A copy of The Last to Vanish held up against a background of a lake with sailboats

The Last to Vanish

The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda

Megan Miranda is back with her latest mystery, The Last to Vanish

In The Last to Vanish, we find Abigail Lovett, Abby, working in Cutter’s Pass at the local inn.  Cutter’s Pass is haunted by a series of disappearances over the years.  A journalist, Landon West, appears at the inn, asking questions, digging around, until he too goes missing.  Then, Landon’s brother shows up, trying to find some answers as to what happened to Landon.

What caused all of these disappearances?  Does Abby know her fellow townspeople as well as she thinks she does?

The Last to Vanish was one of my most anticipated books of July! So what did I think?

Well, this was my first Megan Miranda book, and I have a bit of a mixed reaction.  The first 50-66% of the book is so, so, so slow.  I kept putting the book down.  It took me several extra days to read this book, because I just could not get into it.  I even had to put it down, read a couple of other books, and come back to it. 

The book does really pick up during the last half.  There is a twist that I didn’t see coming which personally I loved (although I know some reviewers will be angry at this familiar trope). 

There is one portion of The Last to Vanish where there were too many extreme coincidences.  Seriously, what are the odds that my car would not start, I just happened to borrow a ride, discover a keychain, immediately identify a random key from a storage facility, and then as luck would have it the owner would just randomly allow me to view their records (which conveniently just so happened to be stored in a physical book)?

Why would a storage facility not have a computer? 

In my opinion (for what that’s worth), the book would have been more engaging if it flashed to each individual disappeared person.  It could even fade to black at the end of each section until leading up to a big reveal at the end.

As to my overall rating, the first half of the book is 2 stars.  The second half of the book would be 5 stars.  This would average 3.5 stars. So rounding comes into play for those of you who are mathematically challenged.  In this case, I am going to round down to 3 stars because The Last to Vanish didn’t pick up until well into the second half.

Overall, I am looking forward to reading more from Megan Miranda!

Need more book suggestions? Check out these most anticipated books for the last half of 2022!

*Thanks, NetGalley, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest opinion!