Dinah spends a weekend with her friends at a luxury holiday home but quickly becomes obsessed with the owners and wants to inveigle herself into their lives. Can Dinah get the life she has always dreamed of…?
The Perfect Guest is a psychological thriller set in the UK.
Dinah has not had an easy life and always feels like the odd one out. She wants a better life for herself and thinks that friendship with the Rivers family will make all the difference. But she is lying to them and maybe everything isn’t as perfect in their lives as it seems.
Poor Dinah frequently compares herself to others and finds herself lacking. She obviously has serious mental health issues and is an unreliable narrator. The book is written in the first person so we experience her hopes and fears, understand her emotions and actions. Her behaviour is dark and dangerous as her obsession grows. I felt annoyed that she doesn’t appreciate what she has and blames others for her unhappiness instead of taking responsibility.
As the plot progressed, I was unclear what Dinah hoped to achieve. She is fully aware that she is lying and that the friendship is built on falsehoods. None of the characters is particularly easy to like, and in fact I actively disliked some of them. The final third of the book takes a more sinister turn as it is revealed that Dinah isn’t the only one with secrets.
The Perfect Guest is an enjoyable psychological thriller.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
She stayed in your house. Now she wants your life . . .
‘Tense, compulsive and gripping, The Perfect Guest is uncomfortable in the best possible way’ Charlotte Levin, author of If I Let You Go
We all have that friend – the one who doesn’t quite belong. Dinah Marshall is that person and knows it. After someone drops out, she’s invited to spend the weekend at a luxury holiday home with women she’s known since university. However, the gulf between them has widened since then, and Dinah is conscious of being the only one with no money, career, partner or children. Feeling like an outsider, she takes to snooping around the house. She’s fascinated by its owners, Sarah and Isaac Rivers – and when she discovers she can secretly stay an extra night, that fascination quickly spirals into obsession.
When Isaac Rivers meets ‘Diana Malone’ at an exclusive members club, he introduces her to his wife and friends, and she’s soon welcomed into the group. She seems to be trying a little too hard, however, and as her somewhat intense behaviour starts to raise both eyebrows and questions, one of her new acquaintances begins to suspect she isn’t who she says she is. For Diana – or is it Dinah? -this is a disaster: she’s worked hard to get where she has, and these suspicions threaten everything. But Diana isn’t the only one with secrets, and if she’s going down, then she might just take everyone else with her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ruth’s debut thriller, The Perfect Guest, is published in 2024 by Black & White and she is working on her second thriller.
Trained as a classical musician, Ruth teaches music around her writing. She lives in South West London with her husband and two children.
