First and foremost, The Guest Book (June 2, 2026) gets a special mention as my very first NetGalley eARC. I feel like a proper book reviewer now! I was immediately drawn in by the synopsis: a whirlwind vacation to a cozy English inn for two young Americans in need of an escape from Hard Things, with a treasure-hunting twist? Sign me up—for the book, and for the actual adventure!
The Kick-Off
Cosima is our first main character, introduced as she is freshly grieving her high-powered Hollywood legend mother. Overwhelmed by all the responsibilities she finds dropped on her shoulders—namely, ensuring her mom’s legacy by deciding on the new CEO for her production company. No pressure. Quickly, she reaches a breaking point, and sneaks away in the night to cross off the final item on her mother’s bucket list, which offers a convenient excuse to escape: a trip to Gregory Place, the inn in England where her parents met and fell in love.
We immediately fast-forward and switch POVs to meet Edie, a passionate foodie whose vegan cheesemaking business (in Wisconsin) recently folded. Convinced she’s lost her one chance to leave her mark in the world, she’s taking a last hurrah trip to England before she resigns herself to a life of recipe development at a local factory. She only finds herself at Gregory Place because the inn is the cheapest option around; It’s no longer in its heyday, and the owner, Morag, is only hosting one other guest: Cosima.
Morag is the puppetmaster of this tale, orchestrating Edie and Cosima’s meeting, setting them on the path to finding the message Cosima’s mother left for her, and then, the big one: setting them off on a treasure hunt hidden within titular guest book, which she has been safeguarding for fifty years.
The Negatives:
The narrative of The Guest Book is, overall, slow. It sets off quickly, but it wasn’t long before I realized that the letter left by Cosima’s mother was more of a device to push the plot forward than it was tied to the actual treasure hunt. After Cosima and Edie discovered the letter, the pace dropped significantly and I rarely read more than a chapter per sitting. Potato-chippy, it was not. There was a lot of overly verbose prose and meandering sentences that I often struggled to follow from start to finish. Then, on the flip side, there was a lot of dialogue that felt stilted and choppy. The set up was great; I really loved the idea of this book, but it ultimately felt like a slog.
A further note on the dialogue: I have to be so honest, I was stunned to learn that this was written by not one, but two Americans. It reads like it was written by a British person who didn’t have a reader/editor in the US to tell them what Britishisms aren’t used here, but as far as I can tell the authors (Annie Mare and Ruthie Knox, a married writer duo, which is goals actually) live in Wisconsin and I could find no references to either of them having overseas origins. Maybe I’m being overly critical; maybe they just got so into the book being set in the UK that they overcorrected on the verbiage, but it reads like both the Wisconsinite vegan-cheesemonger and the Hollywood movie studio heiress were born and raised in the UK.
The Positives:
It’s not all bummers though. I always enjoy reading about folks on the asexual spectrum, and I related to a lot of Cosima’s internal musings about her identity and settling on demisexual. The self-reflection and the confusion about what she was feeling for Edie and why rang very true. I will say that I was surprised by how quickly she became interested in Edie sexually, but I’m not going to say that one person’s ace experience is more ace than another’s—I think it mostly felt odd in juxtaposition to the relatively slow pacing of the book itself.
The piece around Cosima’s emotional intelligence and learning to stand up for herself instead of just following the path her mom set out for her, as well as coming to terms with the myriad ways having an alcoholic mother affected her and her way of processing the world, was done really well. Edie being one of those “emotional intelligence and freedom for you, but I must suffer!” types of people felt very grounded in reality and I enjoyed(?) my frustration with her throughout the narrative. The way that both characters’ main drivers tie back into the idea of legacy and what that means and how to shape your own was also done very well and felt very natural to who Cosima and Edie were portrayed to be. Overall, I feel that the authors developed really compelling characters with nicely inbuilt narrative foils… I just didn’t enjoy the execution of the story. And, ultimately, I have to review the story as a whole, not just the structural underpinnings of the characters.
There is a bit of a B-plot that I won’t spoil, which provides the basis for the treasure hunt. I enjoyed the set up and although it resulted in a very tidy conclusion, I thought it worked for the characters involved. It was pretty clear from the jump where the B-plot was going, in my opinion, but I don’t find that to be inherently a bad thing in romance. Sometimes you just want to watch the tropes trope, and this was a case in which I really enjoyed getting to go “oh, I know where this is going!” Interestingly, the pacing here was tighter and felt much less dragged out; I think the B-plot fundamentally benefitted from not becoming clear until pretty late in the book. It’s there in pieces when you look back, but it doesn’t feel like its pace is the same as the main plot because you don’t really realize it’s happening, or if you do it’s very in the background until much later.
The Verdict:
Let’s put it this way: If you’re not a nitpicky person, many of my difficulties with this book probably won’t even register for you. My wife often says that I am pickier than most, and not everyone minds a slow story arc. It wasn’t bad. I’d say a solid 3-stars: inoffensive but just not anything to write home about. I think I am more hung up on the pacing and narrative structure than I would be otherwise because I liked the idea of the story and of the characters a lot more than the payoff. Alas, I can’t love every single book I read, but dang, I feel a bit like I’m in a slump! I already have a book picked out for my next review, so fingers crossed that it’s groundbreaking, or something!
