A Literary Apothecary

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I don’t remember exactly what piqued my interest about The Overnight Guest. It could’ve been a recommendation from social media or a browsing session at my local bookstore. The one thing that I couldn’t ignore was the stunning four-star average rating on Goodreads with over a hundred thousand reviews. Ratings on Goodreads tend to trend towards the middle, floating between a 3.4 and a 3.8, so any time something falls out of that range, either positively or negatively, I’m immediately interested.

I also quite enjoy the trope of characters being trapped in an isolated location by a winter storm. Darcy Coates’ Dead of Winter was another book with this trope that I really enjoyed! I find that it really heightens the tension and carries a greater danger than a thunderstorm. I live in Florida, so the cold is still a novelty to me! The Overnight Guest had a lot going for it, and I had to find out more.

True crime writer Wylie Lark has never been so close to one of the stories she writes about before. She’s staying in an old, isolated farmhouse to research and write about the two murders that occurred in this exact location and the mysterious disappearance of a teenage girl on the same day. These murders were never officially solved, and Wylie yearns to find a new perspective on the case. An incoming snowstorm doesn’t bother her. She has enough supplies to outlast being snowed in and a warm fire. The isolation might be perfect for her to really focus on her book.

But when Wylie’s dog discovers a young child lying unconscious out in the blizzard, she senses something is wrong. The child isn’t dressed for the weather and is all alone. Where did he come from, and who might be out there looking for him? It soon becomes clear that someone is searching for the child, but the boy doesn’t want to be found. This person is dangerous, and Wylie might be the only thing standing between the child and a terrible fate.

Characters

Overall, there are a few too many characters, especially point-of-view characters, and especially in the past timeline. In the present, everything is told through Wylie, and in the basement, everything is told through the Girl. In the past, though, not only do we get the perspective of Josie, the only survivor of the attack, but we also get neighbors, Becky’s parents, the sheriff, the deputy, a detective, and so on. It’s quite a lot. I think the three law enforcement characters—the sheriff, the deputy, and the detective—should have been condensed into one character.

Wylie is a character that has me conflicted. On one hand, there’s a good amount of intrigue involving her. She’s introduced as being quite paranoid. She doesn’t want to be seen in town by any of the locals, and she seems to be particularly attached to and intrigued by the case she’s writing about. On the other hand, her personality leaves something to be desired. She’s kind to the child whom she finds in the snow, and I liked the way she tried to get him to open up. She reads as someone without much experience with kids, so her floundering and frustration make a lot of sense. It might be unfair to say, but Wylie just comes across as a bit unintelligent. She spends so much of the book wandering around in a blizzard, and when she isn’t risking hypothermia, she’s making incorrect snap judgements about the case she’s meant to solve. Wylie needs every little piece of the mystery spelled out to her, and it made her less likable because the mystery is much more straightforward than she makes it seem.

Josie is the primary point of view from the past. On the night of the murders, she was shot in the arm by the killer while trying to run into the cornfield to hide with her best friend, Becky. She’s a bit naïve, but in a way that’s totally normal for a twelve-year-old girl. She’s just on the cusp of becoming a teenager, but she doesn’t really have a genuine interest in the “teenage” things Becky does. Becky is around a year older, and she wants to feel more grown up. She has a crush on Josie’s brother, Ethan, and wants him to see her as a real romantic option. This creates a bit of a rift between the two girls, and it lends itself to the idea that Becky might’ve disappeared of her own accord. Did she leave with one of the boys as a romantic partner?

I also think that Josie is the most emotionally complex character in the story. She feels survivor’s guilt for being the only person left alive after the massacre of her parents, but she also feels normal guilt for letting go of Becky’s hand when she was being chased. When the police begin asking her if Ethan could’ve had a hand in the killings, she has conflicting thoughts. Her brother owned a shotgun and had been fighting with her parents a lot before the murders. Josie hates that she suspects him at all, but she can’t help but consider the possibility. Her thought process, trauma responses, and reactions all make perfect sense.

I liked a lot of the other characters as well. I think Brock Cutter works quite well as a villain and antagonist in the past chapters. He’s the small-town bully character who is a bit too touchy with Becky, so he’s an automatic suspect. Jackson Henley, the odd neighbor living in a junkyard, also makes for a good suspect. The Girl and her mother in the basement chapters also functioned well. The Girl is very sweet and acts her age well. She doesn’t understand very much of what goes on in her household, but she still cares for her mother and behaves well. Both of those characters act realistically traumatized by the environment they’re forced to be in.

Writing & Atmosphere

The atmosphere was very well done. The building of the storm into a raging blizzard was paced well, and it was easy to feel the cold through the author’s description. Thrillers, in my experience, often have quite basic prose and descriptions because the plot is the most important element; however, The Overnight Guest had several instances of writing that were vivid and sensory.

“The blackest dark came in the middle of the night. It was warm and velvety and sounded like her mother’s breathing right next to her. It isn’t the dark you should be afraid of, the girl thought, it’s the monsters who step out into the light that you need to fear.”

