This is one of those books that will engulf you from the very first page then fling you out at the end leaving you saying to yourself, "Did that really happen?" Yes, it is that good with an excellent story line, marvelous characters and a malicious murder that will keep you guessing until the very end. Don't you just love books like that? I know I do and be prepared to not want to put this one down.

Highly recommended!

I really enjoyed this book. It was a mystery which was different from the other books that I read of hers. It had a lot of twists d turns and a surprising ending.

Last Day by Luanne Rice was an okay read. I've read many by this author in the past, but nothing too recently so I thought I'd give this a try.

While the story had promise, I felt like there wasn't enough character development and got to the point where I was skipping pages because of the endless details.

If you enjoy domestic thrillers, this might be the book for you. Give it a shot.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and author for an ARC at my request. All thoughts in this review are my own.

Luanne Rice has written an excellent book about sisters and best friends. Last Day will touch your heart and make you feel what these women are going through.

The author had me hooked on the first page. She set the scene perfectly for the story that would follow. The characters were all interesting and complex, the setting well-described, and the narrative slowly fed us the story with plenty of twists and turns along the way.

Though I, like Conor, wanted one person to be guilty, it was just too easy and too predictable. The final reveal was a shocking surprise - - and a very sad one in many ways.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book - - an engrossing thriller.

Disappointing read for me. I have always enjoyed Rice's stories, but this was too... too... over the top to be enjoyable. Storyline: 2 sisters and their mother are held captive while a painting is stolen. Mom dies. (This is not giving away anything in the story.) The 2 survivors grow up running the family gallery, but are of very different mind sets as to how they feel about the experience.
Kate goes on to live a more solitary life style than her sister Beth who marries and has a child, but both still stay in almost constant contact with the other 2 friends they have shared since childhood.
The same painting makes an appearance (or rather disappearance) and it appears to be at the root of another murder. The same police investigator who cut loose the girls years ago is the one to investigate this murder, but he seems way too emotionally attached to be allowed to have this case.
There were too many possible suspects who were unlikable, too many fringe issues thrown in, but mostly way too much attachment to certain books and artwork for me. The idea of 4 high school girls signing a book with their initials and becoming blood sisters might be nice in theory, but years later for one to kiss the initials just seemed hokey to me. Not my favorite of her books at all.
thank you NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was not my favorite Luanne Rice book. It started off okay but then soon became a very drawn out story. The characters were unappealing. Kate, having been affected by her mother's death was distant. Her sister, Beth followed her mother's footsteps and chose the wrong husband. The husband and girlfriend plus baby was just a little too much.

I wouldn't exactly call this a thriller. It's more of a slow paced who done it. I enjoyed the seaside setting for the book and the circle of lifelong friends that made a blood pact as children. The sisters and their friends have been keeping secrets as adults and when one of them turns up murdered her sister has to uncover the secrets of her late sister's life. The motive for the killer seemed a little perplexing to me but overall I enjoyed this book.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book for an honest review.

Last Day by Luanne Rice is the story of two sisters Beth and Kate. The book starts out when Kate finds her sisters murdered body. Who would want to kill Beth? Was it her husband, who was having an affair and had a child with his girlfriend, or some stranger? Kate finds out her sister was keeping a lot of secrets from her and so were all their friends. The story kept me guessing till the end who the killer was. But for me there were a lot of questions not answered. I thought the ending was rushed and I would have liked to have known what happened to some of the characters after the killer was revealed. Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is not just "another mystery/thriller", as it has so many twists and turns that keep the reader guessing and their loyalties shift as they read further into the book. I really enjoyed this one and will be looking for more from this author!

This is a story about lightning striking twice – and for the same reasons. It’s also a page-turner of a mystery combined with a story of friendship and sisterhood.

The story opens on Beth Lathrop’s last day. Or at least the last day when anyone who loved her woke up and believed that she was alive. But she isn’t.

