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The Guest List

2020 novel by Lucy Foley

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ122363681
Source-derived summary

The Guest List is a 2020 mystery novel by British author Lucy Foley. The story takes place at the wedding of Jules Keegan and Will Slater, which is being held on an island off the coast of Ireland. The plot has been compared to the works of Agatha Christie, as a murder occurs with limited suspects and each guest has a secret which will be revealed.

It was published in May 2020 by HarperCollins and on 2 June 2020 by William Morrow. It became a New York Times, Sunday Times and Washington Post bestseller, selling over a million copies in 30 territories. The novel was named one of the best thrillers of 2020 by The New York Times, was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award and won the 2020 Goodreads Choice Award for Mystery and Thrillers.

Plot

Set on a remote, windswept island off the coast of Ireland, The Guest List centres around the glamorous yet tension-filled wedding of Jules Keegan, a successful London magazine publisher, and Will Slater, a handsome and charming television personality. The couple has chosen to hold their wedding at “The Folly,” an isolated venue owned by the wedding planner Aoife and her husband Freddy. As guests begin to arrive by boat, a storm rolls in, cutting off all communication with the mainland and heightening the island's ominous atmosphere.

The story unfolds through the alternating perspectives of several key characters: Jules; Olivia, her fragile and troubled half-sister and bridesmaid; Hannah, a guest and the wife of Jules's longtime friend Charlie; Johnno, Will's best man and childhood friend; and Aoife, the wedding planner.

Editorial summary

“The Guest List” enters the record as 2020 novel by Lucy Foley. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Guest, List and novel can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2020—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Guest, List and novel.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Guest List” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Guest, List and novel provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q122363681. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2020.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Guest List”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Guest List primary sources, The Guest List archive and Guest research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Guest List”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from The Guest List” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.