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A review by readingtimeatthezoo
The Last Guests by J.P. Pomare
3.0
Oh I really wanted to love this one. I loved his previous book, Tell Me Lies, and I’d seen such rave reviews about The Last Guests, but here it comes…..unpopular opinion…….I didn’t love this one.
Fantastic premise for a story, super creepy vibe to it and I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to stay at an Air BnB for a while, but something just didn’t grab me.
I think it was the main characters. I just couldn’t get drawn into their lives. I couldn’t understand Lina’s behaviour and instant guilt, even before she’d done anything wrong, it felt to me her reasoning was explained too far down the storyline so by then I just found her annoying.
Meanwhile her husband Cain seemed so one-dimensional that I couldn’t care less what he had to say.
Set in New Zealand, Lina and Cain decide to rent out their lakehouse as a holiday home to earn some extra income, unfortunately things don’t quite pan out the way they had hoped.
With Lina seemingly the target of a stalker whose advances seem to be escalating and Cain keeping secrets of his own everything soon threatens to fall apart.
Intertwined amongst their stories are random pages devoted to what appears to be some kind of secret voyeur’s club where complete strangers get off from spying on the goings-on through secret cameras installed in random B&B’s around the world. These sections just seemed so separate to the story and unnecessary that I still can’t work out what purpose they played in the overall story.
I honestly struggle leaving negative reviews and especially for an author whose previous work I’ve just loved, so please don’t let my negativity put you off if this one is on your TBR list. I found last month a bit of a struggle with some of my reads so maybe I was just in a bad mood when I read this one.
Fantastic premise for a story, super creepy vibe to it and I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to stay at an Air BnB for a while, but something just didn’t grab me.
I think it was the main characters. I just couldn’t get drawn into their lives. I couldn’t understand Lina’s behaviour and instant guilt, even before she’d done anything wrong, it felt to me her reasoning was explained too far down the storyline so by then I just found her annoying.
Meanwhile her husband Cain seemed so one-dimensional that I couldn’t care less what he had to say.
Set in New Zealand, Lina and Cain decide to rent out their lakehouse as a holiday home to earn some extra income, unfortunately things don’t quite pan out the way they had hoped.
With Lina seemingly the target of a stalker whose advances seem to be escalating and Cain keeping secrets of his own everything soon threatens to fall apart.
Intertwined amongst their stories are random pages devoted to what appears to be some kind of secret voyeur’s club where complete strangers get off from spying on the goings-on through secret cameras installed in random B&B’s around the world. These sections just seemed so separate to the story and unnecessary that I still can’t work out what purpose they played in the overall story.
I honestly struggle leaving negative reviews and especially for an author whose previous work I’ve just loved, so please don’t let my negativity put you off if this one is on your TBR list. I found last month a bit of a struggle with some of my reads so maybe I was just in a bad mood when I read this one.