I am a huge Megan Miranda fan-girl and had to jump on her latest, which does not disappoint! Pick up a Miranda novel and you'll be treated to a slow burn psychological thriller completely driven by its strong female protagonist. The backdrop for The Last House Guest is a small, seasonal beach town in Maine where a suicide (but maybe murder?) takes place during the final week of the previous summer season. And that is just the beginning of a story about the "invisible" residents of a town made by its summer crowd, the secrets people keep--and are willing to reveal, and the bonds of family.
While I definitely enjoyed every moment of the story, I wasn't quite as taken with it as Miranda's other novels. The setup was wonderful, but the final act just wasn't quite as tight as her previous novels.
However, I'd recommend anything from Megan Miranda--she's just THAT good.

First, I want to thank Megan Miranda, Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing me with this book so I may bring you this review.

The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda Is one of those books I can see as a Saturday night feature movie on Lifetime Movie Network.

I loved the cover of The Last House Guest. It was unique and clever and yet so perfect for this book. Kudos to the graphic designer.

The book had my attention from the beginning when Avery when didn’t know where Sadie was. When she didn’t reply to any of her texts. Then my heart felt for her when we learned she died. This is the story and investigation on what happened to her.

Megan Miranda is a talented author. I have enjoyed many of her novels and am always looking forward to her upcoming releases. The Last House Guest was just as good as I was anticipating (I really didn't expect anything less). I was caught up in the whirlwind mystery and so intrigued by the small town community that I had no choice but to keep reading long after I was supposed to be in bed. This is a great book- very character driven, exciting (especially for those who love a mystery) and top notch as for how the ending goes. I recommend it.

Set in the idyllic summer town of Littleport, Maine, The Last House Guest follows main character, Avery Greer's attempts to uncover the truth behind her best friend, Sadie Loman's, apparent suicide in the summer of 2017. Both Avery and Sadie come from two different worlds, Avery a local and Sadie a wealthy summertime visitor, but somehow their worlds came together and an unlikely friendship formed. Told in both the present and the past, the story develops as Avery begins to discover clues in the summer following her friend Sadie's supposed suicide that lead her to believe that Sadie's death may in fact be a homicide. In this fast paced thriller, Avery begins to uncover family secrets, unlikely relationships, and doubt everything she knew about her own life as she tries to dig to the bottom of Sadie's death and reveal the truth. The Last House Guest will leave you continually wondering which characters you can trust and which characters are harboring more secrets.

This is the third Megan Miranda book that I have indulged in as a pleasure read. Among the three books that I have read by Miranda, The Last House Guest would come in second to All the Missing Girls, but rank higher than The Perfect Stranger. I found main character, Avery very likable and relatable. As a reader you wanted to see her succeed in the end. Miranda also does a good job of making her other primary character, Sadie Loman, mysterious enough to make you want to continually know more about who this person really is, what she is hiding, and how she really died. Overall, The Last House Guest was an enjoyable, fast paced read and I look forward to more from Megan Miranda in the future.

I generally enjoy Megan Miranda’s books for not only their suspense, but also for their consistently well done emotional characterizations. In The Last House Guest, Avery Greer flashes back and forth to the night her best friend, Sadie Loman, died. She never has quite believed it was a suicide, and as her life continues to remain intertwined with that of the mighty Loman family, Avery slowly and inevitably unravels the truth behind what went down the night of Sadie’s death, and she faces those who ultimately set the stage for all that happened then and now.
While the first half was paced well enough, the second half seemed to meander and the pacing felt sluggish. The ending was just okay; a little too coincidental in several resolutions. Worth a read but Miranda’s written better.

Littleport, Maine, has always felt like two separate towns: an ideal vacation enclave for the wealthy, whose summer homes line the coastline; and a simple harbor community for the year-round residents whose livelihoods rely on service to the visitors.

Typically, fierce friendships never develop between a local and a summer girl—but that’s just what happens with visitor Sadie Loman and Littleport resident Avery Greer. Each summer for almost a decade, the girls are inseparable—until Sadie is found dead. While the police rule the death a suicide, Avery can’t help but feel there are those in the community, including a local detective and Sadie’s brother, Parker, who blame her. Someone knows more than they’re saying, and Avery is intent on clearing her name, before the facts get twisted against her.

