I received an ARC as part of the blog tour in exchange for an honest review. It has not affected my opinions.
Genre: Thriller/Mystery Age Range: Adult Star Rating: 4 stars Series: standalone
Blurb:
The island watched and wept…
In search of a new life, sixteen-year-old Adriana Clark’s family moves to the ancient, ocean-battered Isle of Mull, far off the coast of Scotland. Then she goes missing. Faced with hostile locals and indifferent police, her desperate parents turn to private investigator Sadie Levesque.
Sadie is the best at what she does. But when she finds Adriana’s body in a cliffside cave, a seaweed crown carefully arranged on her head, she knows she’s dealing with something she’s never encountered before.
The deeper she digs into the island’s secrets, the closer danger creeps – and the more urgent her quest to find the killer grows. Because what if Adriana is not the last girl to die?
Blurb taken from Goodreads. Add to your shelves here.
Review:
THE LAST GIRL TO DIE is a book about brutal murders, long histories of witchcraft, small communities that protect their own, and the men who want to control women. The rugged Isle of Mull forms the perfect backdrop to the book, the land harsh but beautiful, lulling you into a false sense of security.
This was a very twisty story about very brutal, defiling murders, and an investigation hindered by people unwilling to help or desiring to turn it to their advantage. Not to mention past history, traditions, and beliefs tangling it all up. It made it all so hard to predict what would happen, which kept me turning the pages because I wanted to know who had done it – and what would end up catching them out.
Suffice to say, I did not work it out. There were so many layers of deception and red herrings and complications that I wasn’t able to piece it together faster than Sadie. And then, once she had, the ending was adrenaline fuelled.
The book did not end as I expected it. There is an ending you expect with mysteries, and this book does not give it to you – at least, not in the usual way. It was very interesting, satisfying and fitting with the tone, but certainly a shock to end that way.
I flipped between audiobook and ARC for this book, depending on what I was doing. The narrator was great, bringing a great sense of sympathy for the victims, and the investigator’s horror at unfolding events.
Sifa Elizabeth Reads 