The Guest
Emma Cline follows Alex, a young woman who has been living off an older, well-off man until he sends her away during a Long Island summer. With nowhere to go and a phone running low, she decides to stay in the area, convinced that everything will be fine if she can just hold on until his Labor Day party. Over a few precarious days, Alex moves between houses and strangers, improvising stories and reading people to survive. Cline builds quiet dread as Alex's choices grow riskier and her hold on the situation slips. The novel is a sharp, suspenseful portrait of class, desire, and a woman accustomed to living on the edge of other people's lives.
What you might want to know about The Guest
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A young woman drifts through a wealthy Long Island summer community after being cast out by the older man she had been staying with.
Emma Cline, also known for her novel The Girls, wrote The Guest, published in 2023.
It is a tense literary novel that builds suspense around class, drift, and a young woman improvising her way through a wealthy summer community.
The Guest is 304 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Guest takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Guest is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.