The Last Word by Taylor Adams

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?

Publisher: Harper Audio | Narrators: Carlotta Brentan, Jim Meskimen  | Length: 9 hours 57 minutes | Genre: Thriller/Suspense | Source: Audible | Rating: 3 

Wanting to escape from a personal tragedy, Emma is house sitting at a remote beach house. Spending her free time reading e-books and communicating with her nearest neighbor via a whiteboard and telescope seemed an easy way to spend a week, but when she reads a poorly written horror novel by H.G. Kane, she feels obligated to leave a review stating just how bad the book was, and she doesn’t hold back her feelings. She doesn’t think anything of it until the author reaches out and demands that she remove the review then strange things start happening leaving Emma to wonder if the author is stalking her.

As a reviewer, and a lover of thrillers, this one intrigued me and it was one of my most anticipated released on 2023. Sadly, it didn’t wow me.

While I did like it—or rather liked the concept of this one—I felt that this one rambled a lot and I do mean a lot. The events take place in one night and, my goodness, it must have been one long night as I started wondering if the book was ever going to end. There were so many twists and turns and red herrings that it started to get annoying because it was obvious from the start how everything was going to play out.

The book is told through two different perspectives. We get Emma’s point of view about what’s currently happening then we get snippets from the new book HG Kane’s currently writing. It would have been nice if we would have received more from HG Kane. And for some random reason, we also get snippets of Laika’s thoughts, just because, you know, dog’s thoughts are needed in a thriller/mystery.

I think that my problem with this book was the length. Things that should have been mentioned in passing, such as going to look for a bottle of peroxide, were written about in length. The ‘fight’ scene went on for hours. I found myself looking at the time remaining thinking it was near the end and discovering I still had hours left in the book. At times, I felt the author was trying to aggravate the reader.

While I liked the narrators, Carlotta Brentan’s accent slipped out several times and pulled me from the book, which I was already struggling to stay in the world the author created.

Overall, I feel like giving this a 3 is being generous. I think it had potential to be great had it been condensed. I do think it would have made a better movie than book.