Read with Fern

Spoilers Beyond This Point

Characters:

• Iris: married to Gabriel, Beth’s mother, interior decorator
• Gabriel: married to Iris, Beth’s father, local doctor
• Laure: married to Pierre, friend of Iris & Gabriel, childfree
• Pierre: married to Laure, friend of Iris & Gabriel, childfree
• Beth: Iris and Gabriel’s daughter
• Charlie: a teenager that Gabriel found, dying on a trail
• Esme: Iris and Gabriel’s new, pregnant neighbor
• Hugh: Esme’s older husband
• Joseph: Esme’s family friend, living with Esme and Hugh

Summary (with Spoilers)

“Her plea was so heartfelt that Iris found herself walking down the drive towards the woman, who was hurrying barefoot to meet her, her canary yellow dress billowing behind. She came to a stop in front of Iris and held out her hand. She was tiny, bright and beautiful, like an exotic bird. ‘I’m Esme, and I’m dying for a cup of tea. Would you like one?’”

The Guest, B. A. Paris

Iris meets her new neighbor by chance. To escape Laure for a few moments at a time, she goes on a run. This particular day, she runs past a nice, older house she’s had her eye on for a few years. There’s a woman in the front yard and she invites Iris in for a cup of tea. Her name is Esme, and she’s pregnant. She tells Iris that her husband Hugh is significantly older than her. Iris asks about how they met, and Esme says that she was a nanny for his son after Hugh’s wife died. And after a few years, they realized they were in love. And now Esme’s pregnant with their first child. 

Esme also tells Iris that they have a family friend named Joseph staying on the property with them. He’d been a struggling alcoholic for years, and after a car accident while drunk driving he hadn’t been able to get a job. At the request of her parents, Esme had hired him to do the landscaping for the new house they’d bought. Joseph now lives in a small cottage on their property. Iris mentions that Gabriel has been working on their back garden while home on leave, and Esme offers to have Joseph help. Iris takes her up on the offer.

“He looked at the earth he’d just turned over, and fought the urge to bury the letter deep into the soil.”

The Guest, B. A. Paris

While Iris is getting acquainted with their neighbors, Gabriel is dealing with a new level of emotional turmoil. He’s received a letter from the grief counselor for Charlie’s mom, Maggie. The counselor had let Gabriel know that Maggie desperately wanted to talk to him about Charlie. Gabriel has been holding back a secret about Charlie’s final moments. He’d told the police Charlie’s last words were “Tell Mum I love her.” Sweet, safe, and exactly what a single mother who’s teenaged son had just died would need to hear. But Gabriel had lied to the police to protect Maggie’s feelings.

“Because ‘Tell Mum I’ll never forgive her’ wasn’t all that Charlie had said. In the silence that had followed, as Gabriel sat with Charlie’s hand clasped in his, cursing that despite all his medical training, he was unable to alleviate Charlie’s suffering, Charlie had whispered the final part of his brutal message—’This is her fault. She shouldn’t have done what she did.’ And then—’He shouldn’t have told me.’”

The Guest, B. A. Paris

Gabriel has not told anyone what Charlie’s real last words were, and he planned on keeping it that way as long as possible. He needs to talk to someone about it, but wants someone completely removed from the situation. Ideally, he’d talk to his best friend, Pierre. But because of Pierre and Laure’s fight, all communication is about their relationship, and Gabriel hasn’t found a way to initiate the conversation.

Driving himself crazy, he forgets that the letter is still in his pants. Days later when Iris does a load of laundry, she finds the letter and reads it. She then confronts Gabriel, asking why he wouldn’t go see Maggie. Trying to keep his secret, he insists it’s because it makes him uncomfortable to talk about what happened that day. He knows that Iris hates lying, and as a mother, would insist he tell Maggie the truth. 

Iris has started feel like everything is spiraling out of control. Gabriel has been keeping things from her. He’s also upset that Joseph has been around to help with the garden, encroaching on Gabriel’s hours of alone time. Meanwhile Laure is wearing Iris’s clothes every day, doing nothing to help around the house, and has gotten a haircut identical to Iris. To give herself a break, she’s been spending more and more time at Esme’s house.

“Esme was stretched out on the sofa, her red hair fanned on a cushion behind her, and Joseph, perched on the low table, had his hand on the mound of her stomach. As Iris stared, flustered by their intimacy, Esme murmured something to Joseph and he leaned forward and lay his head where his hand had been just seconds before.”

The Guest, B. A. Paris

One day, Iris arrives at Esme’s house and finds the front door open. When she walks in, she sees Josephy laying with his head on Esme’s belly. She backs out and pretends to re-enter. She asks some questions, which Esme happily answers. Emse tells her that she and Joseph had briefly been together almost 10 years ago. She’d gotten pregnant, but decided to have an abortion. Joseph took the decision hard, and that’s what led to his alcohol abuse. When she’d told him she was pregnant this time around, he’d asked if he could be included in the pregnancy progress to help his healing journey. Esme acts like this is super normal, but Iris still feels really weird about the whole thing.

During this time, Laure has decided to go and visit Pierre in Paris. She insists that they need to have a conversation face-to-face. He agrees to a specific time at their apartment. She returns later that day, sobbing. She’d shown up at the apartment right on time and he’d never shown. She takes that as a clear sign that their marriage is fully over. Laure had been trying to seduce Joseph prior to her Paris trip, but after this, she loses all subtlety. This is awkward for both Gabriel and Iris as the encounters happen mostly at their house.

