An Unwanted Guest (Shari Lapena)

An Unwanted Guest
Shari Lapena
Pamela Dorman Books
Fiction, Thriller
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: A winter weekend retreat in the Catskills at rustic Mitchell's Inn was supposed to be a break from the draining grind of their regular lives. They all came to the inn for their own reasons - to explore a new relationship, to finish a book, to deal with a marriage on the midlife rocks, to cope with trauma, to plan for a wedding, or just to get away from prying eyes and whispers - but when an ice storm shuts down the roads and takes down the power lines and guests start dying, murdered in the darkness, they share one new goal: survival.

REVIEW: This is perhaps the most forgettable book I've read (or listened to) in some time. It's composed entirely of familiar characters and situations, pushing well into cliche territory - cliches from a few decades ago, at that, with women being generally useless for various flimsy reason and men having to protect them (while too often reducing them to their relative sex appeal, if not in so many words, because a woman is nothing if she's not desired by a man apparently). The best any of them managed to elicit was apathy, and more than one I actively disliked. As for the thriller/mystery angle, too much information is withheld to make for a satisfying investigation, or even a satisfying thriller/"stay alive until morning" story, with characters inevitably doing the dumbest possible things at the dumbest possible times, especially toward the end. Several potentially interesting setups are never followed through on, and a lot of time is wasted on pointless wanderings and obvious red herrings and dull, repetitive whining (especially by the female characters). Skirting spoilers, the reader doesn't even get the satisfaction of a regular character solving the mystery, but an outsider turning up in the last few chapter does the honors. Some scenes work okay, and the setting is decently described, but even as I listened to it I found myself wanting to forget it. At least with my usual genre reads in science fiction and fantasy I might get some nice mind's eye candy that stands a chance of lingering in my brain, and I generally get more interesting characters and plots. Oh, well... it does a body good to venture beyond one's usual genres once in a while, if only to remind one why one returns to those usual genres.

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