The Last House Guest: REESE WITHERSPOON’S AUGUST 2019 BOOK CLUB PICK

3.5 rounded up. This wasn't my favorite Reese Witherspoon book club read, but it was enjoyable and I flew through it. There was mystery and it was a different setting for me taking place in Maine. It seems like others like a different book this author had written so I will add that to my TBR and give it a try.

I started reading this one for myself then it was chosen by my book club for our September pick. I really enjoyed the book once I got further into it. Definitely a page turner if you stick with it.

This was listed as a thriller and I guess if you count the murder it qualifies… but it’s not what I consider “thriller” material. It took quiet a while to get going and wasn't the page turner I had thought it would be. The story also did something that really annoys me…it jumps from the present day to one year earlier which becomes confusing at times. Overall it was a good enough story but it could have had so much more potential.

So this has to be one of the better books I’ve read by Megan Miranda. I had almost given up on her after the last few I’d read, but I’m back. I can’t say that it compares to All The Missing Girls, which is my favorite Miranda book, but I am not disappointed that I read it. The storyline is a bit cliché with a few surprises thrown in that make it different than the typical. I think if you’ve been disappointed in Ms Miranda’s books recently, you’ll be glad you picked this one up.

Good Book, didnt see the ending coming, but would have wished for a more indepth resolution.
A Great Summer Beach Read!

A good read, although I got a little bored 3/4 of the way through.

I'm feeling kind of... meh. I finished this book two days ago and I'm already forgetting the details.The story is told via alternating timelines. The summer of 2018 is the present and the summer of 2017 is when all the bad stuff happened. It starts strong, with an intriguing premise and a great setting. Initially, Avery's past is shrouded in mystery and I wanted to know more. I was intrigued by the details of Sadie's death.Then we get to know Avery and all the other characters, and herein lies my problem. None of the characters are likable. They're wealthy and entitled, or they're envious and bitter. They're caricatures, stereotypes, irritating. And they're linear. We see no growth, no hidden facets of personality that make a person unique and interesting. For me, psychological suspense relies on a strong connection to the characters, and I didn't have that here. The plot does have a couple nice twists that many readers won't see coming. The pacing is slow and there's a lot of drama, but the writing is good and that kept me reading.*I received a review copy from the publisher via Amazon Vine.*

Avery Greer and Sadie Loman are best friends who live in Lilliport in Maine. Every year there is an annual party where everybody attends. This year Sadie doesn't show and is shortly found dead. Her death is ruled as suicide but Avery thinks otherwise and needs to find out the truth.The premise of the book appealed to me even though it's isn't anything new. This is the first time reading a book by this author for me and I quite enjoyed it.The story goes back and forth from now, which is a year after the party and back to the events of the night of the party. The reader follows Avery as she uncovers what really happened. As like other thrillers Avery has to decide who she can trust as she goes along.The story paced quite nicely and I really was invested in the story. At times I had my own suspicions but was totally wrong and didn't guess the who at the end. It did give the story that unexpected twist which for me can make or break a book.Overall I enjoyed this read which didn't bore me and kept my interest. I will read more by this author in the future. Thank you to the publisher via Readers First for the opportunity to read and review the book.

Avery is left with her grandmother's house after she passes, a wealthy family buys it, and they hire Avery to manage this house and their entire neighborhood of exclusive, rented summer cottages.Avery is an excellent manager, becomes friends with the Lowman's daughter, Sadie, and is treated like family, and then is faced with Sadie's death that is being ruled as a suicide. Avery knows Sadie wouldn't kill herself and especially on the night of the annual Plus-One end-of-the-summer party.Avery stuck to her theory that Sadie didn't commit suicide, and she found a few things to prove the police investigation hadn't been thorough and that no one could be trusted. Her investigation made me nervous, though, because of the way she went about gathering evidence.We move from chapter to chapter telling the before and after of Avery and Sadie's friendship and of the goings on at the rental community. Was Sadie really Avery’s friend or did she think of Avery as the help and pretend to be her friend? Was anyone really Avery's friend?I was a bit confused at first about what was going, but once Avery found evidence and clues about what really happened and things were revealed, the interest kicked up.THE LAST HOUSE GUEST will be for you if you enjoy a beach setting, characters that have secrets, characters that are broken, and a mystery that keeps you guessing.The ending is definitely a surprise. 4/5This book was given to me as ARC by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Avery manages all of the season rental properties for a wealthy family in a small ocean side town. During their teen years, Avery and the daughter of this family, Sadie, became best of friends. However, Sadie died, an event attributed to suicide. But years later, Avery finds out some hard truths and who was behind so many of the things that happened in her life. This was a great summer beach read.

