Review: The Last Party by Clare Mackintosh

Author: Clare Mackintosh

Publisher: Sourcebooks

Publication Date: November 2022

At midnight, one of them is dead.
By morning, all of them are suspects.

It's a party to end all parties, but not everyone is here to celebrate.

On New Year’s Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests. His vacation homes on Mirror Lake are a success, and he’s generously invited the village to drink champagne with their wealthy new neighbors.

But by midnight, Rhys will be floating dead in the freezing waters of the lake.

On New Year’s Day, Ffion Morgan has a village full of suspects. The tiny community is her home, so the suspects are her neighbors, friends and family—and Ffion has her own secrets to protect.

With a lie uncovered at every turn, soon the question isn’t who wanted Rhys dead…but who finally killed him.

In a village with this many secrets, murder is just the beginning.

The Last Party opens in the new year with the discovery of a dead body floating in the lake.  The dead man is a wealthy resident.  The man has several enemies, so that means several suspects.  It's up to Detective Morgan to use her small town advantage to solve the case.  All while keeping her own secret from her colleague, Leo.

For the most part, I enjoyed this one.  The pacing was a little slow for me in the first half of the book.  I wasn't a fan of the constant time line switching.  It did get a little hard to keep track as to what part of the timeline I was reading. There were also way too many characters thrown at me.  It was hard to keep them all straight. 

The second half of the book was much better and faster paced.  I liked the characters and thought there was a lot of character development for both Ffion and Leo. They are both detectives I would like to see partner up again.  I felt like both had a lot of character growth by the end of the book.  There were a few twists that did genuinely surprise me.  It looks like this is the first in a series, so I'll probably read the next one. I would say give this one a try.