When Kristin Chapman agrees to let her husband, Richard, host his brother's bachelor party, she expects a certain amount of debauchery. She takes their young daughter to Manhattan for the evening, leaving her Westchester home to the men and their hired entertainment. What she does not expect is that the entertainment—two scared young women brought there by force—will kill their captors and drive off into the night.
With their house now a crime scene, Kristin's and Richard’s life spirals into nightmare. Kristin is unable to forgive her husband for his lapses in judgement, or for the moment he shared with a dark-haired girl in the guest room. But for the dark-haired girl, Alexandra, the danger is just beginning.
Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!
When Kristin Chapman agrees to let her husband, Richard, host his brother's bachelor party, she expects a certain amount of debauchery. She takes their young daughter to Manhattan for the evening, leaving her Westchester home to the men and their hired entertainment. What she does not expect is that the entertainment—two scared young women brought there by force—will kill their captors and drive off into the night.
With their house now a crime scene, Kristin's and Richard’s life spirals into nightmare. Kristin is unable to forgive her husband for his lapses in judgement, or for the moment he shared with a dark-haired girl in the guest room. But for the dark-haired girl, Alexandra, the danger is just beginning.
Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!
Reviews-
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October 19, 2015
In his latest novel, Bohjalian (Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands) stacks the deck against his well-to-do main character, Richard Chapman, who holds a bachelor party in his Bronxville home for his younger brother, Philip. Richard sends his wife and daughter into Manhattan for the night, a good thing, because the two strippers hired for the occasion turn out to be Russian sex slaves, who kill the two pimps who accompany them to the party before fleeing into the night. Earlier, one of them, a beautiful Armenian girl named Alexandra, almost managed to seduce Richard before he changes his mind. In the aftermath of the murders, Richard is turned out of his house, which has become a crime scene with reporters camped outside, and forced to hire a lawyer. As the consequences of the night pile up, Richard becomes estranged from his wife, is banned from his office, and finds himself the target of a blackmailer from the party who has an incriminating cell phone video of him and Alexandra. And then there is Alexandra herself, who returns to the scene of the crime, tailed by her seriously scary Russian bosses. It is to the author’s credit that he takes this situation and makes it somewhat credible. Juxtaposed against the upper-class setting is Alexandra’s own account of being sold into slavery, which deserves a less sudsy book of its own. -
November 1, 2015
Bohjalian's latest ripped-from-the-headlines cautionary tale concerns a very poorly planned bachelor party. Richard Chapman, a middle-aged investment banker with a lower Manhattan firm, makes one mistake that will upend his life: he hosts a bachelor party at his suburban Bronxville home for his feckless younger brother, Philip, manager of a boutique hotel in Chelsea. Richard's wife, Kristin, a good sport about the impending high jinks, is spending the weekend at her mother's in Manhattan with their 9-year-old daughter, Melissa, to allow the boys to be boys. Although he was expecting a stripper, Richard definitely failed to anticipate that the entertainment procured by Philip's hotelier friends would actually be two possibly underage Russian girls and their menacing bodyguards, who forbid the men to take cellphone pictures but encourage everything else. Soon the high jinks are devolving into an outright orgy. As the men take turns with one of the girls, Sonja, the other, Alexandra, takes Richard up to the guest room, where he declines to do more than talk. Alternating with the narratives of Richard and his family is Alexandra's chronicle of her enslavement. After her mother dies, the talented young dancer is tricked by a trusted family friend, who arranges for her to travel from her native Armenia to Moscow--for a ballet audition, she thinks. Instead, she's raped and then trafficked in Russia until she's 19, when she is removed, along with Sonja and another girl, Crystal, to New York. At the party, Sonja, who knows that the guards, Pavel and Kirill, murdered Crystal, fatally stabs Pavel with one of Kristin's butcher knives. Kirill is shot and killed in the fray, and the girls escape. From there the plot thickens with blackmail threats, Internet defamation, employment discrimination, and marital meltdown, as Richard compounds his original error with even more implausible lapses in judgment. Character development takes a back seat in this expose of human trafficking, and Bohjalian's treatment often wavers between prurience and polemic. A compulsively readable train wreck.COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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November 1, 2015
