The Overnight Guest

Book Reviews

Nov 3

The Overnight Guest
By: Heather Gudenkauf

[Fulfilled ‘Two books with similar titles’ (with The Guest) for Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]

[Nominee for ‘Best Mystery/Thriller’ category of the 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge]

This was a really fast-paced book that was extra fun for me to read because the setting of the story is in rural Iowa.

[I actually was trying to pinpoint where this fictional town would have been in relation to my hometown. She gave some clues: 30 minutes from Algona, 4 hrs from Omaha, 30 minutes from Spirit Lake, and somewhat close to Spencer. All of these towns are close to home. From a helpful radius calculator I found online I determined the whereabouts of Burden would be an hourish from my childhood home, just north of Emmetsburg— Heather feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!]

The setting definitely felt like home to me… well except for the murders and abductions. The gravel roads, the agricultural environment, the creepiness of cornfields— if you haven’t been dared to go into a cornfield in the middle of the night at a sleepover, are you really from Iowa? Gudenkauf also shows her knowledge that Casey’s gas station is the place to go for a slice of pizza and that the closest Lowe’s is in Sioux City. Can you imagine having to drive over an hour to get to a mall?! That was my life until now, though honestly, the small town life was a great way to grow up.

But I’ll move on from my Iowa nostalgia.

This story has three different threads:

August 2000: the night Josie’s parents are shot point blank in their home, Josie manages to escape but her brother, Ethan, a possible suspect, and best friend, Becky are missing (Nostalgia sidenote: they were about to go to the Iowa State Fair which is kinda a big deal around here but I’ve only been once or twice)
Present: Wylie, true crime writer, is staying in the house of the aforementioned murder as she wraps up the book she has written detailing the somewhat unsolved crime; it’s the middle of a blizzard and she discovers a little boy almost frozen to death on the property. The power is out, the landline isn’t working— no way to get help.
Unknown time period: told from a little girl’s perspective who is unaware (though the reader knows) that she and her mother are being held in a basement in an abusive situation.

If a story has three storylines, you know they will all have to eventually intersect in some fashion and that was the case here. I wouldn’t say the manner of that was overly shocking for me as I suspected some of what was revealed. But the ultimate ‘killer’ was not something that I knew for sure by the end of the book.

There were some parts of the book that were hard to read. Now that I’m a mother I have a harder time reading stories where something happens to children or a child loses a parent.

I read this book in like three sittings. The tension continues to build as you learn more about the shooting and the abduction and who the suspects are, as Wylie realizes the little boy and his mother are running from someone who will do anything to get them back and has followed them to the farmhouse, as the little girl and her mother eventually try to escape from the basement.

The timeline in two of the threads are very short, like one or two days, which adds to the suspense and increases the action.

Some readers commented that it had a slow start— I didn’t feel that, but even if that’s you, I would encourage you to continue reading because it definitely picks up in pace.

I didn’t want to read this book in the heat of summer so I was saving it for when the weather got cooler. It’s been colder and rainy this week and it was a good atmospheric read to usher in more winter weather.

My one critique of the book is that I don’t think we really got the ‘why’ behind the abduction or the ‘planned’ abduction. There are a few pieces of information that might give us a clue but nothing was ever spelled out and I’m not entirely sure why it happened other than the person had to be some sort of deranged human. I would have liked some more information and context for the why.

Recommendation

This is a book I would recommend for thriller readers, anyone who grew up in rural Iowa, or anyone looking for a snow-themed thriller. The suspense is good and though there are a few gruesome descriptions, it’s a pretty clean book in terms of swearing and sexual content.

Heather Gudenkauf is definitely an author I would look to read again!

If abuse, abduction, or loss of a parent at a young age is a trigger for you, then this may not be the book for you.

[Content Advisory: a handful of f-words and s-words; a couple references to sexual abuse; trigger warning for miscarriage]

You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.