The Last Word by Taylor Adams
Stars: 4
Ok, look, I’ll be honest, did I sleep with the light on after reading this book? Yes, yes I did. Did I want to skip going to rural New Hampshire to spend New Year’s Eve in a cabin, yes to that too. Do I want to read Adams’ other books and scare the sh*t out of myself? Yep, call me a glutton for punishment.
Emma Carpenter is house sitting on a remote island off the Oregon coast. There isn’t much to do in the offseason besides walk the beach and read, so Emma, who seems to like a good murder mystery, is basically downloading every thriller from Kindle and spending her days curled up with her Golden Retriever and a good book. Or in one instance, a really bad book. After reading the latest novel from H.G. Kane, Emma feels compelled to leave a one star review on Amazon detailing the disaster that is Kane’s novel. Kane does not take Emma’s write-up well and before she knows it, Emma seems to have one pissed off writer stalking her.
Adam uses various POVs to move along the narrative, switching from Emma in real time, to killer’s remembrances of the night in question. I really enjoyed this aspect of the book; the shift in characters, sometimes within the same page, created a taut tale that left the reader guessing as to which of our narrators was telling us the truth. Or if they were just telling us their truth. This one had some good plot twists I didn’t see coming and overall I was impressed with Adams’ writing, especially as he moved from point of view to point of view and managed to create a completely separate voice for his two main characters.
No one star reviews here!
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