Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - The Last Word

Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

The Last Word by Taylor Adams

184 reviews

_simply_cyndi_'s review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

pomoevareads's review against another edition

3.0

mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Broken-hearted Emma Carpenter is given a horror book to read by her neighbour where she is housesitting on the Washington state coast. She regularly communicates with the neighbour via a whiteboard and telescope. Emma would end things if it were not for her beautiful golden retriever, Laika, named after the dog sent out to space. The book-it’s terrible, and she leaves a one star review for the author. Then strange things start happening and Emma doesn’t know if she is paranoid or if the author has come after her for her poor review.

Pick a weapon, and it was likely used in this book. Full of jump starts and twists and reminiscent of 80s final girl films, The Last Word has received many rave reviews. Throw in the possible harm of an animal and you lose my trust.

I was excited to read this book based on the premise but it fell a bit flat for me. It borders on horror which I am not a fan of so perhaps I was not the intended audience for this one. Please check out other reviewers’ glowing reviews as it has a fast-paced and thrilling plot line that many will enjoy. I really enjoyed No Exit and Hairpin Bridge and will read what the author writes next.

Content Warnings

megwilli's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Content Warnings

jkpiowa's review against another edition

4.5

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

drquinnreads's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

kcrockford's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

honey_coated_chapters's review against another edition

2.0

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

°:. *₊ ° . ° .•

𝑹𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈: 2//5

𝑵𝒖𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒑𝒂𝒈𝒆𝒔: 327

𝑮𝒆𝒏𝒓𝒆: thriller/suspense

𝑸𝒖𝒊𝒄𝒌 𝒕𝒂𝒌𝒆𝒔:

•isolated setting

•determined MC

•multiple bad guys

𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒊𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆: slasher films (think: scream and the strangers) and deep diving into Reddit threads about murder mysteries, incels and books.

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First and most importantly — the dog doesn’t die. Now, this book was hard to rate because I actually did enjoy it, the plot is wildly different and over the top like a real slasher but, towards the middle it got so incredibly repetitive I had to put it down. Yes she’s running from the bad guy, yes there’s no way out, yes he’s outsmarted her again and thought of every conceivable way to keep her how does he keep doing that? My oh my.

———————————————————————

It was good in that — I felt the tension and I was genuinely finding myself rooting for our main character to make it through. I also absolutely love slashers and this definitely gave me a nice suspenseful vibe. The killer was absolutely disgusting — the author did a tremendous job in making this guy gross and detestable. There’s a twist towards the end I saw coming, was briefly dispelled and then came to light, so that was wonderfully written. Aside from the repetitiveness, the ending made me really upset, but I’ll give it to the author that it was impeccably written…

Content Warnings

caitlynischeckedout's review against another edition

4.0

Gosh this was a hard one to rate. And not just because I’m afraid the author will come after me, ha!

The premise of this pulled me in immediately. I couldn’t wait to get this in the mail and bumped it up to the top of my TBR quickly. I was so invested in figuring out the ending I read it pretty much straight through, I could not put it down. It was tense and I *needed* to find out what was going to happen but at the same time, it felt like a lot of it was more drawn out than necessary. Was it just that good at tension? I’m not sure, but I was getting impatient closer to the end and found myself wanting to skim to skip through some scenes.

I think the author’s goal was to make the villain cringey and unlikeable and he definitely succeeded at that. I was visibly cringing and had to set the book down at several points to recover, hahah! This book also includes the author’s story in between chapters, which is both interesting and creepy also. I do like that you got to see how the narrators differed in their viewpoints and the story they were telling.

I also couldn’t help but like Emma as a main character. She made some mistakes but I liked that she never laid down and gave up, she kept fighting! I liked the message that even if it’s just for your dog- keep fighting.

I do feel that one of the plot twists was a bit overdone.

I’m not a big fan of the schizophrenic villain trope. It’s been done so many times and just vilifies the mental illness. And it was a red herring! Which just made it feel even more unnecessary.

I also feel like the ending went on forever. I thought the plot points were interesting but I was ready to get to the end by that point.

What made it so hard to rate though was the way I tore through it! I was on the edge of my seat the whole time! So even though there were some points I wasn’t a fan of and you have to suspend some serious disbelief at points, I’m rounding upwards and I think I will be checking out the author’s other works!

Content Warnings