If you’ve spent any time on BookTok or scrolling through Reese’s Book Club archives, you know the name. Lucy Foley is basically the reigning queen of the "glittering party turned crime scene" trope. But with The Midnight Feast, things feel… different. It’s not just another locked-room mystery where rich people are mean to each other in a fancy house, though there’s plenty of that too.
Honestly, it’s kinda weird. In a good way.
Foley trades the snow-capped Alps and the rugged Irish islands for the thick, damp woods of the Dorset coast. She’s calling it "folk horror," and she’s not kidding. Think Midsommar vibes mixed with a very British, very "wellness-obsessed" aesthetic. You’ve got the crystals, the infinity pools, and the $20 cocktails, all built on top of soil that’s literally soaked in old secrets.
The Setup: A Retreat Built on Lies
The story centers on The Manor. It’s this insanely expensive wellness retreat opened by Francesca Woodland. She’s the ultimate "clean girl" archetype—all linen sets and pious social media posts—but she’s actually kind of a monster. She inherited this ancestral estate and decided to turn it into a playground for the ultra-wealthy.
Naturally, the locals are pissed.
The village of Tome (pronounced "tomb," because of course it is) isn’t just annoyed by the traffic. They’re losing access to their ancient forest and their "secret" beach. There’s this simmering "us vs. them" tension that Foley builds beautifully. It’s class warfare, but with a supernatural garnish.
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Who's Who at the Midnight Feast?
Foley loves a multi-POV structure. It’s her signature. In The Midnight Feast, we’re bouncing between four main voices, and honestly, none of them are telling the whole truth.
- Francesca (The Founder): She’s stressful. She’s desperate for this opening weekend to be perfect, but she’s also clearly running from something that happened fifteen years ago.
- Owen (The Husband): He’s the architect who designed the place. He seems like a devoted husband, but he’s actually a former local who’s scrubbed his past clean to fit into Francesca’s world.
- Bella (The Mystery Guest): She checks in under a fake name. She’s got short, bleached hair and a backpack full of old journals. She’s not there for the spa; she’s there for revenge.
- Eddie (The Kitchen Help): He’s a local kid just trying to make some money. He’s caught between his loyalty to the village and his job at the resort.
The 2010 Timeline
We also get diary entries from 2010. This is where the real meat of the mystery lives. We see a teenage Francesca (then called Frankie) and her "plaything" for the summer: a young, naive girl who we eventually realize is Bella.
The journals detail a summer of cruelty. Francesca and her twin brothers, Hugo and Oscar, are the worst kind of privileged bullies. They lure the local kids into the woods for "ceremonies" and "midnight feasts." It all culminates in the death of a local woman named Cora—a death that was covered up by Francesca’s family and has haunted everyone involved ever since.
The Legend of The Birds
The most polarizing part of The Midnight Feast is definitely "The Birds." No, not the Hitchcock kind. These are local legends—spirits of the forest that supposedly mete out justice when the law fails.
Are they real? Or is it just locals in masks?
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Foley keeps you guessing. The atmosphere is thick with "folk horror" elements: animal sacrifices found in the woods, strange feathers left as warnings, and a sense that the trees themselves are watching. It adds a layer of dread that her previous books like The Guest List didn't quite have. It’s less about a clever puzzle and more about a primal sense of "getting what’s coming to you."
What Really Happened: The Ending Explained
If you’ve finished the book, you know the finale is a total fever dream. During the actual Midnight Feast—the big solstice party—the locals spike the cider with hallucinogenic mushrooms. Everything goes sideways.
The Manor burns down.
Francesca tries to flee.
But the past catches up. It turns out Owen is actually "Shrimp," a local boy from the 2010 timeline who was Cora’s son. He didn’t just happen to marry Francesca; he was part of a long-con orchestrated by Michelle, the hotel manager who was also a victim of the Woodland brothers years ago.
The "Birds" make their move too. Eddie, wearing a crow costume he found at home, scares Francesca’s car off the cliff. She dies exactly where the woman she killed fifteen years ago was buried. It’s messy, it’s dramatic, and it’s deeply satisfying in a "burn it all down" kind of way.
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Why People are Divided on This One
If you check Goodreads, the reviews are all over the place. Some people love the "pagan-chic" atmosphere. Others find the characters too unlikable or the pacing too slow.
Here’s the thing: Lucy Foley isn’t trying to write a cozy mystery. She’s skewering the wellness industry and the way rich people colonize rural spaces. If you go into it expecting a straightforward whodunit, you might be disappointed. But if you want a dark, atmospheric story about the "rot" underneath the linen and crystals, it hits the spot.
A few quick takeaways for your next book club:
- The Setting is a Character: The Manor is inspired by real-life posh retreats like Soho Farmhouse and The Newt in Somerset. Foley actually stayed at several of these for "research."
- Class is the Core: The real horror isn't the ghosts in the woods; it's the fact that the rich characters don't even recognize the "locals" they ruined years ago. To them, the poor are invisible.
- The Ending is Justice: Unlike some thrillers where the villain gets away, this one offers a very definitive, if violent, closure.
If you’re looking for your next read and want something that feels like a cross between The Secret History and a slasher flick, pick up The Midnight Feast. Just… maybe skip the cider.
Next Steps for Readers:
Check out the audiobook version of The Midnight Feast. Because there are so many different narrators, the audio version uses a full cast with different British accents (Dorset vs. Posh London), which makes the class tensions much easier to track. Once you're done, look up the real-life folklore of the West Country—Foley borrowed heavily from actual English pagan traditions to build the myth of The Birds.