The Guest Room

Title: The Guest Room
Author: Chris Bohjalian
Published: January 5, 2016 by Doubleday
Pages: 336
Source: ARC via publisher
Rating: 4/5
Goodreads

 When Richard Chapman offers to host his younger brother's bachelor party, he expects a certain amount of debauchery. He sends his wife, Kristin, and young daughter off to his mother-in-law's for the weekend, and he opens his Westchester home to his brother's friends and their hired entertainment. What he does not expect is this: bacchanalian drunkenness, a dangerously intimate moment in his guest bedroom, and two naked women stabbing and killing their Russian bodyguards before driving off into the night. In the aftermath, Richard's life rapidly spirals into a nightmare. The police throw him out of his home, now a crime scene; his investment banking firm puts him on indefinite leave; and his wife finds herself unable to forgive him for the moment he shared with a dark-haired girl in the guest room. But the dark-haired girl, Alexandra, faces a much graver danger. In one breathless, violent night, she is free, running to escape the police who will arrest her and the gangsters who will kill her in a heartbeat. A captivating, chilling story about shame and scandal, The Guest Room is a riveting novel from one of our greatest storytellers.

My review:

First let me say that I've read almost all of the 18 books Mr. Bohjalian has written, and I'm so impressed with how versatile he is as a writer. After that many books, you can come to expect the same type of story from a lot of authors (not that this is a bad thing, just an observation). I never know what to expect from Bohjalian, and it definitely keeps me coming back for more. There is always an underlying social theme to his books, and in this case it is the issue of sex trafficking. Alexandra's story is heartbreaking, and I was turning the pages as fast as I could to make sure she was safe in the end. Richard's story was a little harder to swallow, you would think that he would have been smarter than to go along with what was occurring in his home, but it's certainly not the first time I have rolled my eyes at the "boys will be boys"mentality. The book is well paced, the chapters alternate between Richard (and his family) and Alexandra. The only nugget of disappointment comes at the tail end where I thought things got a little unbelievable, but then there was the real ending which had me holding my head and screaming "NOOOOOO" (no spoilers :))!!

A page turner of a novel, which brings to light a subject not that prominent in the headlines, and speaks of the huge consequences that one night of "seemingly harmless fun" can have.

I had the pleasure of seeing Chris on the release night of the book, at my local Indie bookstore. As a former Vermonter, I always take pride in speaking with him. I asked him about his next novel, and it sounds fantastic, so keep your eyes out (he didn't say when it would be released).