The Overnight Guest (2022)

I appreciated that the author made an effort with the writing style! I also think Gudenkauf writes fear very well. However, I had a bit of an issue with the lack of consequences involving the winter storm. From the description, this seems like quite the blizzard, and yet Wylie is constantly going out into the snow. Sometimes she was trekking through this weather for half an hour or more, and she was never affected by it in a way that was dangerous. At one point, Wylie is outside without her thick winter coat, and yet she struggles the exact same amount.

I’m not saying that Wylie needed to develop hypothermia or anything like that. It’s just that the storm was set up as an antagonistic force throughout the novel. Yet, Wylie never loses feeling in her fingers and becomes clumsy because of it. She never has trouble breathing because of the cold, causing her to not be able to run. She doesn’t have to take a long break in front of the fire. It’s important that the storm has consequences; otherwise it’s easy to forget it’s there.

Plot & Pacing

The pacing was a bit odd. The sections that take place in the modern day are lightning-quick, but the sections that take place in the past are sluggish. It took quite a while to get into the mystery, and even once the murders happen, the pace remains lethargic through the investigation. Though I complain about it, I do understand why this happened. The present timeline literally doesn’t have the time to relax because there are only a few hours in which the story takes place, as opposed to the past which occurs over a few days. The past timeline is also more emotionally driven, so characters have to pause and react to the tragedies occurring around them. Neither of these is terrible, but the juxtaposition between the two makes the book feel a bit jerky.

There are three timelines that we follow throughout the story. In the present timeline, Wylie is trapped in a blizzard when she finds a child stranded and unconscious out in the snow. In the past, twenty years prior, the events of the murders and disappearance unfold. This section is also filled to the brim with different character perspectives. The third is about a little girl who is trapped in the basement with her mother while she deals with living around her abusive father.

While I was listening to the audiobook, I found myself becoming a little bit frustrated at the plot. The description mentions the murders in passing, but it primarily focuses on Wylie in the present. However, the vast majority of the book is about the murders in the past. As someone who was drawn in by the description, I started to get irritated every time I was pulled away from the present and back into the past. I wanted to know more about Wylie and the kid. I wanted to stay in the snowstorm. That was the mystery I was sold on, so when the book was more interested in the true crime case, I was annoyed.

It became easier as the story went on, though, because more connections were being made between the past and the present. Obviously, the three stories were never going to be entirely unrelated. Narratively, that wouldn’t make any sense. Once I accepted that the primary story was the one in the past, it became an easier read.

The ending is the section I saw quite a few complaints about on Goodreads, even within the positive reviews, and I have to agree. While the ending was exciting, it was also different from the tone of the rest of the story. I saw someone describe the bad guy as “basically Michael Myers,” and that’s a very accurate description. This person tanked so many attacks that it became completely unbelievable. At four different points, I thought the conflict was over, and then it kept going! Between that and the confirmation of the identity of the villain, I disengaged a bit from the end. I don’t think that the twist was very good on that front.

Twists

Unfortunately, a major downside of this book is the plot twists that it tries to execute. If you’ve read more than three thrillers in your life, I think every single twist is blatantly obvious. The identity of the child, the identity of the mother, and the identity of Wylie were all fairly clear to me from the beginning of the story. Oddly enough, they were so obvious that I was convinced they were red herrings. I kept trying to talk myself into different answers because I didn’t believe that they could be so completely evident.

The identity of the killer was a bit more obscured, though I don’t think I was very satisfied by the answer on that front either. There was some more effort expended to hide the identity of the murderer, excluding a single scene that made one character so blatantly suspicious it was impossible that it wasn’t them. I’m trying pretty hard not to spoil the twist because I think The Overnight Guest is still a fun read, but there was zero reason for that particular character to be in that particular location at that particular time. The author did try to pin the blame on another character, but again, it felt like a very visible red herring.

I also didn’t feel like some of the mystery elements were very well explained. I’ll admit it’s been a bit since I’ve read the book, so if I get anything wrong here, I apologize. I just don’t remember the explanations well. Where did the bloody rag come from and how did it get on Henley’s property? When were certain characters killed? The timeline doesn’t add up with the shots coming from the house and Josie and Becky being chased down. How and when were some of the bodies hidden if the police were guarding the house? What was Randy Cutter driving away from at top speed? I understand that this is a difficult mystery to write. It’s happening across twenty years with characters that are hiding their motives, identities, and pasts. Some things are going to slip through the cracks. The mystery just never felt like a fully satisfying solve.

Recommendation

I would still recommend The Overnight Guest. Despite the issues I had with the predictability of the twists, I still had quite a good time while reading. The ties between the past and present were strong, and someone just getting into reading thrillers would likely have a fantastic time with the twists and turns. A more impatient reader would likely have a difficult time with the pacing, but if you can sink into the story, it’s not a bad way to spend a few hours.

Trigger warnings:

Rape, kidnapping, domestic abuse, forced abortion, miscarriage, blood, child abuse, murder, gun violence, starvation.

Does the Dog Die?

Depends on which dog. In the past timeline, there’s a Black Lab that vanishes and is never seen again. He could be presumed dead. His name is Rosco.
The dog in the present timeline is named Tas. He survives the events of the story.