Rating: 2 out of 5
Genre: Mystery/Thriller, Contemporary
People who should read this: People you love atmospheric thrillers, who done it, and Agatha Christie style mysteries.
Sorry friends. I’ve done it to you again. I’ve changed my initial rating. There was a moment when the climax hit its peak but it wasn’t enough to push the rating up that half a point. I’ve just decided to accept the fact that thrillers are not my genre. I want to like them, which is why I keep reading them, but I rarely do. Most of the time the ending is too easy for me to guess, and when you add in unlikable characters, the book is never going to stand a chance. So the age old statement comes out to play again - if it wasn’t for book club, I probably wouldn’t have finished The Hunting Party.
Yes, the ending was very entertaining and I was able to turn the pages quickly… finally. Foley got the tension right at the perfect moment, but that doesn’t excuse the lack of tension in the rest of the book. I could have cared less about who was dead and who was still alive. If anything, I was more worried that the Scottish estate was going to be damaged.
Queue the setting - the only thing I liked about the book.
Atmospheric is the best word to use. Tiny cabins, an old burned down estate, mountain views, a loch, and heather, what else do you need? Add in a snowstorm to make everything even more secluded and you’ve got me hooked. Help can’t come in or out. The murderer has to be on the estate still.
But tell me who is dead at the beginning so I care…
Foley went for the idea of hiding who was dead. You find out the victim at the same moment you find out who the killer was. It might have been more successful if I cared about a single character. It might have been more successful if Foley hadn’t used coy little ways to hide who was dead. It might have been more successful if I knew up front so I could gauge that character’s interactions with everyone. And when I finally learned the truth, it was a let down. It wasn’t that it was the most obvious choice, but it felt vanilla. Foley didn’t stretch the plot. She didn’t ask hard questions to mix things up. She just painted this image and said now this person will die. How are you supposed to care about elitist people with elitist problems?
The only non-elitist characters in the story ran the lodge. They both had a decent back story that led them to living on a remote estate, but there was something missing. They didn’t really have a soul. Instead, they felt like those clowns that come out between the acts in the circus. A distraction to add fluff to a book. Even the three plots felt weird and full of holes. More fluff for the story? More ways to make the story more riveting since there was nothing else to care about? The Hunting was either too much and a clique or not enough and missing a backbone.
All in all… I feel more confident about my rating now. I think a lot of people will still find the book to be entertaining. It’s just not meant for me. And if you do read it, maybe you can learn a few tricks for your writing.
Happy Reading
Love Kait
Reading Challenge: 78/110
P.S. If you hadn’t noticed, I upped my reading total by ten books this year.