Review By Veronica
A Death at the Party is a clever and riveting suburban suspense novel.
Favourite Quote:
“A hand grips my leg. I barely stifle the scream. His eyes shoot open. He looks right at me, frantic, pale, gasping. No! I kick my leg loose and stumble backward into the towel rack. At once, my fear is replaced by rage. Why isn’t he dead yet? He needs to die.”
Goodreads Synopsis:
Nadine Walsh’s summer garden party is in full swing. The neighbors all have cocktails, the catered food is exquisite—everything’s going according to plan.
But Nadine—devoted wife, loving mother, and doting daughter—finds herself standing over a dead body in her basement while her guests clink glasses upstairs. What happened? How did it come to this?
Rewind to that morning, when Nadine is in her kitchen, making last-minute preparations before she welcomes more than a hundred guests to her home to celebrate her mother’s birthday. But her husband is of little help to her, her two grown children are consumed with their own concerns, and her mother—only her mother knows that today isn’t just a birthday party. It marks another anniversary as well.
Still, Nadine will focus just on tonight. Everyone deserves a celebration after the year they’ve had. A chance for fun. A chance to forget. But it’s hard to forget when Nadine’s head is swirling with secrets, haunting memories, and concerns about what might happen when her guests unite.
Can I just say how excited I was to read this book? Firstly, because it is written by a Canadian author and secondly, there has been plenty of buzz on social media (and the Costco magazine) about this book. All the hype and my excitement were utterly justified; this book is so good. A Death at the Party is one of those books you just completely sink into and can read in one sitting. You get so absorbed in the story and its characters that you want to turn the page because you want to know what will happen next. This is a slower-paced suspense story. There is only a little action going on. Instead, you get this twisty “whodunit” mystery with plenty of interesting characters. I really enjoyed how this story was laid out. We start off with murder and spend the rest of the book trying to figure out who the victim is and why Nadine killed him. The whole story takes place over a day, with some flashbacks from Nadine’s childhood that are woven throughout the plot. It was a lot of fun trying to guess who the victim was. It’s not something I get to do too often in mystery books. I thought it was a clever way to write a book.
Amy’s characters are so well thought out and have lots of depth. As the story progresses, you quickly realize that everyone is hiding something. They all seem to have these dark secrets, and it really keeps you guessing. I loved that feeling of slowly peeling back these layers and getting to learn more about these characters. Nadine surprised me. I thought I had her character pegged within the first few chapters of this book, but I was wrong. I found myself liking her more and more as the story progressed. She is smart and fierce and protects her family with everything she has.
A Death at the Party is a smart and addictive suspense novel and a must-have for any mystery book fan.
Thank you, Simon and Schuster Canada, for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
