The Engagement Party by Darby Kane

This book was purchased by Traveling With T for her listening while walking time.

The Engagement Party

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.

Traveling With T’s Thoughts:

I’ve really enjoyed Darby Kane’s previous books and I was so excited to listen to this one. The description, the cover- oh it all sounded GREAT.

Unfortunately, this book just did not work for me. It had the ingredients to make a great book, but it fell flat. In many places.

Excerpt from a recent Instagram post:

This book. It was like a train wreck that I couldn’t quit watching. From my Goodreads review: “It was like watching a very low budget D-list star horror movie and each twist/cliffhanger chapter just got a bit more over the top.”

The sideplots, the cliffhanger chapter endings- ugh, it just became too much. In the end, the only thing I really and truly enjoyed about the book was the sarcasm of Mitch, Sierra, and the book chapters.

Bottom line: The book had promise, but was trying to be too much and just couldn’t really decide exactly what it needed to be.

*This book was purchased by Traveling With T for her listening while walking time. All thoughts and opinions are mine alone.*