Reviewed by Isabella Agostino

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The Guest is set in an upscale beach town on Long Island, following Alex, a twenty-two-year-old who spends a few days drifting in a haze of drugs, sex, stealing, sun, and sand. Her objective? Killing time before making amends with middle-aged Simon, who abruptly ended their arrangement in Chapter 3. Ah, the plight of the 21st-century woman, with her cell phone, pawned pills, and little black dress.

You might be left with some loose ends after reading The Guest. You may also feel a tinge of melancholy or dread, but, dammit, can Cline build a world. From the outset, she announces an inevitable reality and implicates the reader in Alex’s human-survivalist decision-making. It’s brilliant and attuned to the times. We’re forced to reckon with Alex’s needs: food, money, sunscreen, and an outlet for her perpetually dead phone. We’re inclined to sympathize with her at the thought of sand getting into—god forbid—our jeans (!), and we relate to her desire for opulence. No alarm bells ring when Alex plucks a pair of extravagant sunglasses from the home of one of Simon’s friends. I winced—me, who wears cotton blends and owns polyester—when Alex thought to use her designer dress as padding between herself and the forest floor.

My brain received signals that told me to believe Alex had earned it when she’s showered, the air conditioning is blowing, and she’s just scarfed down expensive salmon, a juicy salad, and many beers. After all, she made it happen through sheer pretty privilege and the manipulation of the rich’s implicit trust in their own kind. There’s a constant tension stemming from the way the reader is made to conflate fundamental human rights with luxury. It’s inevitable in a town where the only places to be, eat, and sleep are affluent. I wanted to root for Alex’s existence in this world of private beaches, catered events, and security systems, not because I felt sorry for her, but because she gave me no other choice. Cline makes the city seem like a faraway dreamland; the distance between it and the beach town might as well be lightyears.

I never wanted to put it down. And yet, the plot lacks cohesion, the characters are underdeveloped (this was the biggest issue for me), and the ending is underwhelming. Naturally, to be whelmed isn’t a requirement, but Cline initially sets up a mysterious and thrilling narrative that suggests at least a little whelm. Alex’s situation, with Dom, with the other men in her life, with the woman from her past she glimpses in the bathroom of a classy food establishment, all allude to a particular occupation. Frustratingly, readers are never given the complete picture.

Alex seductively wields her mysterious aura to attract the men and women she uses for food, shelter, showers, and petty cash, all while counting down to meeting Simon again at his party. Cline, in turn, wields Alex’s mystery, padded by the extra insulation of the third-person perspective, to string our emotions through the pages.

The Guest ends up being a visceral read on money, mental health, and relationship, without ever quite connecting the reader to the specifics: characters, plot, etc. Nonetheless, I found myself thinking about Alex’s sun-soaked world of waiting days after I finished the book and placed it back on my shelf. I wondered: Could it be? Is Cline making a connection to Camus’s short story? Is it all mystery and thrill, or is there something more, existentialism, absurdity? These questions begged a higher rating.

Ergo, four stars for Emma Cline’s The Guest!