Sandie Jones

A Novel

The Guilt Trip

Jenna Pascale 

I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it a million more times: I love a book with unreliable narrators/characters. And this one was full of them! I don’t think I trusted a single character while reading this book. Everyone had a secret to keep, some of their own, some for others – but secrets nonetheless. 

This was a quick read – I would say 2 ½ days due to real life but easily could have been done in one sitting. Things took off quickly and just kept building from there. There were so many twists and turns. I had cultivated so many theories whilst reading this one and second guessed every theory I came up with. There was so much going on at all times and little clues that led you in the wrong direction, but I truly loved every second of it. However, I will say that the buildup was a little underwhelming. I really enjoyed this storyline and the ending, but I feel like the ending should have had a bit more meat to it given how the rest of the book really built up that anticipation. 

All in all, I really enjoyed this read and would recommend to any thriller fans and especially those looking for a fast-paced thriller and quick read.

Cheri McElroy

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 rounded up. 

I listened to the audiobook courtesy of #NetGalley, and the atmosphere and characters were great, but the story dragged towards the end. And the ending was a bit crazy. It was still lots of fun.

Anna Price

✨THE GUILT TRIP✨

★★★★☆

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🍊Drink: Port and Tonic
- Fill a glass with ice
- Pour 4 oz Fevertree Tonic Water
- Add 2 oz white port
- Slice an orange wedge and give it a little squeeze into the drink, then take the peel and rub it around the rim of the glass and drop it in!

First of all, Happy Pub Week to The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones!
(Thank you to @minotaur_books and @netgalley for my gifted copy)

I knew what drink I was going to make for this read before I was even halfway through the book! The Port + Tonic is the perfect summer drink - I tried it for the first time this year on my birthday and immediately fell in love. It’s a classic Portuguese apéritif - light and refreshing, with a hint of orange to balance out the bitterness of the tonic water.

This story is set in Portugal where a group of three couples travel for a destination wedding… and everything goes terribly wrong.

The British couples are constantly on the hunt for a Gin + Tonic to drink away their awkwardness and suspicions, but have no luck, so they always get stuck with a different drink - which is why I wish I could have been there to make them this Portuguese Tonic as a substitute 😂

🌟 Review: I flewwww through this book, I had to finish it because I needed to know what happened. It was very reminiscent of Lucy Foley’s “The Guest List”, and so I predicted the ending almost right away. Part of me wishes there would have been a little bit of a different twist, but part of me is glad it ended the way I thought it would. It definitely kept me on the hook - I thought the character development was great, and I loved seeing things through Rachel’s eyes. I wish the ending was a little more spread out because it all happened so fast and suddenly!

I also loved the author’s note at the end - because yes, we all need to appreciate the Allie’s in our life!

Nicole Kerekes Boe

This one took me a long time to get into but I ended up enjoying it. It was pretty predictable but it was an easy listen during the workday.

Lacey Feigl

Rachel is trying to make the best out of her trip to Portugal. Her brother in law is getting married to a flakey woman that neither Rachel nor her husband Jack are particularly thrilled about. Luckily, Rachel’s best friends Noah and Paige are coming with which should make for a pleasant trip. The only problem is that Rachel is convinced something is off about Ali, the bride, and feels like her husband may not be telling her exactly why he despises his brother’s fiancé so much.

The Guilt Trip is 305 pages long and took me two days to read.

I’m giving this book at 3 out of 5! I had so much anxiety reading this book but in the best way! This quick read will leave you with your jaw dropped!

Thank you, Minotaur Books, for sending me this copy!

Here’s to the adventure of finding a novel novel!

Lacey

Lauren Attaway

What can I say about this book, besides the truth-I could not finish this fast enough! I mean it is the perfect binge read! The drama did not disappoint. Three couples with all of their relationships and grievances travel to Portugal for a destination wedding, and we get secret after secret as the stakes just climb higher. I expected this novel to be murder-y vacation story but Sandie Jones really spent an excellent amount of time setting up the danger so I was dreading the bad news I knew must be coming. All of the characters behaved so authentically that when things went off the rails I was like ok, point. I felt like this book made me question everyone constantly in the best ways. The ideal summer domestic suspense!

Thanks to Net Galley and Minotaur Books for the ARC!

Anna Wilson

Thank you NetGalley for this early audiobook copy!! 


Oh wow wow wow did I love this! Soooo what do you get with 3 couples, a beautiful secrets, and 100 hidden secrets? THIS BOOK! 

Where do I even start? Rachel and jack have been married for 20 years. Rachel and Noah have been friends (maybe more than friends?) for more than that! Jack’s brother Will has fallen for the beautiful and bubbly Ali. Are you confused yet? I was at the beginning bc of all the characters! But once I got everyone sorted out, I was hooked! There is so much drama and secrets, and mixed with the idealistic setting there’s no way you couldn’t fall in love with this book. 

