The Last House Guest

I am confused. Did I just read a book described as a fast-paced mystery filled with twists and turns, that would keep me on the edge of my seat? I liken THE LAST HOUSE GUEST to a lengthy promo written by the Maine Bureau of Tourism, combined with a semi-predictable mystery.

The story is set in Littleport, Maine, a prized vacation enclave for the wealthy. Despite the deep divide between townies and summer people, Sadie Loman and Avery Greer have been inseparable for several years. Not only is Sadie wealthy, but her her father is Littleports Big Cheese. Avery, a resident since birth, began working for Sadies father after her parents were killed in a car accident.

To celebrate the end of summer, the young vacationers throw a bash at one of Mr. Lomans rental properties. As Sadies best friend, Avery is on the guest list. The evening is abruptly interrupted when the guests learn that Sadies body has been found on the beach. Her death is ruled a suicide.

Avery refuses to believe that her best friend jumped from a cliff and is determined to prove otherwise. Thus begins her mind-numbing investigation into Sadies death. The outcome is somewhat predictable.

My primary issue lies with the characters. They are so one-dimensional that I feel no connection to anyone. Avery, skulking around town like Maines own Inspector Clouseau, wants to clear her name as a person of interest. Why one police officer has a person of interest in a case his tiny department declared a suicide is the bigger mystery for me.

On and on the investigation goes. Ancillary characters are introduced, and the story gets too far down in the weeds. The denouement doesnt come a page too soon.

The operant reading mode of Megan Miranda’s THE LAST HOUSE GUEST is “Wait, what? Who? What?” Reading this contemporary suspense-thriller novel is like listening to a tedious someone confident in their own sense of charisma tell a story without context, dropping in names without explanation and leaving confusion about the order of events, until you finally stop trying to follow the thread and start plotting your escape.

Worse, the someone in question isn’t a good storyteller, larding their stories with endless asides in choppy, chunky sentences that veer wildly from fragments and run-ons to long lines snarled in rat’s nests of clauses, independent and co-dependent, till you stop plotting your escape and start thinking about hurling yourself through a window. (Example: “But the summer bustle, the visitors. the way I was always on call, smile in place, voice accommodatingthe house was a stark contrast. An absence you could feel; ghosts in the corner of your vision. … Now each evening I’d walk by on my way to the guest cottage and catch sight of something that made me look twicea blur of movement. Thinking for an awful, beautiful moment: Sadie. But the only thing I ever saw in the darkened windows was my distorted reflection watching back. My own personal haunting.” Not exactly a prose style to turn pages or encourage those nearby to stop glancing at their phones.)

If THE LAST HOUSE GUEST were a movie, it would be one that was 20 percent mostly undeveloped scenes and 80 percent claustrophobic voiceover. Such is what you get in novels in which one person does all the talking for the dead person whose death is the catalyst for everything that happened before and after. I’ve never read a novel like this in which I didn’t wish mightily for the dead person to be given the freedom and power to speak for herself. Instead, we get the narrator’s dreary, ceaseless drip of narcissistic self-pity. And if that’s the story you’ve decided to tell, then at least tell the story in prose with glide, with a pleasant thrum of uncertainty that keeps pages turning, and not this graceless back-and-fill sentence style, full of over-clever withholding that keeps readers a little too deeply in the dark.

Megan Miranda has some plot-twist chops, however, and the reveal of the killer is reasonably well done after a number of sharp-edged misdirections per the rigid dictates of the contemporary-suspense-thriller template. (Though attentive readers should be able to figure it out after a few chapters, if only because of one universal truism of every wealthy seaside community: the rich can’t fully maintain their power over a place without the dirty-handed complicity of the corruptible poor.)

This was just bad. I don’t like criticizing someone’s work, but it really was. No spoilers, but if you have a marginal amount of common sense, you say out loud, “oh, come on!” like I did. The main character just happens to find all these clues that are so coincidental it’s outlandish. The rest was so boring, I could not wait to finish it. There was a twist at the end, but it did not make up for the rest of it.

No need to reiterate the plot as it’s shown clearly in the synopsis. Just know that if you love great writing, complex characters, intricately-woven plots, and twists you can’t anticipate, Miranda is one of the authors you should be following. This is the third psychological suspense book of hers I’ve read and they are all wonderful. This has a dual timeline but it was easy to follow and lent to the suspense. It deserves every bit of praise it’s getting.

A few months ago I read The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda. I delayed writing any reviews on this book as I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Finishing this story I felt ….blah….on the other hand I was satisfied.

This is the story of woman, Avery, who lives in a coastal town in Maine. Avery handles vacation rentals in this paradise for the wealthy. Suddenly, Avery’s friend Sadie is found dead. The police insist Sadie’s death is a suicide but Avery is not so sure. The story is easy to read, engaging from the very beginning and all around pleasant as far as who-dun-its go. I really liked it. Yet when I completed The Last House Guest, I was underwhelmed. Since I knew the story was good, I couldn’t figure out why. I think the issue for me is that this book is listed as a thriller. I actually googled the genre “thriller”. This certainly qualifies. For me, though, a thriller is when I can’t stop flipping pages; when my heart is beating fast because someone is running for their life or is hiding in a closet about to be found out. Something quick and tense. This book is not like that. For me, this is a really good story with a big old mystery at the heart. Once over the lack of adrenaline rush, I realized I really did like this book.

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