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The Venue
- A Wedding Novel
- Narrated by: P.J. Morgan
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
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The Venue
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Summary
Welcome to the Venue - a place where the super rich can get away from it all...and get away with anything they want.
You're invited to Caleb Hunt's wedding!
Sure, you haven't spoken since you two had a falling out in high school, but Caleb has gotten over that. He's a forgiving person. It was all a misunderstanding. He credits you with turning him into the man he is today.
He wants to repay you and everyone else from his life with an invitation to his destination wedding.
An all-expense paid trip to a luxurious resort. High up in the Alps. Secluded and private.
Please RSVP. It's sure to be a killer party.
The newest gleefully violent release from the writer of Intercepts and In My Father's Basement. Rollicking dark, twisted fun!
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What listeners say about The Venue
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Francine
- 02-05-23
Completely bonkers 😝
Couldn’t read and listen fast enough to see what happened next. Suspension of disbelief required 😂 highly recommend- narration was great
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Alan Preece
- 18-05-20
Not Quite... Not Sure...
Based on a relatively simple idea, Battle Royale at a wedding, and sporting an excellent cover image I was immediately taken in by T. J. Paynes The Venue: A Wedding Novel; eagerly downloading the audiobook and clearing my schedule to settle down to it.
After a brief – and unsettling – prologue between a couple and their wedding programmer we are introduced to Amy, one of their prospective guests as she receives her invitation to their wedding; an all expense paid trip to a secluded European venue.
Seeing it as perhaps the remedy to her own woes with her girlfriend Amy sends an RSVP, but not without reservation; she remembers the groom, an old school friend, and deep down she knows something is is wrong. She hadn’t heard from the man, Caleb, is many years and though they did not part under poor circumstances she cannot help but feel the invitation carries with it a sinister meaning.
Which of course it does.
Arriving at the venue under a veil of secrecy with her parents and girlfriend in tow Amy discovers the venue to be a spectacular mountain retreat, filled with every amenity, and the sheer extravagance of it fills her with growing dread; and when the wedding begins she finds things far worse than she had imagined.
T. J. Payne’s The Venue: A Wedding Novel begins swiftly and by the time the guests arrive at the venue the reader knows exactly what they are getting themselves into. What erupts is laden with considerable violence, but there is a comic-book feel to the proceedings that never really allows the violence to escape parody and as a result affect the reader in a visceral way.
Party this may be due to the constant comic-cutaways of venue staff throwing around one-liners, but it may also be due to the selective cluelessness of the guests as they conveniently (for the story at least) forget that there’s a crossbow sat on the floor nearby, or that 80% proof alcohol can be used as a Molotov cocktail.
Throughout the story I found myself more and more irritated by the obvious solutions the guests were missing, not to mention the suspense killing one-liners from the staff, and though the story tumbled along at quite a pace and there was little time to get bored with the story I found these irritations steadily built a wall between the book and my enjoyment of it.
The only noticeable character arc was that of the villain, Caleb, as he realises everything isn’t quite what he believed it to be; and ultimately because of this he was the one character who I grew any level of sympathy for. I can’t say I approved of his solutions (I’ll go out on a limb here and say that mass murder isn’t good) but at least I understood his reasoning, petty as it was, for his actions.
Amy was a different matter. I have to stress that Amy is not a bad person, or a bad character, just an unremarkable one and as such no more worthy of my time than any of the other minor characters littered around the book. We never really learn why there was a rift between her and her girlfriend, there are no inner battles for Amy to overcome and no memories that weigh on her; she just seems to react to the world around her and is no more or less a mistress of her own destiny than anyone else.
Things continues much this way throughout the book until the last fifty pages or so where there is a shift that struck me as jarring and improbable. Needless to say I shall not go too deeply into this as it would be a major spoiler to those who are intrigued by this book and wish to read it; but I will say that I found the books ending to be lacking in substance and though it is dramatic and fulfilling in an action sense, I felt that none of that characters had taken anything life-building or life-affirming from the experience.
