You Are Fatally Invited

Six thriller and horror authors receive personalized invitations from J. R. Alastor, a bestselling author who has maintained total anonymity for nearly thirty years, to attend an exclusive week-long writers' retreat on a private island off the coast of Maine. Each invitation promises mystery dinners and creative inspiration. The guests must sign non-disclosure agreements to protect Alastor's identity.

Rodrigo Sandoval, a Spanish former lawyer turned crime fiction co-author, arrives at the mainland dock with his wife and writing partner, Olivia. They are joined by Thomas Fletcher, a British literary thriller author and Rodrigo's former friend; Ashton Carter, a Chinese American paranormal thriller author in his late twenties with a background in law enforcement; Cassandra Hutchinson, a prolific domestic suspense author in her early seventies; and Violet Blake, the youngest guest at twenty-four. Rodrigo privately dreads the retreat because someone connected to a case he mishandled as a lawyer is among the guests.

Mila del Angél, a professional event coordinator hired to manage the retreat, welcomes the group at Wolf Harbor Estate, a renovated colonial mansion. She has spent months preparing the estate, installing hidden cameras, and communicating with Alastor through a secure messaging network, though she has never met him in person. She believes Alastor's plan is to force each guest to confess past sins through themed games. What Alastor does not know is that Mila harbors a private vendetta against Violet, whom she blames for stealing her unpublished novel and destroying her writing career. Mila's real name is Ana Emilia Aracely-Ortega, and she intends to kill Violet during the retreat and stage it as a suicide.

The first night's mystery dinner presents a riddle involving a mutilated fish served on ice. The guests determine the answer is "justice," though Fletcher suggests "revenge." Rodrigo is deeply unsettled, as he carries guilt over committing perjury during his legal career. Mila secretly drugs Rodrigo with amphetamines and sedates Olivia, both on Alastor's instructions.

By the next morning, Rodrigo has vanished. The security cameras went down overnight, and Alastor texts Mila that everything is going according to plan. The guests find a defaced copy of Rodrigo and Olivia's novel with a murder scene rewritten to name Rodrigo as the victim. That evening, each guest receives a "cursed artifact" personally meaningful to them: Cassandra gets a black widow spider alluding to rumors she killed her husbands, while Rodrigo's box contains a map marked with a cemetery.

Following the map, a group discovers Rodrigo's body tied to a tree in the cemetery, blindfolded, his eyes removed, holding a prop knife from the mansion's horror memorabilia display and a set of scales, staged as a grotesque parody of Lady Justice. When Olivia tries to call for help, she finds the landline and wifi have been cut. Mila realizes Alastor has been using her as a scapegoat: Her name is on every contract and work order, with no traceable link to Alastor.

Cassandra disappears next. Her room is destroyed, with blood on the window frame and cliffs below, mirroring a death from her own novel. Alastor is using the authors' own stories as templates for their murders. The group's only boat has been sunk. Alastor's next game introduces a custom version of Clue, with cards for all nine people on the island, including staff members Taryn and Curt, paired with sin cards such as the Perjurer, the Child Murderer, the Serial Killer, and the Host. Correctly matching sins to characters will reveal who holds the Host card and is therefore Alastor. Partial confessions emerge: Olivia admits her debut novel's idea was not entirely hers, Ashton reveals that his childhood friend drowned at camp in an incident where both their hearts stopped and only his restarted, and Fletcher's connection to Rodrigo as a former legal client surfaces.

Mila confronts Alastor via her watch. He justifies the killings as justice against people who took lives and insists the guests can survive by demonstrating genuine transformation. He shocks Mila by revealing he did not kill Taryn and Curt, whose throats were slit in his study. A chapter narrated from the concealed Serial Killer's perspective confirms that one of the guests has been systematically eliminating suspects, killing the staff and hiding weapons stolen from the Museum Room, the mansion's display of horror and thriller memorabilia, throughout the house.

Fletcher, acting on Alastor's orders, drugs Mila's tea with a sleeping pill. Ashton later realizes this proves Mila is not Alastor, since Alastor would not incapacitate his own agent. Mila vomits up the drug after receiving a warning and enters the estate's hidden passageways to carry out the next game: Guests must stay locked in their rooms from sundown to sunrise. During the night, Alastor floods rooms, plays recordings of children's laughter, and fills hallways with smoke. Copies of his old memoir in Fletcher's room expose his true identity as Dr. Timothy Foley, a psychiatrist who exploited patients' stories. Ashton teams up with Olivia to fake his death so he can search the house unnoticed for Alastor's identity; Olivia nicks his throat and uses nail polish to simulate blood.

Before dawn, Mila plays a pre-recorded scream through the house speakers, testing whether the guests will break the rules to help someone in distress. Olivia and Violet leave their rooms; Fletcher and Ashton do not. Fletcher is found dead, killed by a lethal air injection between his toes, exactly as depicted in his own novel.

Only Mila, Olivia, and Violet remain. A final clue reveals that the dinner garnish resembles oleander, a deadly poison, but is actually harmless. The only plate with the garnish uneaten is Olivia's, exposing her as someone who recognized oleander because she has used it to kill before. Olivia attacks with a machete and douses the hallway with gasoline, but Violet shoots her with a gun she brought to the island, whose bullets Mila had removed early in the week but secretly replaced. Before dying, Olivia implies she conspired with someone she believed was Alastor.

The final game is Confession. Violet confesses that she stole her debut novel from an online critique partner named Ana Aracely-Ortega. Mila reveals her true identity as Ana Emilia, the person Violet wronged, and clarifies she is not Alastor but was recruited because of her vendetta. They reconcile, each apologizing.

As fire engulfs the mansion, they enter a confessional booth that functions as a puzzle box: Both must be locked inside for an escape passage to open, but only one booth leads to freedom. Mila traps herself so Violet can escape. Cassandra Hutchinson then appears, alive, revealing herself as J. R. Alastor. She explains that she is the mother of Jacqueline, the girl who drowned at camp with Ashton. Her second husband, lawyer Michael Rothchild, had represented Violet in the plagiarism case and conspired with Rodrigo to suppress Mila's evidence. Cassandra killed Michael and orchestrated the retreat to punish all those connected to these wrongs. She frees Mila and sacrifices herself in the fire. The full truth of Ashton's sin also becomes clear: The drowning was not an accident but the result of a cruel prank in which Ashton pushed the canoe from shore knowing Jacqueline could not swim.

Deducing from Olivia's dying words that Ashton must still be alive, Violet finds him strapped to a wheelchair under the dock, left to drown with the rising tide, and rescues him. Mila escapes the burning house and reunites with Ashton and Violet as boats from the mainland approach. A newspaper article reports the fire as an accidental propane leak, listing seven dead and three injured. The three survivors agree not to involve police but commit to anonymously helping identify Olivia's serial-killing victims. An epilogue set two years later reveals that Violet and Mila have co-authored a bestselling thriller and transformed Wolf Harbor Island into an invite-only writers' retreat center.