The Dinner Guest – book review

A psychological thriller that keeps an audience and the readers on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. The Dinner Guest is one that I didn’t see coming with a few twists and turns and something you thought you were prepared, but then you get thrown into the deep end with yet another twist. In the instant your eyes read that first page, you will be hooked immediately and not want to put the book down. The Dinner Guest by B.P. Walter set in the super posh areas on London, is a novel that hits all the emotions. It’s a wild combination of secrets and manipulation, grief, death, and a class system. 

The Dinner Guest opens up with a murder. The audience is introduced to one of the main characters, Matthew who is in fact dead on the floor, and another character, Rachel who is standing over the body of Matthew. Even though the author opens with a murder, it takes the whole novel to get to who is actually guilty, and how and why the attack even occurred. The author, B.P. Walter does a brilliant and complex job at weaving in all the twists and turns. The information you are meant to know is spread throughout this novel in such a way that it always keeps you on the edge of your seat, unable to put the book down. 

Thrillers, especially murder thrillers aren’t always easy to write, it’s difficult to keep the reader engaged with the characters and keep them turning page after page to find out what’s going to happen next. The two main characters that we focus on, which are also the two perspectives that are throughout the book, are that of Charlie, Matthew’s husband, and Rachel. Which I find compelling because as we come to find out Matthew lived a good spoiled rich life. Charlie, who seems to be an Instagram hit, shares different moments of his ideal and stainless life of his marriage and adopted son Titus. While we come to see that Rachel led more of a struggling to ends meet life, and then picks up and moves to London on a mission to find the family she saw in a photo while scrolling through Instagram. Rachel’s interest in this family adds a feeling of suspense and curiosity to understand why she seems so interested in getting into this family’s life as much as she is. This novel gives an imperative look into how the rich live vs the non-rich, and more importantly just how being wealthy and having those intimate and close connections allow the rich to act as if they were untouchable. 

Each twist and turn is revealed in a piece by piece way, making you think you have figured it out when in fact there lies in another twist or another turn keeping you on your toes and those gears in your head working. For example, Rachel confesses to the murder but yet is not the one who committed the murder. The reader then has to try and figure out why she would take the fall for such a crime, why does she care to take the fall for someone else? There are only a few possibilities as to who the actual culprit of the crime are an the journey to figuring it out is a rollercoaster ride of brain exercises. There are a few flaws, however. I didn’t find myself connecting or identifying with the characters as much as I wanted to. Usually when reading a novel, I try to find someone to connect with. Something that can thrust me into the book as if I was there right next to those characters. Even though Walter talks about how the rich are untouchable, it seems to come off as a bit superficial, and doesn’t go too deep below the surface. The characters snap and try to guilt trip each other into becoming more charitable and open-minded and less conservative and snob-like. 

Overall, the premise of this novel had me hooked from the first page. The characters are decently out-lined, and the story itself is suspenseful and gripping to the point where you can’t  and won’t want to put the book down. There are only three possible murder suspects and there is a whole novel going into detail about who did, how and why. Not many can pull off a novel like this. While there are aspects that could be fixed or worked on it is still a captivating novel about how the rich stay rich, but at what cost. I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone who loves a good puzzle and mind games. This book is worth the read from the first to the last word.