📖 Book Review ~ Seven Reasons to Murder your Dinner Guests by K. J. Whittle

Harper North
11 September 2025

Three courses. Seven guests. One evening they'll never forget.

Seven strangers meet at Serendipity's for an anonymously hosted dinner party. As the evening reaches its close, small black envelopes are placed in front of the diners… revealing the age at which each will die.

Spooked, but not wholly shaken, the group disperses into the rainy night with the hope of forgetting the ghoulish stunt.

But two weeks later, one dinner guest dies at the age foretold. Was it a tragic accident? Or something more sinister?

As the years go by, the other guests begin to die in line with the predictions given on that first night. And it's up to the remaining few to figure who, if anyone, was behind that dinner party before their numbers catch up with them too.

Told from the perspectives of the guests, Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests balances mystery and mortality, asking: how would you live your life if you know your number was up?

📖 My Review..

In November 2015 a group of seven disparate dinner guests gather at a secluded, and rather clandestine, restaurant in London. They have no idea why they have been gathered together nor do they know who is hosting the party and whilst the seven have absolutely nothing in common by the end of the sumptuous meal they will be linked in a way they could never have imagined. Over the course of the next ten years we catch up with the dinner guests and ponder over the reasons why each of them have been targeted in such an unusual way.

What then follows is a slow burner of a story which takes us into the lives of each of the dinner guests, in fact, we are allowed to get right inside their heads as they each go back to the mundanity of their lives.  The rather clever twist to the story, of which there are several, comes in the knowledge that each of the guests have been told the age that they will die. It’s an interesting concept, cleverly handled, and a different take on the usual guests around the dinner table murder/mystery, it’s rather like an Agatha Christie but with a modern twist.

I enjoyed how the story developed and all credit must go to the author for drawing me into the story despite none of the characters being at all likeable. Of course, as with all mysteries I attempted to guess the outcome but I was left baffled until the clever reveal. Brilliantly done, this a story which intrigues from start to finish.

About the Author 

Kerry Whittle grew up in Cumbria and studied English Language and Literature in London. She is an experienced journalist, having written for national newspapers and magazines for the last 20 years, specialising in real life stories. In 2020, she attended Curtis Brown Creative’s novel writing course.