The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

Hold onto your linen sundresses!

Lucy Foley is back with another fast-paced unique murder mystery that will have you cancelling your fancy hotel bookings faster than you can say complimentary cocktail.

In The Midnight Feast, we are whisked away to The Manor, a new luxury retreat on the Dorset coast, which is meant to be the next on-trend venue for stressed city folks looking to commune with nature.

In Lucy Foley fashion – surprise, surprise – the opening weekend goes off with more than just celebratory fireworks.

There is family drama, long-term grudges, staff gossip, mysterious guests, romances and enough secrets to fill a large bucket and obviously the obligatory dead body.

Foley’s pacing is as good as ever; with her dishing out her trademark usual recipe, multiple narrators, time jumps and red herrings, we bounce between the present-day chaos at The Manor and events from 15 years ago that set the whole story in motion.

The pacing is snappy with short chapters and a cliffhanger which will see you reading until 3am and wondering how you will get up for work tomorrow.

The story begins highly charged and gently settles over the first chapter, thanks to a great cast of characters; the wellness guru owner with more Instagram followers than scruples, her architect husband, a friend from the past and the brother of an old conquest.

Lucy Foley leads us through the story admirably, doling out revelations and plot twists.

Just when you think you have got it figured out, there is a curveball that will stun.

There is a great juxtaposition between the manicured lawns and the ancient forest adjacent to it, a definite contrast between the polished new and the wild.

There is a delicious sense of irony running through the whole book for which we must give the author kudos; she is clearly having fun poking at the pretensions of the wellness industry and the extremely rich.

If you have read Foley’s other books, the formula might feel a bit familiar and some plot points require a hefty suspension of disbelief.

I do not believe that this is a book club read; instead it is like a good reality TV show.

It lacks depth in discussion points, but this is what makes it such a fantastic book for the beach or lazy afternoons.

The Midnight Feast is a great whodunit, with a couple of extra talking points for those who do want to read it as a group.

Julie Chessman