I loved Megan Miranda’s book, Perfect Stranger, so as soon as I saw that she had another book coming out I was just dying to get my hands on it! She is one heck of a story teller, I could not put this one down! Throughout the book you go back and forth between the past and present and I think that really helped the story keep you guessing. I love books like this one that is a little harder to figure out and has strong female characters. Highly recommend!

Thank you #NetGalley for the ARC of The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda
Pub Date: 18 Jun 2019

Big fan of this one! I"ll definitely have to check out the author's other books. I called the last plot twist a mile away, but other than that, it was a fun read that kept me guessing and entertained.

I received an advance reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is very well-written and has a very well-crafted narrative, the focus however is more on the girls' relationship and class tropes than on psychological suspense, I was interested in the girls but not the mystery. 3.5 rounded up

Another great Megan Miranda story! Avery and Sadie have been friends for awhile, but Sadie is from a prominent local family, while Avery is the hired help. Nevertheless, they are best friends.
At a year end party, Sadie hasn’t shown up. Everyone in town is there....where is Sadie? Soon, her body is discovered, ruled a suicide.
But was it really a suicide? Avery owes it to Sadie to find out.
The Last House Guest is a twisting mystery leaving you guessing until the end.

This was a super well-done thriller! I hadn’t read any of Miranda’s work prior to The Last House Guest, but now I definitely want to read more. One thing that really stuck out to me was the story’s setting in the town of Littleport, Maine. The quaintness of the place and its scenery, at once beautiful and dangerous, were threaded so strongly to the narrative and really pulled me in as the reader. It invoked feelings of familiarity that I don’t often experience from fictional locations, and drew me into the town’s drama as if I was one of its summertime visitors. The mystery itself was also captivating, and I was kept in suspense til the very end in regards to everyone’s role in the events of Avery and Sadie’s lives. All in all, this is one of the better thrillers I’ve read in a long time and I look forward to whatever Megan Miranda writes next!

OMG THIS BOOK WAS SO GOOD!

5/5 stars for The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda

This story has everything - great characters, a setting that makes you feel as if you are on vacation, and twists and turns that kept me guessing until the last page. It's one of those rare books that leaves you shocked at the end and saying "wow!". I finished it last night and am just getting to writing my review because I am so sad that it is over!

Many thanks to the publisher and netgalley, who provided me a free copy of this ebook in exchange for my honest review.

This book was a quick easy read. The mystery kept me guessing until the very end. I have read several of Megan Miranda books and this book makes me want to read more. Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.

Review and another chance to enter the Giveaway! .
I was honored to receive a digital copy from @netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I haven’t read any Megan Miranda novels, although I know her book All the Missing Girls was a big hit a few years ago. I enjoy female-driven suspense and was excited to check this one out!

The story follows Avery, a twenty-something young woman living in a vacation town in coastal Maine. Last summer, her best friend Sadie was found dead near the rocky shore, and it was ruled a suicide. But now Avery is discovering inconsistencies in the story of what happened that night and feels compelled to discover the truth about what happened to Sadie.

The plot started out slow and it took until about the 25% mark for the mystery to present itself. Then it took nearly half the book for me to finally get a handle on the story. I couldn’t quite figure out all the characters, the timelines, and how they fit together. Once I did, I enjoyed the story although I never quite felt invested in our main character and the prose, while well-written, had a distant quality. The setting, a coastal vacation town in Maine, was well-tendered and lent a spooky atmosphere to the book. Once the plot got going, there were some interesting twists and turns and the ending felt satisfying for the genre.

Overall a solid addition to the ever-popular female-driven suspense genre. I read it during vacation and it kept my interest once I got past the halfway point.