Megan Miranda's latest novel is The Last House Guest.Avery is a townie, living the tourist town of Littleport, Main. Sadie's wealthy father owns many of the local rental properties. When their paths cross, the girls form an unlikely friendship. One that continues for a decade - until Sadie is found dead. It's ruled a suicide, but Avery has trouble believing that - as does a local cop. She feels like they're looking at her....Miranda's timeline flips from present to past. We see the friendship from Avery's viewpoint. And as she seems to try to convince herself that they were friends and equals, the reader will see cracks and inconsistencies in Avery's memories. I looked forward to those cracks widening as the search for answers progressed. They did, but slowly.The present introduces us to Sadie's family. I found them cliched - the troubled brother, the parents that never saw Avery as one of them, but only as the employee she is. I thought I should be on Avery's side, but found her unlikable and difficult to connect with. Avery's seemingly selective memories are interesting as they do cast doubt on the suicide theory, as well as the reality of their relationship. And Miranda does give us a nice twist at the end. But.....there was something missing for me. The pacing perhaps - I found it to be a slow burner. Maybe I just went in expecting more as I loved her first two books. All The Missing Girls was a standout. That said, I will be curious to see what Miranda pens next.I did choose to listen to The Last House Guest. The reader was Rebekkah Ross. She did a great job interpreting the story line. Her voice is very pleasant to listen to. It has movement, rising and falling. The reading is well paced. She enunciates well and the words are sharp and clear. I did picture Avery with this voice and it suited.

Juicy little tale, perfect for me and a book binge on holidays. Every small town has secrets. Every small town has that family. The one that everyone knows, the one that funds so much, the one the town caters to. And maybe they have secrets too. Avery lives in a town like this; Littleport, on the coast of Maine. A chance meeting with a member of the golden family, Sadie Loman, turns into a close friendship. And just like that, Avery thinks she has found where she belongs. With the death years ago of her parents, she has no family and the Lomans seemed to have let her in, making her part of their beautiful life. But that last year, the death of Sadie changed all that. Even though they had a bit of a falling out, Avery does not believe the cause of death as suicide. Now it’s the next summer. Odd things are happening at the properties of the Lomans. And Avery starts investigating on her own to find out what Sadie knew that may have gotten her killed. Who can she trust? Parker, the golden boy? Connor, the old boyfriend that didn’t end well? Greg, the one who calls her Sadie’s monster? Grant Loman, patriarch, who funded her education and gave her a job and home? The police?This book starts at the end of the summer of 2017 and goes back and forth from 2017 then to 2018 giving the summer events and what led up to the present. This is a definite binge book that I finished in the wee hours of the morning on holidays as I couldn’t put it down. A solid 4 1/2 for me!

