My Readers Guide to the The Wasp Trap discusses this dinner party gone VERY wrong book. Is this suspenseful, dual timeline book with a complicated plot for you? Let’s find out!
Readers Guide to The Wasp Trap
Table of Contents:
Jen’s Quick Take on The Wasp Trap
Character List for The Wasp Trap
Spoilers for the Wasp Trap and the Ending Explained
Jen’s Quick Take on The Wasp Trap
- The Wasp Trap blends quite a few tropes: friends with secrets, past present narrative, missing person.
- As for subgenere, it’s on the dark side of suspense, almost a true thriller as most of it takes place in real time (except for those flashbacks, which I don’t think added anything.)
- There was also a creepy house element. For me it was almost TOO much.
- It does have quite a few twists and turns, but did all of them make sense?
- Publication date: September 16, 2025 by Atria Books. Thanks to the publisher for the advance copy!
I wasn’t familiar with Mark Edwards, but he’s very prolific and perhaps more familiar in the UK. One Goodreads reviewer said she couldn’t believe this book was written by him. Which I’m not sure I understand as this book has many elements of his prior books. Maybe it’s the style? If you know, tell me in comments.
Readers on Goodreads are divided. Some loved all the twists and unexpected elements. Others found the characters flat, the plot implausible, and the flashbacks boring.
Character List for The Wasp Trap
I wasn’t planning on doing a character list, but I needed one so happy to share!
The Wasp Trap Gang from 1999:
- Will: main narrator; now a writer
- Lily: a coder; originally from Hong Kong. Now lives with her wife and children.
- Sophie: biracial; makes jewelry; Will has always had a crush on her.
- Georgina Howard: posh and blonde. She and her husband host the dinner party.
- Theo Howard: Georgina’s husband.
- Rohan: football and gadget fan
Other Characters present in the story
- Sebastian Marlowe: the professor who originally brought group together at Thornwood. Now dead.
- Callum: the chef at the dinner party
- Amber: sous chef
- Finn: Sebastian’s former assistant
- Mia Howard: younger daughter of Georgina and Theo
- Dominic: Sebastian’s nephew; drowned in the lake at Thornwood.
Mentioned but not present:
- Felix: Olivia’s ex
- James: angel investor to Sebastian Marlowe
- Olivia Howard: older daughter of Georgina and Theo
- Barbara: Sebastian’s late wife, who was murdered.
- Rupert Chadwick: writer who used to own G’s house
- Eve: Sebastian’s housekeeper at Thornwood.
Spoilers for the Wasp Trap and the Ending Explained
There are multiple mysteries in The Wasp Trap:
- Who killed Barbara, the wife of Sebastian Marlowe?
- What happened to Olivia, Georgina and Theo’s daughter?
- What is the secret that Callum and Amber are after?
- What does 1999 have to do with ANY of this?
Leave any questions you have in the comments and I will attempt to answer them!
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I didn’t love the flashbacks, but as best as I can understand, Marlowe gathered the six students to help him program a dating app back in 1999.
This didn’t really succeed, but they decided to shift it into a test for psychopathy. They named it The Wasp Trap as the wasp is the psychopath of the insect world.
In the present, the Notting Hill dinner party to celebrate the life of Sebastian Marlowe goes south when the internet stops working and Theo can’t find the key to get out of the house.
Will, the narrator, discovers that Callum and Amber have incapacitated Finn. They then shoot Theo.
Callum and Amber insist that one of the guests has a secret, and if they don’t spill it, everyone will die.
One by one, the guests reveal secrets, but they aren’t the right secrets.
- We learn that Mia, the Howards’ daughter, is not at a friend’s, but hiding in the house.
- We also learn that Finn was a private detective hired by Mia to find her missing sister.
Finally, Lily confesses her secret: the “Wasp Trap” she coded back in 1999 caught a psychopath: Dominic, the nephew of Sebastian Marlowe.
In 1999, Lily also witnessed Dominic attacking Eve, Sebastian’s housekeeper. In an attempt to save Eve, she pushed Domniic from behind and he hit his head on a rock. She left him to drown and went to tell Sebastian.
Nope, not the right secret. Also Dominic is NOT dead. He pops up and is working with Callum and Amber.
In the end the secret they are after is: who saw Dominic and Sebastian putting Eve’s body and the branch Dominic hit her with in the lake?
There’s a melee. Amber and Callum admit to being a couple, and only interested inn Dominic’s money.
- Amber gets stabbed in the melee
- Georgina fatally shoots Callum
- Domnic shoots Sophie in the leg
We learn more secrets: Georgina is actually the psychopath. She switched test results with Dominic.
Also Georgina is the one who saw Sebastian and Dominic hide Eve’s body. She has a phone video and even saved the bloody tree branch.
Olivia found this out (I guess she found the evidence, plus Georgina’s journal, in the secret tunnels and confronted her mom, who murdered her.)
Mia, who has popped up using secret tunnels constructed by the house’s former owner, mystery writer Rupert Chadwick, is having none of her mother’s plans. She uses the tree branch to hit Georgina.
In a flash forward, the remaining gang are attending the funerals of Theo and Olivia.
Georgina is in prison for Olivia’s murder, Dominic is in prison, Eve’s and Olivia’s bodies are recovered.
In an epilogue, Mia finds the original Wasp Trap test on an old computer and takes it: she’s a psychopath!
MY QUESTIONS:
If Dominic was not a psychopath, why was he a murderer? Because he THOUGHT he was a psychopath?
If Georgina was a psychopath, then why didn’t she do more with the evidence she had?
If Mia was a psychopath, why put so much effort into finding Olivia
What are your questions? Leave them in comments and spoilers are fine!
I 100% agree! That last twist about Mia should have been left out because it makes no sense for her to look for Olivia at all – much less to hire a private detective if she’s a psychopath.
I think Dominic just made a rash decision that he regretted with Eve.
Thanks – I always enjoy hearing what you think!
Do you understand why Georgina agreed to the dinner party?
I have no idea. It doesn’t seem like the smartest thing to do when you have bodies buried in your garden!
Has anyone read the special edition of this with the bonus chapter at the end that tells more about one of the main characters (described as providing “Crucial backstory for a main character”) ? I can’t seem to find it anywhere and really wonder if it answers some of the questions I had after finishing this.
I checked the author’s website, Goodreads and Barnes and Noble and I don’t see that edition, sorry.