{"id":2233,"date":"2022-03-03T15:29:30","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T15:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2233"},"modified":"2023-03-11T18:47:34","modified_gmt":"2023-03-11T18:47:34","slug":"the-disinvited-guest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2233","title":{"rendered":"The Disinvited Guest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wondering where all the pandemic fiction is? Well here\u2019s the antidote. It\u2019s ten years since the end of the pandemic, when it looks like another one, but even worse, is on its way. Married couple Reed and Lucy, both thirty-somethings, assemble their five closest friends, including Reed\u2019s sister and her girlfriend, and hide out at Reed\u2019s family cottage\u2014WASP code for a 12-room-estate\u2014on an island off the coast of Maine. Blueberry pancakes, innovative cocktails, Scrabble, plenty of time for artistic projects, it\u2019s like a Ralph Lauren ad come to life. Until things fall apart. In a big way. Part of it is brought on by novelist Lucy\u2019s growing obsession with the island\u2019s past\u2014in the 1840s, Irish immigrants with typhoid were quarantined here\u2014and a diary she discovers, written by one of Reed\u2019s ancestors, recounts those horrible days. But you needn\u2019t go so far back to be terrified. Reed\u2019s parents died here on Fever Island\u2014yes, that\u2019s the name\u2014in the last pandemic, along with his girlfriend, whose presence Lucy senses everywhere. Goodman does a great job of blending the present and the past\u2014each with their own rising tensions\u2014with the past spilling over into the present. <strong>But best of all, this book offers readers a chance to reflect on the pandemic, the choices we made, the impact it had on us, and what\u2019s left as the waters finally recede.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wondering where all the pandemic fiction is? Well here\u2019s the antidote. It\u2019s ten years since the end of the pandemic, when it looks like another one, but even worse, is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[52,51],"class_list":["post-2233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-psychological","tag-thrillers"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Disinvited-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Disinvited-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Brian Kenney","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}