For most of the year residents in the harbour community of the attractive small town of Littleport, Maine live a simple life, managing to eke out a living during the “lean” months of the year – from early autumn until the huge influx of affluent holidaymakers descends for the lucrative summer season. These wealthy families fill all the rental properties and support all those businesses which exist just for these few weeks of each year, merely to meet their needs. Their presence is something of a mixed blessing, mainly because many local people are unable to afford to buy desirable properties because any which do become available are bought, at inflated prices, to be used as yet more holiday rentals. However, as many of the local people rely on making enough money during the holiday season to see them through the rest of the year, any feelings of resentments are accompanied by a degree of ambivalence. This creates a powerful sense of a town divided between the “haves and the have nots”, with each group being regarded as distinctly separate and with friendships between the two being almost unheard of. However, one exception is the six-year friendship which has developed between local resident Avery Greer and Sadie, daughter of Bianca and Grant Loman, the wealthy owners of a large portfolio of summer-rental properties in the town.When she was fourteen Avery’s parents were killed in a car accident and she was then cared for by her grandmother. For a time, her subsequent wild behaviour resulted in her being seen as “trouble” so when, following the death of her grandmother, she and Sadie become friends, she is surprised that the Loman family appears to accept their unlikely friendship. Grant, appearing to recognise her potential, pays for her to take some business courses, buys her late grandmother’s house to add to his other properties and, in addition to giving Avery a job, gives her a place to stay in the family’s guest house. She gradually takes on more and more responsibility, eventually managing and overseeing the family’s assets in the town throughout the year.To mark the end of each summer season there is always a “Plus-One” party, a much-anticipated highlight of the social calendar. However, at the 2017 event Sadie, although expected, doesn’t appear at the party and late in the evening her body is found at the foot of the cliffs. Although the police rule her death a suicide, as she discovers more information about her friend’s final hours, Avery begins to think otherwise and is determined to get to the truth, even though some of the new information she uncovers appears to throw suspicion on her. As the 2018 Plus-One party approaches, coinciding with a memorial service for Sadie, tension increases as more evidence emerges to contradict the suicide verdict, but can Avery uncover the facts which will prove her innocence, especially when Sadie’s brother Parker and a local detective seem intent on proving she is guilty of killing her friend. With Avery as the narrator, the timelines in this story switch between 2017 and 2018. Her recollections and reflections gradually reveal her own troubled background and the various events which led to the friendship which developed between her and Sadie. Through these reflections it soon becomes apparent that their relationship was complex and that her perceptions of their closeness were not universally accepted by either the residents of Littleport, or the Loman family. The one belief the two sides do appear to share is that Avery had found various ways to worm her way into the family but was little more than an obsessed “hanger-on”, a gold-digger: a perception she is determined to disprove. I found that this story had some strengths in depicting the tensions which so often exist in the relationships between the “haves and have-nots” in communities which rely on the patronage of wealthy holidaymakers. However, I thought that there was far too much repetition in Avery’s recollections of the night of the 2017 party and found my mind wandering during many of these sections of the book. I thought that the tension which could have been generated – by storyline of a series of break-ins, power-cuts and various strange happenings at the rental properties, all of which contributed to Avery feeling she was under constant surveillance – was never quite achieved. I think that this was partly due to the frequent switches between past and present, but I think it was also because I found it difficult to care sufficiently about any of the characters who, with the exception of Connor (a local friend), seemed rather stereotypical and lacking in any real depth. Some of the twists and turns of the plotting were intriguing and appealing but these were offset by others which required considerably more suspension of disbelief than I found possible to achieve! Although I had already guessed the denouement sometime before the end of the story, I do think that the way in which this was eventually revealed was well executed, but in some ways this only added to my frustration that the story had the potential to be so much more engaging and satisfying than I ultimately found it. On a more positive note, as I know the coastal areas of Maine well I very much enjoyed how the author’s evocative descriptions transported me back to a place which holds memories of happy holidays – to a large extent these were what encouraged me to carry on reading! With thanks to Corvus and Readers First for a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest opinion.

This is a better-than-decent domestic thriller, atmospherically set in coastal Maine and heavy on the townies-vs-rich-interlopers trope. Avery's best friend, rich girl Sadie, dies in the opening chapter, and the timeline goes forward and back to determine the cause. Avery, townie, is mentored by the uber-wealthy Loman family - a ruthless and slick tycoon father, icy mom, innocent daughter Sadie, and history-of-violence brother Parker - after a tragic car accident destroys her family. There are just enough red herrings and a surprising twist to make this a suspenseful read, though it's a bit heavy on the cliches.