The Guest: A Novel

A friend breaks up with her husband and overstays her welcome living with another couple. Lots of twists and turns in the story.

When we first meet Alex, we know she is an imposter. We equally know that her reflections on this are simply an observer measuring the success of her disguise. Cline’s incisive narrative will dig into Alex’s head, exposing for us the sociopath within, a chancer who will manipulate and exploit without so much as a blink at conscience. Survival. A woman who can outwit a riptide. The mystery of Alex, slowing unfolding, taps into our negativity bias, our hope for a dopamine fix as we puzzle out who this woman is, why she behaves as she does—the Pavlov dog that salivates when an opportunity to make a bad decision confronts her. We fear for her safety, that ever-looming Dom threat, indulge a morbid interest in watching someone self destruct. The narrative will maintain a hum of tension as Alex works her way through Simon’s pill stash, until she snaps the end of her tether by disrespecting the fragile bubble in which May-December romances dwell. Where aging rich buys young love and will not suffer mockery. We cannot sympathize with either of them, Simon or Alex. They are both users.They differ in one way: he is the one with money. But let us resist the temptation to elevate this work to social commentary—wealth inequality, power imbalance. We must bookmark in our minds how they meet. Alex studies Simon, thinking he is not a good use of her energy. He is a civilian, she decides, a man whose self-conception embraces casual sex, not the kind for which he pays. She will have a change of heart when she realizes he can offer protection, give her some breathing room to turn things around. He is merely a mark. He happens to be a rich one, and that serves Alex’s purposes. Alex is dispassionately aware that she burns every bridge she crosses. With a shrug, she knows there are always more bridges. This time, her self-delusion, the other devil on her shoulder, will convince her that Simon will cave. This is the point in her story when the vortex that began in her hometown, the one that etched the arc of her life, begins to lose momentum. She will circle a drain in this rarified beach enclave, with each loop a rerun of the prior con. At some point, we’ll tire of her, of her indecency, moral blankness. The swindle will wear thin, no matter how beautifully Cline writes it. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing this eARC.

Now THAT is an epilogue…..

Okay so I've seen some really bad reviews of this book but honestly I flew through it. True, the story is not that deep, she's a terrible person and you hate her, but it's entertaining as hell and you will find yourself invested in her story lol. It's chaotic and unhinged and I loved every second.

The ending was the best part. Everything else was somewhat predictable in a sense.