The Perfect Hosts
The Perfect Hosts
By: Heather Gudenkauf
[Fulfills the prompt: ‘Book with food on the cover’ for the Shelf Reflection 2026 Reading Challenge]
“She feels the sudden urge to flee, to run away from this nightmare. But she knows she can’t. This is her life now. There’s no running. She has to face whatever is coming her way head-on. She has no other choice.”
My first Heather Gudenkauf book was The Overnight Guest. I enjoyed that one and similarly, I found The Perfect Hosts to have the same fast pace.
Set in Wyoming, the plot revolves around a gender reveal gone wrong— wrong like a bomb, someone was murdered, and a bunch of people were injured kind of wrong.
Unlike The Overnight Guest which has multiple timelines, The Perfect Hosts takes place over the course of a few days as the bomb/gun-Fed-guy (we’ll call him an ATF agent) tries to figure out who planted the bomb and why.
The multiple POVs definitely have you side-eyeing the characters— “What are you up to?….” It seems like everyone has some hidden agenda in the works and it’s unclear whose plan is going to succeed.
The cast of characters is not super likeable.
The parents-to-be— Wes and Madeline— are super rich with their ginormous ranch and basically ‘own’ the town in more ways than one. Their obnoxiously planned gender reveal party is evidence of their wealth and superiority.
But Madeline earns points with the reader because 1) she’s pregnant and 2) she doesn’t actually want this grand gesture and facade of a party.
Johanna is Madeline’s best friend and midwife but after she is murdered, we find out she had some sketchy stuff going on and we do NOT like best friends who betray best friends so we aren’t sure about this one.
Lucy is Madeline’s estranged stepsister who just so happens to show up right when all this goes down.
It was interesting that Mellie’s chapters were the only ones told in first-person, and based on the book’s ending, I don’t think it was to garner sympathy. Mellie has her own delusions and is not going away any time soon.
Jamie is the ATF agent called in to investigate the situation. But he’s no unbiased third party. He spent a short stint of his youth in Nightjar, Wyoming and it was the worst time of his life. Not only did his sister, Juneau, go missing, but that same night Jamie was run off the road and beaten to within inches of his life. The culprit was never found, his sister was never found, but Wes found him that night and saved his life. Jamie is here to solve the mystery of both the bomb and his sister’s disappearance.
And of course at the center of it all is Wes. What kind of husband is he? What is his true character and what are the red herrings?
I liked the way the book was written. The alternating POVs and cliffhanger chapters made this book hard to put down. It didn’t have the same Iowa nostalgia as The Overnight Guests (although we did get a cameo of an Iowa Hawkeye sweatshirt) and there was quite a bit more swearing, but it was a good page-turner that kept me guessing.
While we do get some justice in the end, there are some things left a little unresolved. I can’t tell if that means Gudenkauf wants to return to this or if she just wants the readers to imagine what happens next. I think I would be fine either way.
Recommendation
If you are looking for a good multiple POV thriller with a lot of suspects, or enjoy books with horses and pregnant ladies, this is for you.
If you want another book that has Wyoming and horses but a better hero, check out Out for Blood by Ryan Steck.
If you want another book with a bomb and domestic drama and a sketchy woman who shows up and overstays their welcome, you definitely want to read The Guest by B.A. Paris.
Overall, I enjoyed this book and will keep Gudenkauf on my radar— I might have to read some of her backlist!
[Content Advisory: 41 f-words, 11 s-words, couple handfuls of other swearing and blasphemes; infidelity, domestic abuse]
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