The Last Ferry Out: A Novel
Andrea Bartz
On a trip to the tropical paradise where her fiancée died, a young woman begins to suspect the death was no accident—and the killer’s still on the island—in this twisty thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Reese's Book Club pick We Were Never Here.When Abby decided to come to Isla Colel, she wasn't sure what—if anything—she'd find. She only knew that she needed to see the place where her fiancée, Eszter, died, to try and make sense of everything that happened. The island is nothing like Abby expected; though it was once a bustling tourist hub, a hurricane a few years earlier left it a shell of its former self, with only a few locals and expats remaining. Even the once-daily ferry to the mainland now only runs every week or so.There, Abby befriends an alluring group of expats, but her sense of unease surges when one of them says he knows the truth about Eszter's last days. Before she can see him, though, he vanishes from the island. Hours turn to days with no sign of him, and the other expats are chillingly cavalier about his disappearance.As her quest for the truth unearths dark secrets, shady pasts, and a web of lies, Abby grows more determined than ever to find out what happened to the love of her life. And the deeper she gets in the close-knit expat community, the more she suspects one of them is Eszter's killer—and will do anything to keep the truth buried. But will she discover who it is before she becomes the island’s next victim?
No posts yet
Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update
Your rating:
Slow Burn Tropical Mystery. If you're looking for balls to the wall action and suspense... this aint that book. If you're looking for a more meandering yet tense... yet also tropical and relaxed... tale... hey, you've found that! This is one of those tropical tales that uses its setting particularly well and indeed really transports the reader to that more low-key vibe, particularly among the more off-the-beaten-path, smaller, non-touristy islands... where perhaps people are willing to kill to keep it that way. Here the story is more about the various expats who have been on the island for varying amounts of time from just a year or two to a few decades and the love they have for the tropical paradise they've created amongst themselves in their fairly tight nit community. Then... you have the outsider. Both the woman who originally came... and the woman who comes later looking to find out what happened in her fiancée's final days. In a community of expats, *everyone* has their secrets of the life they are escaping from, and *everyone* has reasons for wanting to be here rather than there. This is where the mystery really comes to bear, in sorting through the various histories and motivations of pretty well everyone on the island... including our main narrator who just got there and her fiancée. Ultimately this is absolutely a book you come to more for the setting and stay for because maybe you want a touch more tense than a cozy mystery... but still want to be relaxed rather than thrilled, so you don't want to go into a full on horror tale either. This book strikes just that balance, and I could very easily see it being read widely by the very tourists so many of the characters herein absolutely despise. Overall a fun read, if slow - indeed, it does read quite a bit slower than its slightly over 300 page length suggests, feeling like it is perhaps 100 pages or so longer than it actually is. And yet, that stunning setting. Maybe you want to feel like you're there longer than you actually are, anyway. If so, you're going to love this book. Very much recommended.
0
© 2024 Pagebound