Your enjoyment of The Venue will depend, in my view, in how deeply you like to ponder on what you read. A more casual reader will enjoy the book a great deal; for them it’ll be a rip-roaring, blood-soaked roller-coaster, but if you’re a reader who prefers to ruminate on character or theme you’ll quickly find yourself sidelined by unintended irritations that only really present themselves because in many ways The Venue is just so very good!
In a lesser book a lot of my irritations would’ve been par-for-the-course but The Venue is in so many ways well written and well conceived. What it lacks is an over-arching theme or arc that brings everything together, as well as a more stringent control on the tone-deaf humour, and characters who aren’t quite so story-dependant in their cluelessness .
After all this you might be surprised to find that I recommend T. J. Payne’s The Venue: A Wedding Novel as there’s every likelihood that you’ll see none of the issues I saw while reading the book, and I genuinely hope this to be the case. Ultimately the books positives outweigh its negatives, especially for those who are reading purely for entertainment and want nothing more than a fast roller-coaster.
I suppose what haunts me a little with The Venue is that I think there’s a better book in the idea and I’d have loved to see a draft or two down the line from this one; because I think that would have been one really exceptional read.
Last thing I’ll say is that I rarely seen a horror novel presented so nicely. I mentioned the great cover artwork, simple and classy, but the audiobook has a great narrator in the shape of P. J. Morgan, who moves us through the seven and a half hour running time without a step wrong. If you prefer your books in an audio format I’d say that she was a considerable asset to my enjoyment of the book and if T. J. Payne does an extra draft or two of the next book, and then hires P. J. Morgan to finish off the work on audio I’m likely to click the “buy” button.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Sian Plummer
- 05-06-20
gory fun!
Bloody-hell. Literally.
I finished reading T.J. Payne’s Intercepts not too long ago. I enjoyed it, and when I saw The Venue as a choice on Audiobook Boom, I thought it would be just what I needed to get myself out of my physical and audiobook slump I had been in. Boy, was I right.
Caleb and Lilith are getting married! How exciting. For them. They’re inviting everyone in their life, all expenses paid, who they believe have made them into the people that they are today. Sounds romantic right? Well let’s hope that you were never the love of Caleb’s life, or made him dance in front of his whole school year when he didn’t want to. In The Venue you can expect plenty of gore and violence, confusion and frustration in this fast paced psychological horror novel. You might just learn a little something about what kind of person you are yourself as you read along.
The characters are fairly obvious and somewhat stereotypical, there are very little development opportunities for them but honestly I don’t think I really cared, I just wanted a little bit of fun and if that meant a preppy bulldog boss and some it-girls then whatever.
This book isn’t particularly deep, but it was a really great and entertaining listen, so much so that I listened to this all in one day. P.J. Morgan’s narration is excellent. I say this got me out of my listening slump, however, it put me straight back into one again! Nothing I tried could keep up with the wild ride I had just been on.
I have said previously that I think T.J. Payne writes books that would make great horror movies and I stand by that statement with The Venue.
4 ninja stars from this reader!
Disclaimer: I requested this book from Audiobook boom in exchange for an honest review.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Elizabeth Frounks
- 02-06-20
What A Wild Weeding!
This story made me pause and reassess myself because I did not expect this outcome at all. I probably should have, considering the author, Payne has a great ability to make unique books that shock me a little.
Caleb (our groom) isn’t exactly a normal groom and his ideas of celebration is a little…strange to say the least. It’s a lot bloodier than I’d have imagined from a wedding novel, that’s for sure! I did end up binging this a few days ago, I hadn’t expected to get through it so quickly, and honestly, I needed a few days to just consider what happened. It is funny and dark, a fun combination.
P.J. Morgan (the narrator) did a wonderful job, she worked really well with the story and brought so much to the characters. I do think she is part of what let me binge this whole story at once. I think she is someone to look out for and it definitely worth a look.
*I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Suziblue
- 21-04-22
Loved it.
Very enjoyable and interesting. Kept me listening and certainly kept me entertained! Will look for this author again.
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