By: Lucy Foley
*This post contains spoilers for The Hunting Party
“I suppose we all carry around different versions of ourselves”
Lucy Foley, The Hunting Party
Overview:
A New Year’s reunion in the remote Scottish wilderness
Lucy Foley, The Hunting party
The beautiful one
The golden couple
The volatile one
The new parents
The quiet one
The city boy
The outsider
One of these friends is a murderer. And one won’t make it out alive
My thoughts:
The setting was beautifully described but severely underutilized. A remote Scottish retreat with sweeping grounds and a dark lake, set the scene for an eerie thriller. However, the group rarely explored the grounds instead staying in their individual cabins or the main lodge for almost their entire stay.
The only time that the grounds was really utilized was when Miranda was murdered on the bridge. Arguably, the group had their hunting trip but it was highly supervised by Doug and no one ever split off into their own groups.
I would personally be all over those grounds. Maybe not at night but definitely all throughout the day. Having to spend New Year’s Eve every year with the same people sounds awful. I’d only agree to going on these trips as long as it was a cool place where I could have time to myself.
Foley did a very good job of describing the dynamics of a friend group who don’t really care for one another. At one point they all fit together perfectly. They long for these times and attempt to recreate then. Unfortunately for them, they are not the same people that they were in College. Life happens and people get molded based off of their experiences. Most people end up growing apart even in romantic relationships.They
They’ve grown so far apart that no one is really sad Miranda died. Everyone is better off without her in their lives and had she not died, the group would have quickly grown apart. I’m sure the New Year’s ritual would have faded within five years had it not come to a quick end with Miranda’s passing.
The Killer
There are clues to Emma being the stalker and the killer throughout the book if you are looking for them. For one, her relationship with Mark is odd and almost transactional.
“Because, the truth is, there is no great romance between us. There was no grand passion. There wasn’t ever that- even in the first place. I don’t mind admitting it. It wasn’t the thing I was looking for”
Lucy Foley, The Hunting Party
Neither of them love each other. They are simply using each other as a means to an end. Ironically, both of them are trying to get closer to Miranda and using the other to do so.
It was a little unrealistic that Miranda didn’t figure out Emma was her stalker. As soon as she had the tiniest bit of information, she figured it out. Perhaps Miranda was so focused on herself that she couldn’t see the threat in front of her until it was too late? I would think that she would be dissecting every aspect of her life to figure it out. It seemed like an uncharacteristic flaw for her not to know for so many years.
Overall,
The setting was enjoyable and I liked the multiple points of view. The jumping from person to person gave the reader insights into the true group dynamics. Not just what was on the surface to the outsider. It made the reader the final addition to the friend group.
I wanted more tension, more fights, more of a question to who was killed and who did it. Half the group never had their side of the events told, making it pretty clear that none of them were suspects or the one murdered.
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
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