“The police had been helpful when she’d called to report Laure missing, but not so helpful as to send out a search party.”

The Guest, B. A. Paris

One day, Laure goes on a run right before a big storm. She and Joseph had gotten into an argument, and she’d left shortly after. A few hours later, Iris starts to get worried, and she and Gabriel start looking for Iris. They call Joseph, asking if he’s seen her at all, and he checks with Esme and Hugh as well. When they realize no one has seen her in hours, they call the police. And when the police say they won’t be able to send anyone out that night, Gabriel and Joseph start to search for Laure. The storm has moved in, and they barely get outside of the yard before they have to turn around.

Laure was dead. Iris was distraught, blaming herself. It was the police who found her, not far from where Gabriel had found Charlie. But her body had been further back, behind a boulder.

The Guest, B. A. Paris

The next morning, the police find Laure’s body. Even though they aren’t considering it a murder, they do collect everyone’s alibis to make a timeline of Laure’s final day. Gabriel had left on a bike ride and gotten back right around the time Laure left on her run. Iris had been soaking in the tub when Gabriel got back. Joseph had left their house after his argument with Laure because Esme was going into labor and Hugh was out of town. She and Joseph were still at the hospital when Laure’s body was discovered.

The police then reveal that when they tried to contact Pierre about Laure’s death, his dead body had been found. He’d been in a chest freezer that was in his garage. They estimated that he’d been dead for six weeks, which was the beginning of July.

“‘The beginning of July?’ Stunned, Iris turned to Gabriel. ‘That was around the time Laure went to Paris to meet him. Oh God, do you think that’s why he didn’t turn up? Because he was dead?’”

The Guest, B. A. Paris

Based on the information Iris and Gabriel were able to provide, the police believe that Laure went to the apartment, argued with Pierre, killed him, and pushed him into the freezer. She’d told Iris she bought a full new outfit on the way back to cheer herself up, but Iris can’t find the original outfit when the police request it. This further adds to their theory, assuming she’d gotten blood on her clothes and needed a new outfit. 

Learning about all of this, Iris and Gabriel’s daughter comes home from her year abroad to stay with her parents. She comforts her parents while they grieve the violent loss of their two closest friends and deal with the unanswered questions they both have.

But where are the twists? Warning: SUPER SPOILERS ahead.

Twist 1: Joseph is the reason Charlie killed himself. 

Joseph worked at the school Charlie attended and Maggie worked at. Maggie overheard some students discussing Joseph and saying that one of the teenaged girls was going to Thailand with him over a break. Maggie reported it to the school, and Joseph found out. He’d followed her home, furious and drunk. He’d confronted her in front of Charlie. He’d told Maggie he knew about her affair with one of the other teachers on campus and called her a slew of nasty names. Charlie was obviously upset and blindsided. Maggie tried to explain that she and Charlie’s father had an arrangement (military husband, marriage of convenience for the military benefits and for Charlie). Charlie didn’t want to hear it, and was so distraught he rode his bike off a cliff a week later.

Twist 2 (the one that I didn’t like): Pierre is Beth’s father.

This is the final reveal. Iris has an internal monologue explaining everything. She and Gabriel had met Pierre and Laure while the four of them were on vacation. Iris and Gabriel were celebrating their first anniversary while Pierre and Laure were on their honeymoon. The couples hit it off and had spent time together each day. On the final night, Iris couldn’t sleep and went down to the beach.  Pierre was doing the same thing, and they just spontaneously had sex on the beach without saying a word. And then proceeded to keep that secret for 20 years.

The real secret was that Iris got pregnant that night. She lied to Gabriel about her conception date from the beginning, telling him she knew she was already pregnant before they’d gone on the trip. She goes on about all the stuff she did because she felt so guilty, like having a caesarian so she wouldn’t be as connected to Beth?!? She also says she decided to send Beth to a boarding school as soon as possible to keep their connection limited. It’s bizarre. 

Iris had managed to keep Pierre and Beth apart since Beth had turned 12 or so. But he saw her recently, and knew immediately that he was the father (which is also a ?!?). Laure had been watching Pierre and knew from his face that Beth was his daughter (again ?!?). So at some point in the eight weeks she stays with Iris, Laure asks point blank if Pierre is the father. And that’s when Iris decides to kill Laure. Yes!
Did I mention Iris had already killed Pierre? She’d gone to Paris the day before Laure. She lied and said she was going to London. Instead, she showed up at Pierre’s work, got him back to his apartment, and wanted him to promise to keep this a secret forever. But shockingly he wanted to be a part of his child’s life. So she killed him! And then was basically just waiting to see how she felt about Laure? I really don’t know.  She also kills Joseph because Laure had told him too, I guess. I’d really lost the plot by that point. So to sum it up:

“I am Iris Pelley, wife, mother, and murderer.”

The Guest, B. A. Paris

I really liked this, I just didn’t love it. It was a great thriller, and the twists had me gasping out loud. It was just the last 10 pages that made me say “WTF” 20 times that dropped it down a star. Honestly, if the ending had been that Pierre was alive with a different baby mama, Laure died by slipping in the quarry because of her morbid fascination with Charlie, and the big twist was just Joseph, I’d give it a 5 star review instead. But twists like this are always controversial.