The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones

The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones

I just...no.  This entire book takes place within a 24 hour time span, in a house about to be "foreclosed" in 1912 England.  While the home, Sterne, is preparing for the birthday party of Emerald, a ragged bunch of strangers appears per the direct orders of the local railway station.   A train derailed nearby and there were no other places to put the non-critically injured passengers.  Um, what?  And since when does a railway company demand that homes accept survivors for an undisclosed amount of time??  Emerald, her vain and slightly narcissistic mother Charlotte, brother Clovis, who might be either bipolar or just a moody twenty-something, younger sister Smudge who suffers from borderline neglect, friends John, Patience, and her brother Ernst, all have a dinner planned when the strangers arrive at the doorstep. 
Eventually, another passenger arrives, Charlie, who coincidentally was once friends with Charlotte, and the housekeeper Florence.  The group puts the ill-fated railway passengers into the morning room, essentially locking them in with no food, water, toilets, and no one to check over their wounds.  Eventually, the group is fed, hours later, using most of the fancy dinner planned for Emerald's birthday, who eat the leftovers.  That must have been a very fancy dinner that food for 8-10 people can also serve 20+, then the original dinner party could still have some left to eat.  Anyway, after dinner, Charlie, proposes to play a game in which everyone goes around in a circle and says brutally honest things about one person.  First everyone picks on Patience, then Charlie goes after Charlotte.  He calls her a whore, telling her family that she was a prostitute before her respectable marriage.  Once the dust settles, Charlie corners Charlotte in her bedroom, and tells her her family will now abandon her.  He also implies he's supernatural and the railway party is no coincidence.  (what?).  He's dying and needed to see her one last time.  When she yells, her entire family comes to her rescue, against the prophecy of Charlie who then disappears. 

And that's the book.

Side stories:  Smudge sneaks her pet pony upstairs at one point to trace her shape onto her bedroom wall.  And of course can't get her back down the stairs because stairs + horse hooves = disaster. 

Charlotte's husband, Edward, away during all this to try to save the house, was mysteriously given a letter saying that a dead benefactor of Smudge's left her large amounts of money that will save Sterne. 

Okay then. 

I want the (few) hours of my life back that I spent reading this book.