The Last Guest by Tess Little

I'll preface this by saying that I hate being critical of anyone who has managed to get a book published or even finished a book. Authors pour their artistic souls into their work, and I recognize how difficult that is. So this is just my own, humble opinion of the first third of this book, as I've chosen not to finish it.

This story focuses on an actress who attends the intimate Hollywood Hills birthday party of her ex-husband Richard, who is the director who launched her career, only to wake up in the morning and find him dead. It's a locked-room mystery that starts off with the promise of an Agatha Christie-style mystery, but for me, the mystery and characters didn't deliver. 

Although the writing is really quite good, I didn't take to the story. The pacing is slow, and I didn't find the characters compelling or interesting enough to warrant learning the minutiae of their lives. Now, I typically LOVE unlikable characters, when done well. To me, the dinner party guests -- there are about eight of them -- seemed both flat and unlikable. They came off as shallow and grating to me, and I couldn't tell if that was intentional or not. If it was clear that this was a skewering of the elite, Hollywood types - who themselves are little lost souls - it may have been very engaging! Honestly, sign me up for that. I've lived around those types of people for a long time, and they deserve a good skewer. But instead, this seemed more like an earnest representation of people I'd prefer to avoid: in real life, and in books.

The book description makes mention of David Lynch. While the inclusion of the octopus as a character was interesting and definitely Lynch-ian, that's as far as I'd go in comparison to his semi-surrealist and at times wonderfully disturbing style. There's just more depth and insight and bravery within his work.

To be fair, I didn't finish the book. I made it one-third of the way through, which is what I always attempt to do before closing a book for good. The characters just weren't coming to life for me, and I found myself disinterested in finding out who killed Richard, a character who seemed rather pretentious and possibly deserving of a good kill.

Although this didn't work for me, this may work well for those who like slightly eccentric, slow-burning mysteries.

It came out Oct. 5. 

Thank you Ballantine Books for the ARC!