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Book: “Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests” by K.J.Whittle
Publishing Info: Sourcebooks Landmark, September 2025
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: Three courses. Seven guests. One card. It’s a deadly evening they’ll never forget.
Seven strangers meet for an anonymously hosted dinner party. As the evening winds down, seven cards appear, one in front of each of the guests. On each card is a number – the age at which the guest will die. Spooked but skeptical, the guests disperse into the rainy night with the hope of forgetting the morbid turn of events.
Two weeks later, one guest is dead. At exactly the age the card predicted.
More guests begin to die as the years go on, each one dead at the same age as their card. It soon becomes clear that something much more sinister is abound. Now, it’s up to the quickly dwindling group of dinner guests to figure out who (or what) was behind that fateful dinner party all those years ago, before their numbers catch up with them too.
Told from the perspectives of each of the seven guests, which span from hilarious to hateful, Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests is a spellbinding and mysterious exploration of mortality, begging the how would you live your life if you knew your number was up?
Review: Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for sending me an ARC of this novel!
Well I was all excited because last week it really felt like Fall had arrived, and then THIS week we were once again in the 80s with sun and humidity. Once we get to mid-September, my attitude turns to Autumn things in all their forms, and that includes looking for books that have a certain feel to them. That can be cozy, or spooky, or an undefinable third thing that has me like ‘yeah, this feels like a Fall book’ as I read. The book “Seen Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests” by K.J. Whittle definitely had that feeling to me as I was reading, as an Agatha Christie-esque whodunnit just feels like Fall.
As a mystery, “Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests” has a pretty standard set up: seven strangers are called to a mysterious dinner party with no obvious host, and at the end of the night they all receive envelopes that tell them at what age they are going to die. For many of them, it’s in the very near future, and when it starts happening they realize that someone, for whatever reason, wants them all dead. Throw in some Seven Deadly Sins themes, and you have a solid premise and a mystery that mostly kept me guessing, or at the very least invested and interested. I liked that we got different perspective points in the book so that we could get clues from different people that added to the whole, and I found myself surprised a few times. I also have always loved a Seven Deadly Sins theme, and liked seeing how various players lined up within that theme. Did I figure some stuff out? Sure. But there were some twists that had me guessing.
The characters run the gamut from complicated but relatable to genuinely frustrating and terrible. They all had their flaws, but some were a bit more well articulated than others. I liked Vivienne, the cold but intrepid and determined journalist who is our main perspective as she tries to figure out what is going on with all of her compatriots dropping dead after the ill fated and mysterious dinner party. She’s not very kind or nice, but I thought that she felt pretty realistic, and has her moments. I also liked how Whittle explores other unlikable characters and gives them SOME humanizing edges, whether it’s the outlandish and somewhat vapid Janet, who has experienced trauma and sadness around her inability to have a baby, or the closeted cop Melvin who pines for his partner in secret but feels guilt with a sick wife at home. There are also interesting plays on people who are full on hypocrites, like the famous Doctor Gordon who preaches stringent and health conscious lifestyles, but is hiding an eating disorder to maintain his own physique. Other characters were kind of bland or two dimensional, but it was the little quirks of these characters that stood out the most as I was reading.
“Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests” is solid and serviceable as a mystery, and it just felt like the perfect Fall read as we head towards a changing of the seasons. Cozy up with some unlikable characters and just have fun with it!
Rating 7: A solid whodunnit with an enjoyable take on the Seven Deadly Sins, “Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests” is an entertaining mystery that just feels like an Autumn read.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests” isn’t on many relevant Goodreads lists as of now, but would probably fit in on the shelf “Culinary Mystery Books”.
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