Confess the crimes, survive the tropes: You Are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego #bookreview #YouAreFatallyInvited #NetGalley

An exclusive thriller writer’s retreat hosted on a private island turns lethal when one of the authors is found murdered in this twisty locked room mystery.
When renowned anonymous author J. R. Alastor hires former aspiring writer Mila del Angél to host a writing retreat at his private manor off the coast of Maine, she jumps at the chance—particularly since she has an ax to grind with one of the invitees. The guest list? Six thriller authors, all masters of deceit, misdirection, and mayhem.
Confess the crimes, survive the tropes.
Alastor and Mila have masterminded a week of games, trope-fueled riddles, and maybe a jump scare or two—the perfect cover for Mila to plot a murder of her own. But when a guest turns up dead—and it’s not the murder she planned—Mila finds herself trapped in a different narrative altogether.
One by one, you’ll lose your turn.
With a storm cutting off the island, and the body count rising, Mila must outwit a killer who knows literally every trick in the book.
Until only one of us remains…

❤️❤️❤️❤️.5

Hi and welcome to my review of You Are Fatally Invited!

Ah tropes. We all have tropes we love and tropes we hate. Are they clichés? Well of course they are, but they work, that’s how they became tropes in the first place. At its core, You Are Fatally Invited is the embodiment of my favourite murder mystery trope: a locked room in the form of an isolated island, a group of people thrown together and a mysterious killer picking them off one by one. Very And Then There Were None, which, incidentally, is probably what kickstarted my love for this trope in my early teens.

You Are Fatally Invited goes the extra mile, though. Why limit yourself to one trope when you can have a whole bunch of them! This results in a delightfully clever murder mystery that, for me, managed to put a new spin on old clichés. Because of the particular usage of tropes and especially thanks to the excerpts from “J.R. Alastor”’s book on writing fear, You Are Fatally Invited is decidedly meta and at times a little tongue-in-cheek.

To be honest, it took me a little while to get into the swing of things, as the first part is used to set the scene and was a bit slower than my fatigue and my inner Fickle Frieda needed it to be, but I got over that and then I got into it and I ended up having a really great time.

You Are Fatally Invited is the kind of book you want to read with a notebook and pencil at the ready. Or a whiteboard, markers and metres of red string. It’s an intelligent, intricately woven, modern, not-at-all-cosy, Clue-meets-The-Traitors murder mystery that packs more than a few Wait. What?! moments and an impressive debut that I would happily recommend.

You Are Fatally Invited is out in digital formats, hardcover and audio on 13 February.

Massive thanks to Bantam Books and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions are my own.