ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – The Winter Guest by Sarah Moss

The Winter Guest by Sarah Moss will be published on 1st October 2026. My thanks to the publishers for the proof copy.

---

---

Tell me the worst thing you’ve ever done.

On Christmas Eve, in a hotel on Ireland’s west coast, a man and a woman meet for the first time. As a snowstorm gathers outside windows twinkling with fairy lights, they share a meal, pour wine, propose a toast.

Janice and Gerry may be strangers to one another, but they each have a confession to make.

As the blizzard howls, the night will take an unexpected turn, and their conversation will have consequences far beyond the candlelit table . . .

---

---

The Winter Guest has a very small cast of characters. There are Janice, Gerry, Ryan and Donal, who all meet one winter’s night at a hotel on the west coast of Ireland. Janice and Gerry are the hotel’s only guests with a snowstorm brewing outside, Ryan is the waiter for the evening and Donal the chef. Janice and Gerry sit together, two strangers who only have each other for company and they end up sharing the worst things they have ever done over a lavish four course meal.

This is a perfectly formed novella, a tiny book with only 128 pages but so much detail packed into them. The characters’ thoughts and feelings leap off the page and the descriptions are sumptuous, transporting me to the hotel with all its finery. I didn’t know where the story was going initially and just enjoyed the interactions between Janice, Gerry and Ryan (who, standing quietly to one side of the table, witnesses it all), until just before the end when the direction it was going in dawned on me with an ‘aha!’ moment.

The Winter Guest is beautifully written and portrayed, the perfect short read and one that would be ideal for a winter evening in front of the fire.

---

---

Sarah Moss is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University College Dublin’s School of English, Drama and Film in the Republic of Ireland. She has published six novels as well as a number of non-fiction works. Her work has been nominated three times for the Wellcome Book Prize., Sarah Moss is the author of several novels and a memoir of her year living in Iceland, Names for the Sea, shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her novels are Summerwater, Cold Earth, Night Waking, Bodies of Light (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize), Signs for Lost Children (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize), The Tidal Zone (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and Ghost Wall, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2019.

Sarah was born in Glasgow and grew up in the north of England. After moving between Oxford, Canterbury, Reykjavik and West Cornwall, she now lives in the Midlands and is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick.