Reviews - The Last Housewife

4.67k reviews for:

The Last Housewife

Ashley Winstead

3.78 AVERAGE

faye_v's review against another edition

1.0

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

meglondon22's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional

afid81's review against another edition

3.0

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

lydiakim16's review against another edition

3.0

dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

jessiepope's review against another edition

1.0

this was cheap and gratuitous and a COLOSSAL step down from In My Dreams I Hold A Knife. ashley winstead you are a mystery to me

char_andthebooks's review against another edition

4.0

This book has every trigger warning imaginable so beware before deciding to read!

I went in blind so I was caught off guard but overall it was a good thriller book to listen to while I got a tattoo lol.

bitterlyenthusiastic_books's review against another edition

2.0

The Last Housewife didn’t do much for me. The setup isn’t revolutionary but has potential—Shay reconnects with an old friend via his podcast after learning her college roommate is dead, only to get pulled back into the orbit of a cult she once escaped. But the execution leaned too hard on telling instead of showing, and the podcast angle (with Shay basically monologuing her trauma to her ex-bestie-turned-current-love-interest) felt clunky and unnatural. The “secret society” reveal wasn’t dark so much as cliché, leaning into the kind of sex cult tropes that read more cheesy than illicit or dark.

There’s also the book’s attempt at feminism, which felt surface-level at best. The narrative gives us women degraded and punished while trying to pass off a version of girlboss individualism as empowerment. I’d never argue kink and feminism can’t coexist, but this isn’t it. Misogyny is still misogyny, even when written by a woman, and it made the whole “this is dark and feminist” framing ring hollow. Instead of a sharp cult thriller, the book read like a messy romance with thriller bits sprinkled throughout (very Colleen Hoover in writing style and plot overall honestly).

And then there’s Shay herself. A Texas beauty queen raised under conservatism and patriarchy turned survivor/escapee/badass could’ve been a fascinating character, but instead she’s written as a repetitive, one-note pick-me with perpetual main character energy. The supporting cast is equally flat, the cops are cartoonishly sexist, and most of the plot twists either felt predictable or underdeveloped. At the end of the day, The Last Housewife isn’t anything new—it’s a reheated version of things I’ve seen done better elsewhere, packaged as something darker and more daring than it actually is.