I think the best way to go into this book is completely blind. For me that made all the twists and turns along the way hit harder. Thank you so much NetGalley for a chance to experience all the drama!


https://www.instagram.com/p/CR-A35fLn...

Ruth Parker 

This book was an automatic request for me as I enjoyed Sandie Jones books before and was desperate for more! 
Ultimately, this fell a little flat for me. I still enjoyed it, it was worth reading, but it wasn’t a thriller, it was more drama. I was expecting some crazy twists but I could see everything coming a mile off. I was just hoping for more. I’d recommend to those who want domestic dramas for sure as it’s a fun read if you’re not expecting a thriller.

Ghita B

The Guilt Trip was not exactly what I had expected out of a thriller but it was quite enjoyable nonetheless. Until the very end, it was more of a messy marital drama (between rather unlikeable people) than anything else, in my opinion. Probably even a domestic thriller. And the characters... Apart from Ali and Will, I found everyone to be quite hypocritical and judgmental. However, I do give credit when credit is due, and I have to say that every time we got a new piece of information or a different version of events, I found myself second-guessing everything I thought was true. 

As for the narration, I thought it was incredibly done! Not monotone at all, and I believe that Clare Corbett did an incredible job picking up on the different personalities each character had as well as the nuances in speech!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with access to this book in exchange for an honest review!

Devin Mainville

I love a good, light summer soap opera of a book full of lies, betrayals and scandals. And if it takes place in an envious vacation hotspot that also serves to trap all the characters together, all the better. Hence why I was excited to give The Guilt Trip a listen. The book follows three couples over the course of a wedding weekend in Portugal where tensions rise and long buried secrets rise to the surface. 

But this was not it. 

This is a fairly short read, but the pacing made it feel quite long. The first two thirds are very repetitive and rely on a protagonist who cannot see beyond her own misconceptions which gets very annoying. The final third was a little more interesting, but it breezed past so quickly that if you blinked you might miss it. 

I don’t expect great character development from books like this, but every character was little more than a pile of cliches and stereotypes so it was very hard to be invested in their drama.

Aubrey Erskine

I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it. The Guilt Trip was a long winded story about a group of friends who journey to Portugal for a wedding. All is not as it seems though and cracks in relationships start to show almost immediately. It was a twisted tale full of lies and deceit.

The writing was good, but the set up took just a tad too long. I found myself skipping passages of nonsense to get the drama go unfold quicker. It’s a four day trip and we definitely could have cut a day out, but then again maybe we needed that set up? It was definitely a fast paced story though even with the extra fluff. Doubt was perfectly casted and I knew what was going on from the start. Things weren’t quite as they seemed with the friend group and I was fully invested in all the drama that unfolded. 

The relationships were so well established and you could really see the connection between Noah and Rachel. They were college best friends who swear you and down that they never had feelings for each other. We also get to see their relationship with their respective spouses or lack thereof. I felt no connection between Noah and Paige, but Rachel and Jack appeared to have this amazing marriage that is entering its golden years now that their son is in college. It was an interesting dynamic with the ever dramatic Ali.

Poor Ali was done so dirty on every level. I loved her immediately and felt so bad that everyone seemed to be against her and were kinda awful to her. I think my favorite part of this book was her story and watching it unfold along with her relationship with Will.

While I may have seen some of the twists coming from the start, the ending shocked me. Definitely did not see that coming and the epilogue was the icing on the cake. If you’re looking for a fast paced story to read in an afternoon, this is definitely the book for you.

Amelia Hruby

Amber Laurent

Isabel Murry

Samantha cooper 

Mullaney77

Alexandra Coleman

Marissa Long

Jasmine Hernandez

Ellie Crawford

Kristen Claiborn

In the vein of the Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Club pick The Other Woman, Sandie Jones’s explosive new novel The Guilt Trip will have readers gripped to the very last page. They went away as friends. They came back as suspects. Rachel and Jack. Paige and Noah. And Will. Five friends who’ve known one another for years. Then along came Ali, Will’s new fiancée. The three couples travel to Portugal for Ali and Will’s destination wedding. The weekend away at the gorgeous cliff-top villa is a chance to relax and get to know Ali an little better. She seems perfectly nice—and Will seems happy after years of bad choices. But when Rachel discovers a shocking secret about Ali, everything changes. As the wedding weekend unfolds, the secrets each of them holds begin to spill, and friendships and marriages threaten to unravel. In Sandie Jones’s explosive new suspense novel, jumping to conclusions can become the difference between life and death.

The Guilt Trip A Novel

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