The Perfect Guests by Emma Rous (2021) Like all fans of mystery-thriller novels, we love it when the authors astound and surprise us with multiple twists and a plot built like an impossibly intricate machine armed with a steel trip waiting to snap shut on us at the climax.......
We only ask that the author doesn't wander around aimlessly lost in repetitive description and excess verbiage before they spring the trap......
Which is, unfortunately, what Emma Rous tends to do as she slowly and surely guides two parallel storylines, 31 years apart, toward an inevitable intersection and collision.
Of the two side by side timelines on display here, we much prefer the 1988 story, which maintains a steady and creepy gothic vibe.
In that one, we have a worthy young heroine in Beth, a teen orphan parked by her indifferent aunt in Raven Hall, a grand sprawling English estate. The enormously wealthy and a bit strange couple in residence Markus and Leonora, have a teen daughter Nina, for whom Beth is expected to serve as a live-in friend, with possible tenure in the job.
Did we say a bit strange? When Nina suddenly takes ill on the eve of her powerful grandfather's visit, Markus and Leonora convince Beth to masquerade as their daughter for the grandpop, who's never yet to lay eyes on Nina. Hmm......and the plot thickens further.
Fast forwarding to 2019, we're back at a now vacant Raven Hall, in which the new mysterious owners are staging a "Clue"-like weekend murder mystery game, complete with suspects, motives and clues. A group of seemingly random folk have been invited and assembled as the game players, including Sadie, a struggling young actress with bills to pay.,
By now you've already guessed that these two decades apart stories hold multiple secrets and connections to each other......
And so they do.........with so many twists piled up at the end, the whole thing may strike you as overwrought, far fetched........and kind of silly in a soap opera-ish way.
Depending on how this strikes you, you'll either be impressed and amused by all the final revelations.....or else muttering under your breath, "oh, gimme a break, will ya?"
Our main problems with it came from the book's medium-speed pace and that the modern day whodunit reality show in the mansion is nowhere near as interesting as the creepy goings-on that transpire in the 1988 chapters.
We had the same reaction to this as we did to another recent thriller, "People Like Her" (check out our 2/23/21 post)......in that you might be better off waiting for Netflix to turn it into an 8 episode series......as least it'll move faster. 2 stars (**)
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