I really enjoyed Miranda’s Perfect Stranger. It definitely had what it takes to stand out in the homogenous sea of female authored female driven domestic thrillers that are so ubiquitous these days. I’m obviously not the only one who thinks so, because I’m yet to read her other thriller, it’s always out at the library. So naturally when her latest showed up on Netgalley, I requested it immediately without even reading the description. I’m not regretting the choice, though I did like this one less than The Perfect Stranger. But…but objectively this was still very good, the quality is still there. I very much appreciate the fact that the author doesn’t follow the clichéd genre formulas and genuinely takes the time to craft a proper literary thriller. Avoiding cheap thrills, Miranda goes for story and character development instead, these are technically thrillers, but more so crime dramas as in serious dramatic fiction featuring a crime (or several crimes as the case may be). Plus it’s all as darkly psychological as I like. The characters might have been somewhat too young (mid 20s), but interesting in their own way. At the center of the story is a fascinating power dynamic of a friendship. Avery and Sadie, two girls from very different worlds. Essentially an upstairs/downstairs drama, American style, set in a small resort town in Maine, where one wealthy family has all the power and all the money. Or so it would seem. The best parties, every privilege, every entitlement…and yet not entirely safe after all as they find out when Sadie, their daughter, turns up dead. Her best friend Avery, a local girl who for years has been involved with the Lomans personally and financially, almost but not quite one of the family, sets off to find out the truth, which turns out far uglier than she might have ever suspected. So there is plenty of suspense for genre fans, but what attracted me personally was the dramatic writing. The juxtaposition of two different world, the summer guests and the locals, the way they depend on each other and resent each other at the same time, it’s the classic power struggles isolated to one idyllic small town. The callous way that money rules the world and the devastation it leaves in its wake. All of that is done very well in this novel. Plus I’ve always been fascinated by a year round living in a vacation town. The way the place comes alive so vividly in the summer and hibernates the rest of the time. Is it still as happy and shiny of a destination when the visitors leave and the party is over. Would you ever want to be the last guest? So yeah, there is much to like here. Personally I didn’t especially engage with the characters and found the book to be slightly longer than the plot demanded, ever so slightly stretched out. (Although it did read pretty quickly, actually. Easy one morning/afternoon read.) But other than that, it was a very enjoyable book. Thanks Netgalley.

This was my third book by this author and I enjoyed it a lot. The setting was well developed and created an effective atmospheric feel. The plot was well-paced and I couldn’t wait to find out the answers at the end. I loved how thoughtfully written Avery was; she was flawed but not overly so and had a unique life experience. This book also has more of a “new adult fiction” feel. The one character I thought could have been better developed was Parker. Overall, this was an engaging, well-written suspense read with the perfect setting for the plot. The ending was a little too abrupt in my opinion, though.

Thank you NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

A real page turner. I enjoyed the u folding if the story in both past and present. Kept me on my toes and unlike many mysteries, I wasn't sure I'd figured it out until pretty late in story. Good read.

“The Last House Guest” by Megan Miranda is a thriller set in the coastal town of Littleport, Maine.
The protagonist, Avery, is investigating the “suicide” the previous summer of her best friend, Sadie Loman.
The story alternates between the night of the crime and the following summer as Avery tries to work out what really happened to Sadie.

This was a fast paced thriller and a perfect beach read.

I’m am a huge fan of myster/thriller books. I am a media specialist in a high school library. My students love these type of books too, but so many of them have unnecessary sexual content that doesn’t seem to add to the story. I recently discovered books by Megan Miranda and I am hooked. The story of Avery and Sadie has strong appeal. Immediately their friendship pulls you in. The haves with the haves nots. The story weaves around the alleged suicide of Sadie on the last party of the season. It’s a modern who done it. Megan develops and reveals Avery’s character through her interactions with people in Littleport both in the present and the past. The story twists and weaves and as soon as you think you know what happened on that fateful night, something else occurs that makes you think differently.

I have already recommended this to other teachers and students. I actually already have it in my Amazon cart to be delivered as soon as it is released!

I received an advance galley of this book from NetGalley.
This is a story about the mysterious death of a young woman from a highly well-to-do family in a summer resort town. Was it a suicide? If not, who did it? And why?
The best part of the book is how well the author created the report down environment, the folks who live there year round versus those that come Memorial Day and leave on Labor Day.
There are a lot of characters in this book. Thus, many possibilities for who did it if it was not a suicide. The book is told mainly from the point of view of a young woman, a year-round resident and helping hand to the wealthy family who owned several rental properties. This young woman was the victim’s best friend, but seemed under suspicion throughout the book. Was she the culprit? If so, why? If not, why are people suspecting her?
The book also goes back and forth between the time of the suicide or murder and a year later when the case remains under investigation. Between all the characters and the flashbacks and flash forwards, it was tough to follow what was going on.
The ending was pretty good and surprising. A solid mystery.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Beyond amazing I enjoyed this book so very much. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Could not put down nor did I want to.