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The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak

Thriller

The Last One at the Wedding

by Jason Rekulak

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Quick take

Elation quickly turns to concern when a formerly estranged father meets the family his daughter plans to marry into...

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Family_Drama

    Family drama

  • Illustrated icon, Rural

    Rural

  • Illustrated icon, Glamorous

    Glamorous

  • Illustrated icon, Wedding

    Wedding

Synopsis

Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would become permanent. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic, and determined to finally make things right.

He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate—very secluded, very luxurious, very much out of his league. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But it’s difficult: Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose Maggie forever.

Content warning

This book contains scenes that depict suicide.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of The Last One at the Wedding.

The Last One at the Wedding

1.

My phone lit up with the words UNKNOWN CALLER, which usually meant some kind of scam, but I guess I felt like talking because I answered anyway: “Hello?”

“Dad?”

I shot up so fast my knees banged against the kitchen table, sloshing coffee all over my bacon and eggs. “Maggie? Is that you?”

She answered but I couldn’t make out the words. Her voice was faint. The line hissed and crackled, like I was gonna lose her at any moment.

“Hang on, hon. I can barely hear you.”

The kitchen is the worst room in my house for taking calls. You never get more than a bar or two of signal strength. I carried the phone into my living room and tripped over some lumber I’d been trimming and sanding and staining. Just a little carpentry project to kill the time at night; it would all turn into a coffee table, eventually. But I could never motivate myself to finish the job, so there were screws and sawdust all over my rug.

I hopscotched through the mess and rushed down the hall to Maggie’s childhood bedroom. She had a tiny window overlooking our backyard and the old Lackawanna rail lines—and when I leaned against the glass, the signal popped up to three bars.

“Maggie? Is this better?”

“Hello?” She still sounded a million miles away. Like she was calling from overseas. Or from a cabin deep in a remote wilderness. Or from the trunk of an abandoned car, buried at the bottom of an underground garage. “Dad, can you hear me?”

“Are you okay?”

“Dad? Hello? Can you hear me?”

I mashed the phone to my ear and shouted yes, YES, I could hear her. “Where are you? Do you need help?”

And the line went dead.

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Why I love it

When I was a kid, I definitely believed my dad could star in a thriller. Reading The Last One at the Wedding feels like watching that childhood dream come to life. With an endearingly grouchy protagonist and a bold, self-assured damsel in distress, this book reworks the traditional dad-rescues-daughter plotline into a far darker and more fascinating read.

Frank Szatowski is typical dad material. He likes canoeing. He buys extra fire extinguishers just because they’re on sale. And predictably, he’s a bit suspicious of his daughter Maggie’s wealthy, handsome, too-good-to-be-true fiancé. But that’s just fatherly paranoia—isn’t it?

When Maggie reaches out to invite him to her wedding after a three-year estrangement, Frank is determined to make the most of the chance to reconnect. But from the moment he arrives at Maggie’s new in-laws’ luxurious summer estate, he can’t shake the sense that there’s something off. The groom, Aidan, is nervous and evasive; his technocrat parents have secrets to hide under their shiny exterior. And no one will talk about Aidan’s connection to another young woman who disappeared several months earlier…

Every dad wants to think he can protect his child, but this isn’t Taken. Frank is a UPS driver, not an action hero. Maggie is a sharp-witted adult, not an innocent ingénue. As their shared family stubbornness collides and the date of the wedding looms closer, The Last One at the Wedding is one gripping daddy-daughter dance you won’t want to miss.

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