeper and asks around, she starts to realize that all is not as it seems at this apartment building. Dun dun dun!

Having read a few of Lucy Foley's books, I feel like she's really good at building up anticipation. Every moment in this book is so dramatic, with dark shadows and scary sounds at every turn. That's all good, but after a while, it gets to be a bit much, you know? There's no natural ebb and flow in the tone. It's just all high anticipation, all the time.

It doesn't help that every character acts so high-strung and paranoid, even when nothing is happening.

I watched as Nick's friend plucked a sprig of rosemary from one of the bushes, tearing hard to wrench it free. How he crushed it to his nose, inhaled. There was something presumptuous about the gesture. It felt like an act of vandalism.

What the heck. Who attacks a bush just to smell it? And who watches someone do that and calls it "presumptuous"? Reader, if you're able to keep from rolling your eyes, you're a better person than I am.

For a book advertised as a mystery, it sure doesn't feel like one. Jess doesn't so much suss out clues as she bumbles around, pilfering stuff, sticking her foot in her mouth, and just generally acts like an incompetent idiot. The other characters are all unlikable too, though each in their own way. And everyone is smelly, with stale breath and excessive sweat.

After all that exaggerated writing, do the twists deliver? Eh, they seem pretty standard to me for the genre. I wasn't really surprised or shocked. In fact, it feels more ridiculous than anything else.

Still, I was compelled to turn the pages, so I must've been somewhat entertained by all the antics.

Readaraoo Rating: 3 stars

Whenever I come across a murder mystery on an island, I just can't resist. The setting is positively atmospheric and who doesn't love a good locked-island mystery? There's something immensely appealing about a small group of people being stuck together with no escape while knowing that a murderer is among them.

(And it takes place at a wedding! I love weddings!)

So I put on my detective hat and get ready to puzzle this out, with much glee. But here is the first problem: not only do we not know the murderer, we don't know who the victim is either. So right off the bat, some of the fun is taken out of the whole thing.

The story also suffers from a few other issues that seem to plague most books of this genre. The characters are, unfortunately, all unlikable and dumb. They have trouble saying simple things to each other that would clear up much confusion. They make mistake after mistake, and then ruminate at length about each. And they all drink themselves into stupors at the first sign of discomfort, instead of just... talking.

There is so much buildup for this story. For 200+ pages, we are treated to nothing but petty drama between all the participants. There is a constant feeling of anticipation and foreboding, as if something bad is going to happen, but nothing actually does. It was exhausting. And when we finally get to the good stuff, the twists are fine, but they weren't surprising. I figured this was the direction the story was going, and it indeed went there.

Overall, it was a passable way to spend a few hours, but it doesn't quite rise above all the other modern thrillers in this over-saturated genre. It's just if you're going to build up an entire story on nothing but anticipation and petty drama, when it finally gets to the payoff, it better blow me away. And this just didn't.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Seven friends meet up to ring in the New Year together at a remote wilderness lodge. Two days later, one of them is dead. Told in alternating perspectives from three of the friends, as well as in alternating timelines, one leading up to the fateful event and one in the immediate aftermath, it begs the questions: What happened? Who was killed and why?

And here is essentially the first issue with The Hunting Party: we don't know who the victim is. Even in the aftermath narrative, the identity of the victim is obfuscated. We don't even know their gender until quite late in the book. And withholding this information takes all the fun out of it. It's no longer a mystery to be solved so much as a contrived tale, manipulated such that as much of the information is withheld as possible.

Reading this book gave me anticipation fatigue. There was a complete dearth of action and information. Sure, anticipation adds suspense and fun, but only for a little while. After that, I need something more: clues, reveals, investigation progress, anything. Otherwise, my brain starts to feel fried out from all that imminent expectation. It becomes overloaded and then turns to exhaustion.

In the meantime, we are treated to eye-rolling drama from the most unlikable group of friends I have ever come across. How these people, who are so snide and awkward around each other, are supposedly friends for decades really belies plausibility. They treat each other with disdain and open hostility. Who needs enemies when you have friends like that?

And the book is full of descriptions of the remote wilderness, with its snow and trees and mountains and silence. There was a point in the middle of the book, when nothing but petty drama and bleak terrain filled the pages, that I was so bored it was hard to make myself keep reading.

Eventually the book did come together, and the last bit was enjoyable. But I wish it was a more even reading experience throughout. I can't help but feel this was a bit of a missed opportunity, that such a promising premise and entertaining story had been written in such a way as to take the excitement and fun out of the majority of the book.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars