Who better to start a new year with than people you secretly despise?

4. The Hunting Party – Lucy Foley

Ah, toxic group dynamics. If you spend every New Year’s Eve together for like 10 years, after a while you start to realize that you should maybe not spend time together anymore ever, let alone on New Year’s Eve. Noting all of this, is it really any wonder if someone dies?

In The Hunting Party all those types of evolved friends no one wants anymore are invariably represented – the “fun” one who can’t stand that she’s aging and was never actually that fun, her attractive but shit husband, the guy who settled for a shadow of the “fun” one, the shadow – she’s new and trying very hard, the couple who now have a baby and brought it on vacation, the American boyfriend of everyone’s clever male friend, everyone’s clever male friend who really seems stuck in this group, and the one who wants out because she’s the punching bag of the “fun” one (according to the fun one, she has thick thighs). All of these wonders of humanity are being tended to by two people who wanted to escape the hell out of their pasts full of pain, and yet, they are very helpful. Very helpful. Oh, and they’re at the remotest of remote resorts in Scotland where it is super hard to get police or emergency medical services.

Anyhoo, this is a fun thriller. It’s got terrible people and their weird friendship tensions, deer, too much champagne, stalking, a lot of bad smells, some red herrings, drugs, and some solidly professional service.

Baby Finny and Horace’s friendship didn’t last either. Not once Finny met Ozma.