Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Lucy Foley

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Crime

406 pages, published January 24, 2019

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Hoopla

Summary

The Hunting Party is set in a remote luxury estate in the Scottish Highlands.  A group of friends from Oxford choose this locale for their annual New Year’s reunion/vacation together.  However, they soon discover that one of them is a killer.

Quotes 

“Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself.”

 

 “But it is a lot easier to face the day when you know you won’t have to face other people and their happiness.”

 

“It is a dark place form which you can never quite return. It does something to you, the first time. An essential change somewhere deep in the soul, the amputation of something important. The first time is the worst, but with each death the soul is wounded further. After a while there is nothing left but scar tissue.”

 

“I suppose we all carry around different versions of ourselves”

 

“Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters.”

 

“Sometimes these impulses overtake me — the urge to push things a bit further… even the urge to wound. I can’t stop myself, it’s like a compulsion.”

 

“Sometimes solitude is the only way to regain your sanity.”

 

“Here is a person held together by tape and glue and prescription-strength sleeping pills – the only thing I can be persuaded to make a foray into civilisation for, these days.”

 

“There are people who hold out for love, capital letters LOVE, and don’t stop until they’ve found it. There are those who give up because they don’t find it. Boom or bust – all or nothing. And then, perhaps in the majority, there are those who settle. And I think we’re the sensible ones. Because love doesn’t always mean longevity”

 

“Perhaps it’s simply growing older. A sense that she doesn’t have to prove herself any longer, that she knows exactly who she is. I envy that.”

 

“And being around people – people carrying on with their lives, busy and messy, settling down, having children, getting married – just emphasizes how much my own has stalled, indefinitely. Perhaps forever.”

 

“I’ve planned this trip, so I feel a certain ownership of it – the anxiety that people won’t enjoy themselves, that things might go wrong. And also a sense of pride, already, in its small successes … like this, the wild beauty outside the window.”

 

“It’s tricky (…) to be the latest addition to a group of old friends. It seems that I will always be the new girl, however many years pass. I will always be the last in, the trespasser.”

 

“…even if you don’t have much interaction with other human beings – as I do not – it turns out that the instinct to judge one another, that basic human trait, does not leave us.”

 

“They seemed almost at times like actors, I thought, making a great show of what a wonderful time they were having. They laughed a little too hard. They drank a great deal too much. And at the same time, despite all this evidence of merriment, they seemed to watch each other. Perhaps it’s hindsight, making this impression seem like more than it was. I suppose there are probably tensions in most groups of friends. But I was struck by the thought that they did not seem completely comfortable in one another’s company. Which was odd, as they’d told me right at the beginning that they were very old friends. But that’s the thing about old friends, isn’t it? Sometimes they don’t even realise that they no longer have anything in common. That maybe they don’t even like each other any more.”

 

“I was sometimes drawn to men like this. The reticent, brooding sort: the challenge of drawing them out, making them care.”

 

“What’s that expression the French have for it? Jolie laide: ugly beautiful.”

 

“And most people don’t realize how much more they have than they need. They are lazy, and greedy, and blind to how easy their lives are. Perhaps it isn’t their fault. Perhaps they merely haven’t had the opportunity to see how fragile their grip on happiness is. But sometimes he thinks he hates them all.”

My Take

Having really loved The Guest List by Lucy Foley, I was looking forward to reading another thriller by this talented writer.  While not quite as good, The Hunting Party was still a very fun, fast read with interesting characters and a few surprising twists.