by Ashley Winstead

Shay is newly married to her wealthy husband, Cal, in a beautiful but sterile home. She has everything she could ever want but still something is missing. She loves true crime podcasts and regularly listens to one that her best childhood friend, Jamie, does. Listening one morning she hears him talk about the death of her college friend, Laurel, on their college campus. It appears to be a suicide but Shay can’t believe that. Jamie also knew her college friends and he seems to be sending her a message so she decides to call him.

In college, Shay, Laurel and Clem were best friends but now they are both dead under mysterious circumstances. In college, the three girls fell under the spell of a charismatic man who used them for his own purposes. It appears that his influence has expanded and there is a cult exploiting women. Shay decides to meet-up with Jamie and sends her husband who is out of town, a message. Shay is a writer but has had trouble working on her first novel and she told Cal she was going to upstate New York for inspiration.

After meeting with Jamie, Shay decides that something isn’t right and decides to investigate, with Jamie’s help. The more they investigate to try and find out what really happened to Clem and Laurel, the more dangerous the situation becomes especially because it awakens things in Shay that she thought were dormant.

Told with part prose and part podcast transcripts, The Last Housewife is a dark psychological thriller that isn’t for everyone. There is sexual violence, cult manipulation, political corruption and more. Despite all of this, I couldn’t put this well written mystery down. If you have read it, I would love to hear what you thought of the ending.

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for an Advanced Reading Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.