#BlogTour ‘The Club’ by Ellery Lloyd

About the book…

From the author of People Like Her comes a smart and sinister murder mystery set in the secretive world of exclusive celebrity clubs.

Everyone’s Dying to Join . . .

The Home Group is a glamorous collection of celebrity members’ clubs dotted across the globe, where the rich and famous can party hard and then crash out in its five-star suites, far from the prying eyes of fans and the media.

The most spectacular of all is Island Home—a closely-guarded, ultraluxurious resort, just off the English coast—and its three-day launch party is easily the most coveted A-list invite of the decade.

But behind the scenes, tensions are at breaking point: the ambitious and expensive project has pushed the Home Group’s CEO and his long-suffering team to their absolute limits. All of them have something to hide—and that’s before the beautiful people with their own ugly secrets even set foot on the island.

As tempers fray and behavior worsens, as things get more sinister by the hour and the body count piles up, some of Island Home’s members will begin to wish they’d never made the guest list.

Because at this club, if your name’s on the list, you’re not getting out.

I am so grateful to Becca at Macmillan for inviting me on the tour for one of 2022’s most anticipated titles, ‘The Club’ by Ellery Lloyd, out now in hardcover!

Clever and insightful , this book takes you beyond the rope, and into the VIP area of a place so exclusive, so niche you cannot even imagine it.

So special and elite that they need an island to party on,should it really come as a surprise that the only thing to upstage the opening was a death?

Taking in multiple viewpoints, from the outraged villagers whose once quiet life is full of gawkers, to the police having to quickly continue continue murder scene, the character driven plot creates an illusory sense of belonging, even as it shuffles your hopeful , needful personage towards the security team waiting to launch you out the tradesman’s entrance.

The tale of brothers Ned and Adam,who began the venture which evolved into world wide clubs under the Home brand, is an exercise in elitism and ambition.

But after many years of socially acceptable properties which offer an experience like no other, a whole island Home just blows all the others out of the water.

For the Club is a place and a way of life. There is a cuckoo in the nest, a waiting world desperate to see how the mighty have fallen, and a submerged vehicle containing an unidentified body.

As the suspense builds towards a crescendo, it is all to easy to become immersed, swallowed whole,by the history of the rich, the famous,who are so recognisable, so privileged, that they end up seeking the very anonymity they sold everything to gain. Even their conscience.

I loved the tension, the barbed exchanges between owners and staff that created such an atmosphere from the very first page.

The reader gains such a rounded perspective from the owners who really are tired with being the top of the pile-how do you begin to match the standards which you set yourselves over and over again without ennui setting in?- Annie, who has been involved in the Home Group since the beginning, the cuckoo in the nest, Nikki, who has bagged an incredible role which she seems to have been planning for years.

Interspersed with their stories is the public side of things, the newspaper articles , interviews and exposes which make you think, who really created this monster, and how much do we, as mere plebs, enjoy seeing a well known society figure being brought to their knees?

I was honestly riveted to every plot twist, it was a breathless deep dive into a world so removed from my own that I couldn’t envisage it. It made a voyeur of me to a devastating series of events which made me think that perhaps they brought it on themselves. And sometimes, the Club membership price might just cost you your soul. Or your life.

About the authors…

Ellery Lloyd is the pseudonym for London-based husband-and-wife writing team Collette Lyons and Paul Vlitos.

Collette is a journalist and editor, the former content director of Elle (UK) and editorial director at Soho House. She has written for The Guardian, The Telegraph, and the Sunday Times.

Paul is the author of two previous novels, Welcome to the Working Week and Every Day is Like Sunday. He is the program director for English Literature with Creative Writing at the University of Surrey.

Twitter @ElleryLloyd @MantleBooks