The Garden Party – B.P. Walter Book Review

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“Today will send ripples through their lives. Perhaps not ripples, tidal waves, smashing through their sense of the day-to-day.”

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B.P. Walter is starting to become a bit of a guilty pleasure for us here at What We Reading. Having reviewed The Dinner Guest and The Woman on the Pier, we found ourselves on the hunt for a nice, easy-breezy thriller for some sun-soaked summer reading, and happened upon Walter’s 2024 novel, The Garden Party, in our local bookstore. Our conclusions of Walter’s work before had been that they were decently good at what they were trying to do, but were never the sort of books you would dish out the Pulitzer Prize for. That being said, there’s still so much unapologetic fun you can have in a garden party brimming with nasty characters, and brewing vengeance. So, how did this B.P. Walter novel stack up against the rest, and against other domestic thrillers like it? Join us today at What We Reading for our The Garden Party book review! 

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Date Published: 2024

Author: B.P. Walter 

Genre: Thriller, Mystery 

Pages: 384

Goodreads Rating: 3.56/5

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The Garden Party Summary

The perfect family. The perfect celebration, and the perfect day for revenge. The day of the garden party should have been a celebration of love for Raphael and his fiancée, as they toasted their engagement with the families. But for someone, it’s an opportunity to unveil the lies that have bound the family together over the years.

With their nearest and dearest all gathered at the family manor, as the first glass is raised for a toast, the secrets that bind them all begin to snap. And what should have been the happiest day of their lives may just end as a day they’d do anything to forget. Hailed as Saltburn meeting Agatha Christie, The Garden Party is a dark and stylish domestic thriller brimming with shocking twists and turns. 

What Worked

We were going into The Garden Party looking for a fun, easy read with some abhorrent affluent individuals against a glitzy, decadent backdrop, and that is largely what we got. 

We’ve had some reads here at xxx that have felt like right slogs to get through, where the language has been overly wordy, the descriptions hard to visualise, the motives unclear or hard to believe, but that isn’t the case with B.P. Walter’s tale. The decision to split the book into three main sections following each member of the Moncrieff family and their various wrongings against protagonist Harris works effectively, and the overall pacing of the book makes the whole reading process feel like a breeze. 

We should also pay a compliment to B.P. Walter’s ability to craft and venture into some of the most disturbing and unsettling taboos in his tales. It was something we applauded with The Woman on the Pier, and it’s once again on show in The Garden Party, with Walter delving into some of the most deliciously dark areas throughout the story. 

What Didn’t

Just because a book is meant to be an easy read doesn’t mean that it’s exempt from criticism. 

The Garden Party suffers from a severe lack of twists that actually result in any sort of surprise for a reader. All of the big reveals are easily guessable, which is why we’re hesitant about labelling this book much of a ‘mystery’. Essentially, it is more of the sort of well-to-do snobby characters getting up to the exact sort of things you would have come to expect from them in the thriller genre by now. 

A quick word on Harris as a protagonist: he’s not the best. There was an interesting possibility of showing him as an unreliable narrator, or reflecting him to be as bad as the Moncrieffs, which could have elevated The Garden Party to a new and interesting level. Sadly, though, what we get is a sometimes bland, sometimes maniacal lead who is seldom ever fun to follow, or easy to hold too much sympathy for. 

There’s some sloppiness in the editing as well that needs addressing. There’s an instance of a male character being labelled as ‘her’ by Walter, and another example where Harris jumps from third to first person within a paragraph, and then back again. These cases might seem small, but they really go a long way in almost cheapening how we perceive a story. 

Verdict

The Garden Party is your classic airport read, ready to take with you to your next beach or swimming pool for an easy escapist read. That isn’t to try and cheapen what B.P. Walter has produced, but it’s definitely a book that knows what it is. 

And, in terms of pulling this off, Walter does a pretty stellar job in all. 

This is a story that is so easy to pick up and devour. The characters are all so incredibly messed up that you help but be absorbed by their various dark deeds and hidden secrets. This is far less of a ‘whodunnit’ mystery and more of a ‘whydunnit’, but the structure of unpeeling each of the Moncrieff family members’ stories through Harris’ lens one at a time does make the reading experience feel that much more digestible. 

Overall, The Garden Party largely succeeds in being a decent go-to if you’re looking for an easy thriller to pick up and finish without too much difficulty. Whilst Raphael and Isabelle steal the show as the worst of the Moncrieffs, the majority of the twists Walter throws up mean that the book probably isn’t going to leave much of an imprint on us. 

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Our Rating: 3/5

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