Gripping and hard to put down! 🤯📖
Luanne Rice
February 1, 2020
Thomas & Mercer
Blurb: Years ago, Beth Lathrop and her sister Kate suffered what they thought would be the worst tragedy of their lives the night both the famous painting Moonlight and their mother were taken. The detective assigned to the case, Conor Reid, swore to protect the sisters from then on.
Beth moved on, throwing herself fully into the art world, running the family gallery, and raising a beautiful daughter with her husband Pete. Kate, instead, retreated into herself and took to the skies as a pilot, always on the run. When Beth is found strangled in her home, and Moonlight goes missing again, Detective Reid can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu.
Reid immediately suspects Beth’s husband, whose affair is a poorly kept secret. He has an airtight alibi—but he also has a motive, and the evidence seems to point to him. Kate and Reid, along with the sisters’ closest childhood friends, struggle to make sense of Beth’s death, but they only find more questions: Who else would have wanted Beth dead? What’s the significance of Moonlight?
Twenty years ago, Reid vowed to protect Beth and Kate—and he’s failed. Now solving the case is turning into an obsession . . .
A few years back if you had asked me for a list of my favorite authors Luanne Rice would have been in the top ten, hands down. When I went on vacation, I always made sure to pack her newest book so that I could savor it, which, of course, usually meant reading it in one single day on the beach. Somehow, she’s written many novels in the past few years which have gotten away from me. One of the odd quirks of being a book blogger, I’ve realized, is that sometimes you lose track of your favorites upon discovery of new writers.
I was thrilled when the publisher provided me with an ARC of Last Day at the end of last week and also thrilled to discover that Luanne Rice is still on my favorite writer list.
Last Day is like and unlike a typical Rice novel. At its heart are women as there always are. Sisters by blood, sisters by fate. Daughters. Mothers. Grandmothers. Perhaps not all of them are embodied in the novel, but their spirits linger.
The novel opens with Kate finding her sister, Beth, dead, murdered. The murder scene is unflinchingly described, which may have surprised me and told me that I was not reading a typical Rice novel.
This is a mystery told from multiple points-of-view, one from the dead woman herself, adding a touch of mystical to the proceedings. As with all good mysteries, the reader is kept guessing, certain that it must be the sleazy, arrogant husband but then realizing that the clues may point in a decidedly different direction leading one to think that it might be someone totally unexpected.
Despite the fact that this is a mystery, it’s also a character-driven novel. We enter the lives of multiple characters. Discover their passion. Their lack of. We discover their foibles, their loyalties, their relationships, the relationships that are secrets . . . and the secrets.
Secrets come up time and time again. Everyone keeps secrets. Even when you think you know someone very well, when you’ve claimed that you will share everything and that there will be no secrets, there are secrets.
Which leads to the ultimate question: how well do we ever really know anyone? What buttons do we push to change their behavior in such a way that they are totally unrecognizable? That they might do us harm?
So many twists and turns. So much to think about. A very good book.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
rating:
5 out of 5 butterflies
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