Upstanding husband and father Richard Chapman sends his wife and their young daughter off to her mother's in Manhattan so that he can, reluctantly, use their upscale suburban home to host a bachelor party for his younger brother. And while Richard knows that there is the potential for things to get a little wild and crazy, he is catapulted into another stratosphere altogether when the strippers hired for the evening murder their Russian bodyguards in Richard's tastefully furnished living room. Interwoven with Richard's story of a marriage sent crashing to the rocks and a CEO-track banking career in peril is the tale of Alexandra, an Armenian teenager who recounts the diabolical workings of the Russian sex-slave industry. As the tension on both fronts escalates into blackmail, revenge, and violence, the always gripping Bohjalian (Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands, 2014) offsets the fireworks by bathing all parties in the most sympathetic light. Venturing into crime-thriller territory familiar to fans of Harlan Coben, Bohjalian's page-turner about an average Joe caught up in sordid events beyond his control resonates with chilling plausibility.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.) -
August 1, 2015
In another fresh and different novel from the New York Times best-selling Bohjalian, Richard Chapman was prepared for a mess when he opens his home to his younger brother's bachelor party. But he wasn't expecting an intimate moment with one of the women hired as entertainment before she and her coworker (both naked) stab their Russian bodyguards to death and flee into the night. Richard is tossed from his crime-scene house by the police, put on indefinite leave by his investment bank, and cold-shouldered by his wife, and that's just the beginning in this tale of escalating suspense.
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- Skip Horack, The San Francisco Chronicle "Heartbreaking... Unexpected and refreshing... I won't give away of the surprising twists and turns that The Guest Room takes on the path to Bohjalian's daring conclusion; I'll only note that much of the pleasure that comes from reading any well-constructed narrative lies in trying to anticipate how the author will write himself out of seemingly inescapable corners. But here, for a change, we also have a novelist who seems more concerned with examining and dramatizing a much more universal question: whether, in the end, any amount of love or compassion, retreat or nobility or forgiveness, can overcome the remorseless workings of evil."
- Anita Shreve, The Washington Post "The Guest Room [has] an edge-of-the-seat momentum that propels the reader straight to the last page... For those who value the well-researched novel, the author's 18th book will please... Promises to enlighten and entertain."
- Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe "A story both global and intimate... Heartbreaking."
- Amanda St. Amand, St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Hard to put down... Chris Bohjalian keeps readers turning each page... painfully honest... compelling."
- Lynsey Eidell, Glamour "Suspenseful... It took all of our willpower to not bite off all of our nails as we tore through this dark thriller."
- Christina Wilkerson, Arkansas Traveler "This dramatic story is convoluted and thrilling, and nothing short of a page-turner."
- Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winning author of March "A good man's momentary moral lapse plunges his happy, prosperous life into a nightmare of murderous gangsters and remorseless sex traffickers. Bohjalian's deftness as a story teller is on full display here, as he couples the urgency of a compulsively readable crime thriller with a quiet meditation on the meaning of family and relationships; the painstaking, quotidian, essential business of how we win love, and how swiftly we can lose it."
- Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal "Bohjalian catches a key social moment with a book that's fresh and different... a tale of scandal, shame, and escalating suspense."
- Carol Fitzgerald, The Book Reporter "Reads like a thriller...I did not see the end coming. Chris does a terrific job of exploring the very dark side of traffickbing and the women who are preyed on...Lots to discuss, and book clubs should take note."
- Amy Driscoll, The Miami Herald "Bohjalian is at his best in The Guest Room, one of his most compelling books so far, combining an explosive premise, a timely social topic, and fast-paced storytelling with a purpose."
- Peggy Burch, Memphis Commercial Appeal "Bohjalian's novel is a tightly constructed, sex-and-violence-driven thriller, but it's also a check to the convenient ignorance indulged in by American consumers -- of entertainment as well as goods."
- Rupen Janbazian, The Armenian Weekly "The Guest Room is a page-turner in every sense of the word. From its very first page to an emotionally charged surprise ending, Bohjalian's fast-paced plot draws readers in and makes the book truly 'hard to put down'...Remarkable... A captivating and insightful read."
- Carol Memmott, Book Trib "A devilishly good story. And this suspenseful crime novel, imbued with violence, bad decisions and families torn apart, may be Bohjalian's best one yet."
