The Guest List by Lucy Foley

William Morrow, 320 pages, $27.99

If you read my last “review,” you will know I was discouraged by yet another book about the bringing together —on an isolated island in a storm — of people with deep secrets from their youth. I did not finish that book. It is the exquisite nature of literary randomness that the next book I picked was about people with dark secrets from their past getting together — on an isolated island in a storm. But this time I finished the book.

Will Slater and Julia Keegan are getting married. They are successful people in their early thirties who look good together, have much in common, and are madly in love. Julia is a perfectionist so it is a miracle she found someone of whom she approves. They are enough into their individual lives that they can just enjoy the future together. Ruggedly handsome Will stars in a man-in-the-wllderness-against-the-elements reality television show. Julia has a trendy online style magazine.

For their wedding, they draw together their families and close friends to celebrate. From Will’s exclusive prep school come a bunch of rabble-rousers and from uni, his rugby mates. On Julia’s side are her fragile and beautiful younger half-sister, Julia’s neglectful mother and even more neglectful father, and her best friend, a man, Charlie. Will’s family are no more adoring or adorable than Julia’s; his father was the headmaster of Will's prestigious prep school.

While it is a celebration of Will and Julia’s wedding, it is also an opportunity for Charlie and his wife, Hannah, to rekindle the flame that has been dampened over the years by their two children. Only Julia pretty much spirits Charlie off for gossip and reminiscences right from the start.

The prep school mates are boisterous and border on being rude. Johnno, Will’s best man, also is one of the group. He has been the least successful of all the school chums. He is more unkempt and unfit than the others, with a brittle unhappiness.

Well, doesn’t this sound like a merry group?

Lucy Foley builds up the tension expertly. With chapters going back and forth throughout the weekend’s activities and through the viewpoints of several of the characters, she slowly introduces all the sad and sordid tales from the past. In the end, there is a body. In the end, there is a murderer. But that’s only in the end. The journey there is intense.

I didn’t think I wanted to take on this “reunion” tale after the last foray, but I’m glad I hung in there. I don’t think I had a choice. Lucy Foley saw to that.