Instead, Beth’s corpse is found in her bedroom, several days dead, by her sister and the local police. Those events would normally be the place where everyone’s nightmare begins, but it isn’t.

The nightmare began years ago, when thieves broke into their family’s art gallery and left Beth, her sister Kate, and their mother bound and gagged in the basement while they robbed the place. The girls spent 22 hours in that basement, tied to the body of their mother who choked to death on her gag.

Beth turned outward, her sister Kate turned inward, and the cop who rescued them still keeps tabs on them in the hopes of protecting them again.

But their first ordeal happened because their father betrayed them. It was his plan and his idea, and he’ll be paying the price for it for the rest of his life in prison.

Now tragedy has struck again. Beth is dead, Kate and the rest of her family and friends are lost in grief. But just as before, their peace has been shattered because someone in their inner circle betrayed Beth and betrayed them all.

The question is whether that same cop can figure out just who hides the evil behind a mask of grief.

Escape Rating B: Last Day was a compelling read. I think my feelings can be summed up by saying that it was good, and it was just on the edge of great – but didn’t quite get there, at least not for me. A couple of things made it fall just short of the mark.

The biggest thing that threw me off was that there are a few very brief chapters from Beth’s point of view, including the opening and closing chapters. She’s dead. Those chapters are weird, and they took me out of the story every time.

Beth’s contributions aside, the story itself is a page-turner. We see most of the action by following Kate, Beth’s older sister, and Conor Reid, the cop who found them all those years ago. Conor is now on the Major Case Team of the Connecticut Bureau of Investigation, and as soon as he learns of Beth’s death, he assigns himself to the case even though he knows he shouldn’t.

He also shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but he knows all of the principals of this case much better than any investigator should. And he wants the husband to be guilty of Beth’s murder.

Not that Pete Lathrop isn’t guilty of plenty of things, but murder may not be one of them. And Conor’s desire to punish Pete for all of the crap he put Beth through in life blinds him to the man’s lack of means, motives and opportunity to cause her death.

At the same time, Kate is left trying to make sense of it all, not just her sister’s death, but all of the secrets that made up her life that Kate knew nothing about. Somewhere among all the things that Beth hid from her sister but revealed to their best friends may lie the reason for her death. Or may just provide Kate with more reasons to grieve.

In the end, the truth is revealed not by dogged investigation, but by a little girl who is unable to let a lie stand, no matter who tries to gaslight her into believing the lie instead of the truth. The case is finally solved, and the perpetrator is revealed. And it is a betrayal, just as the truth of Beth’s and Kate’s mother was long ago.

But this time only Kate is left to pick up the pieces.

This was one where I didn’t figure out whodunnit at all. I wanted it to be the husband, but it felt too obvious so eventually I read the last chapter just to figure it out – and I was still plenty surprised. I think that, as much as I was riveted by the investigation and the unraveling of Beth’s life as well as the truth of her death, I found the ending a bit unsatisfactory. I’m glad that the murderer was uncovered, but I’m not sure I felt the catharsis I expected. The motives didn’t make complete sense.

Like the detective, I really wanted the husband to be guilty after all.

Last Day by author Luanne Rice is a great domestic thriller! I absolutely loved this book and recommend it highly!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Conor Reid was the detective assigned to the case. Beth and her sister Kate had lost a valuable painting and their mother on the same night, and Conor felt somehow responsible for the girls. Now, years later, a pregnant Beth has been murdered and the same painting has again, been taken. Reid believes Beth’s husband is responsible, the man hasn’t tried to keep his affair secret, but he also has an alibi for the time of his wife’s death. Kate and Reid try to understand who would have killed Kate and why, and also to figure out where the painting figures into all of it. I was hooked on the first page, this book starts with a bang, a gruesome murder and a long lasting obsession

This book was addicting. You wanted to continue reading even long after it was over. The characters felt so real and relatable, and the story was so original.