The story takes place over a week, in which Alex's fortunes change, and we have no idea where she'll end up.

You cannot look away from this young woman – walking a knife's edge of survival, on an increasingly brittle blade. She knows how to play a part, when to look down, when to be silent, when and how to be whoever these men want her to be.īut behind that veneer, she's avoiding increasingly angry texts from an ex she ripped off she's been banned from bars and restaurants back in the city and her flatmates have kicked her out. All her clothes were selected and paid for by Simon, and she wears them with a sense of style learnt through careful observation. She seems so charming, she looks so great. We're in wealthy America, in an unnamed resort town outside the city a place where the residents are so sure of their place in the world they leave their shoes at the edge of the sand, tuck their keys and wallets under towels, have no idea that someone as hungry and desperate as Alex might be sizing them up, working out how to steal that confidence. When we meet Alex, she's staying with an older man named Simon, somewhere by the beach. She has to, because she doesn't have much else: no money, nowhere to live, no family that we know of. The Guest immerses us in the world of 22-year-old Alex: a grifter who uses her body, her looks and her youth to get by.

The American author's second is a page-turner, too. You have to trick yourself into writing a novel, ease into it,' Cline told The Guardian.Įmma Cline's first novel, The Girls (2016) - about a teen who falls in with a Manson Family-like cult in late-60s California - was a popular and critical hit. 'A novel is so long haul, you have to psych yourself up for it.

The blade itself book 2