Monday night at Shoreditch House with Lucy Foley reminded me why I rarely attend book club events. Most writer conversations feel rehearsed. This one didn’t.
ELLE COLLECTIVE organized the evening and brought the right crowd. Foley talked about The Midnight Feast the way I think about Project Mirror. She pitched her book as “Soho Farmhouse meets The Wicker Man” and I immediately understood the appeal. Luxury spaces hiding violence. Perfect surfaces concealing rot. Her protagonist Francesca builds this immaculate coastal resort on land soaked in trauma, convinced she can sanitize the past through architecture and expensive cocktails.
The technical craft impressed me more than the plot. Multiple narrators, shifting timelines between present opening weekend and events fifteen years prior, folklore threading through contemporary thriller mechanics. Foley doesn’t rush. She lets atmosphere accumulate until the reader feels trapped in that heatwave alongside characters who can’t escape their histories.
What struck me during discussion was her approach to class warfare. The Manor represents everything wealthy newcomers impose on working communities. Francesca’s character embodied this perfectly — a local girl who returns as luxury developer, erasing the landscape that formed her. The local kids pelting her infinity pool with stones felt earned, not dramatic.
Someone asked about the folk horror elements and Foley explained how she used ancient forest symbolism to externalize buried guilt. The mysterious “Birds” group became both literal protestors and metaphorical manifestation of consequences. Smart technical choice that I’m filing away for later use.
I found myself comparing her thriller architecture to my dystopian structure. She builds toward revelation of past trauma. I’m building toward realization that perfection itself is trauma. Different genres, same question: what happens when we try controlling the uncontrollable?
The crowd was younger than I expected. Twenty-somethings who understand instinctively that luxury always costs someone something. They asked sharp questions about privilege, violence, accountability. Foley handled them without defensive writer posturing.
Left thinking about how thrillers and speculative fiction serve similar functions. Both genres let us examine present horrors through constructed distance. Her burning manor, my malfunctioning beauty algorithms — different mirrors reflecting identical anxieties about control and consequence.
Worth the Monday evening. Rare to find craft discussion that doesn’t feel like performance.
Posted from London, where every luxury space hides something.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
