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The Last Word by Taylor Adams

Thriller

The Last Word

Repeat author

Taylor Adams is back at Book of the Month – other BOTMs include No Exit.

by Taylor Adams

Excellent choice

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Volume 0
Volume 0

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Quick take

While house-sitting, Emma Carpenter starts encountering eerie things after posting a negative review of a horror novel.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Fast_Read

    Fast read

  • Illustrated icon, Creepy

    Creepy

  • Illustrated icon, Rugged

    Rugged

  • Illustrated icon, Writers_Life

    Writer’s life

Synopsis

After posting a negative book review, a woman living in a remote location begins to wonder if the author is a little touchy—or very, very dangerous—in this pulse-pounding novel of psychological suspense and terror from the critically acclaimed author of, No Exit.

Emma Carpenter lives in isolation with her golden retriever Laika, house-sitting an old beachfront home on the rainy Washington coast. Her only human contact is her enigmatic old neighbor, Deek, and (via text) the house’s owner, Jules.

One day, she reads a poorly written—but gruesome—horror novel by the author H. G. Kane, and posts a one-star review that drags her into an online argument with none other than the author himself. Soon after, disturbing incidents start to occur at night. To Emma, this can’t just be a coincidence. It was strange enough for this author to bicker with her online about a lousy review; could he be stalking her, too?

As Emma digs into Kane’s life and work, she learns he has published sixteen other novels, all similarly sadistic tales of stalking and murder. But who is he? How did he find her? And what else is he capable of?

Content warning

This book contains mentions of suicidal ideation.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of The Last Word.

The Last Word

PROLOGUE

THE END.

Emma Carpenter drops her e-reader. Like surfacing from a deep dive with aching lungs, she has never been so grateful to see those two words on her paper-white screen.

“Thank God.” She rubs her eyes.

She downloaded this bizarre e-book for ninety-nine cents on her neighbor’s recommendation. The novel’s cover art was featureless black with a white Comic Sans title: Murder Mountain. Sinister but in a lo-fi way, like a VHS snuff tape. For less than the cost of a candy bar, how can you go wrong?

Post-purchase, she’d noticed the subtitle: The Scariest Book You’ll Ever Read.

Uh-oh.

The raving blurb was in quotation marks, to appear quoted from a review or notable person, but there was no attributed source. It was the author’s personal boast.

Uh-oh.

Emma persevered and read on anyway, as the horror novel followed two college coeds backpacking alone in the Appalachian foothills. One is a psych major and the other is a prelaw student studying for the LSAT. They’re more ornaments than people: vain, shrill, stupid, and perhaps the least-convincing lesbians ever written. It’s telling that the most authentic character in the entire book is the serial killer.

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Why I love it

Every author gets them. The dreaded one-star review, often accompanied by a line or two of snark. (My most memorable: a simple, brutal “LOL no.”) Most of us try to ignore them. Many of us fixate on them anyway. And in the relentlessly paced The Last Word, one scathing review ignites an online feud that spills over into real life. The twist? The critic is the hero—and the author just might be a psychopath.

The amateur reviewer is Emma Carpenter, a woman going through a rough patch who opts out of society by house sitting on the Washington coast. The author is H. G. Kane, whose violent and sadistic fiction hints at a real-life cruel streak. Oh, and he hates getting bad reviews. When Emma gives his latest book one star, it makes him angry enough to track her down in her remote beachfront cottage and force her to change her opinion. (Between this and Megan Miranda’s The Only Survivors, it’s been a banner spring for thrillers set in isolated beach houses.)

What happens next is so diabolically clever that to give away any more plot would risk spoiling the delicious surprises lurking inside The Last Word. Because this is a book by Taylor Adams, whose No Exit sent everyone’s heads spinning, you can expect a doozy. Or two. Or twelve. There’s also dark humor, nail-biting suspense, and a heroine worth rooting for. My review: LOL yes.

Member ratings (30,331)

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Thriller
View all
The Boyfriend
The Last One at the Wedding
Sleep Tight
First Lie Wins
House of Glass
Middle of the Night
Listen for the Lie
A Talent for Murder
Beautiful Ugly
Someone in the Attic
One Perfect Couple
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Kill for Me, Kill for You
Bad Tourists
Murder Road
Daughter of Mine
The Fury
The Other Mothers
When I’m Dead
The Soulmate
What Lies in the Woods
She Started It
The Only One Left
Dark Corners
Blacktop Wasteland
All the Dangerous Things
The Only Survivors
The Broken Girls
The Family Game
The Push
We Were Never Here
Things We Do in the Dark
The Golden Couple
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
The Last Word
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Last Thing He Told Me
The Maidens
Everything We Didn't Say
The Paris Apartment
You're Invited
The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless