Lucy Foley has written four thrillers and I have read three of them. I save her books to read every January because it kicks off my reading year with a bang. The book I started this year with was The Hunting Party. The Hunting Party reminded me of This is Our Story by Ashley Elston, a YA version of this book. Both books focus on a murder that happens with hunting as the background to the setting. While I liked The Hunting Party, I think it was Lucy Foley’s weaker book out of the ones I have read.

For a New Year’s Eve trip, several friends rent a lodge in the middle of the wilderness. Emma, Mark, Samira, Gilles, Nick, Bo, Miranda, Julien, and Katie reunite to reminisce about their days attending Oxford together. A few days later, one of them is found dead. Meanwhile, Heather and Doug who work at The Lodge are trying to find the missing guest. The Hunting Party is told from both the past and the present before converging into the pinnacle reveal of who killed whom.

I described The Hunting Party as Lucy Foley’s training wheels book. This is the first thriller she released before The Guest List and The Paris Apartment. The Hunting Party walked, so The Guest List could run. This book felt slower than her other books. It wasn’t until page 200 where secrets started to drop that I was invested in this mystery. The Hunting Party had more red herrings and dropped plot points which left me feeling disappointed as a reader. In case it’s needed, a red herring is a clue, story point, or information written in a book that is meant to be distracting, so the reader thinks it’s important when it might not be. I won’t go into those since it would spoil the entire book.

Besides the story, this friend group was awful and I was here for it. The story is told from the perspective of five characters, three of them were a part of the friend group. There’s Meredith, who’s meant to be the attractive, bubbly friend whom everyone is jealous of. There’s Emma, the newest to the friend group as she started dating Mark, one of the original friends. Finally, there’s Katie, the introvert and quiet friend in the group. One of these friends needs to be put in friend jail because the betrayal is obscene. With thrillers, I don’t mind reading books where I hate everybody. It’s nice to root for someone, but I’m okay with being invested in the drama. This friend group was chaos and to see it dissolve as the book unfolds was interesting to read. There were plenty of motives amongst the friend group as to who would have the motive to kill someone else. I felt there was enough going on where I didn’t put two and two together until closer to the end which was a nice surprise.

This was my least favorite Lucy Foley book I read. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. It still kept my interest which is what I want with a thriller. It wasn’t on the same level as The Guest List and The Paris Apartment. I rated The Hunting Party five stars on Goodreads.