Having worked at the Passage Inn for a decade, Abigail has heard all the stories about the people who have gone missing. When a journalist investigating the disappearances himself disappears, and his brother shows up at the inn, Abigail finds herself drawn into the search for the truth.

Miranda doesn't disappoint. This is another suspenseful book with a ton of twists and turns, complex characters, and a protagonist who draws the readers in. The setting is a character in itself, and the ending was completely shocking to me. I definitely recommend this book.

The small mountain town is a perfect setting for a slow burn mystery/thriller. The character development made the who can you trust aspect all the more intriguing. I also enjoyed how the book was divided into parts surrounding a particular disappearance. I found the twists to the plot plausible without being overly predictable.

Reading Between the Wines book review #65/135 for 2022:
Rating: 3 🍷 🍷 🍷
Book 🎧: The Last to Vanish
Author: Megan Miranda
Genre: General Fiction (Adult) | Mystery & Thrillers
Available now!

Sipping thoughts: People disappearing. No one knows why, how, or if it is foul play. Secrets to kill and die for. When someone else disappears and Trey drops in with questions, Abigail Lovett decides to find out the truth once and for all. I was a little confused with this book with the names and who was who. It dragged a little for me until the last 30%. This was more mystery than thriller in my opinion. I love Megan Miranda but this was not my favorite of hers.

Cheers and thank you to @NetGalley and @Scribner copy of @TheLastToVanish.

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It sounds cheesy to say Megan Miranda never lets me down, but her success rate with me as a reader is impressive. I am always excited to pick up her latest thriller every summer, because I know it will be a page-turner that blindsides me with twists I didn't figure out immediately, and a protagonist who fascinates me as equally as I find them untrustworthy. This book is the perfect thriller for people who don't want anything to scary/gory but still want to be wracked with nerves.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC!

I was so excited to receive this book from NetGalley as an ebook. I had heard great things about it. However, now that I am finished, I feel somewhat disappointed. I had such high hopes for this book. I loved the whole concept of staying in a remote Inn and searching for people who had gone missing, but I just feel like that was all that was going on. The majority of the book was the main character Abby, trying to help a journalist, find out what happened to his brother and others who all went missing years ago. But that was it. Not much else was happening other than asking people questions. I was a bit bored throughout most of the book. Although the ending was pretty good, I did not see a couple things coming at all, it still didn’t make up for the lack luster story being told most of the book. I liked Megan Miranda’s writing style and I did Enjoy the atmosphere this book was set in, it just fell a little flat for me.

Okay thriller fans- step right up to one of the best books of the year. The Last to Vanish is an atmospheric and spooky thriller set in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina.

Seven people have vanished in the mountains near the resort The Passage Inn. When the last to vanish has a relative show up to look for them, inn manager Abby Lovett learns the truth about decades old secrets that rock her to her core.

Megan Miranda has a killer knack (no pun intended) for describing the setting of her thrillers, and something about this one just gave me the chills while reading.

This is a five star read that’s a must for any thriller fan and a no brainer for Miranda’s fans. She delivers on this one, beyond expectation.

Definitely a five star read for me.

**Many, many thanks to #NetGalley and #Scribner for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are my own.**

3.5 stars, actually.

Don't get me wrong: This is a well-written story that held my attention from beginning to end just because I wanted to find out what really happened to all the people who inexplicably went missing over the years in the small town of Cutter's Pass, North Carolina. But as "thrillers" go, I have to say there wasn't a whole lot of edge-of-my-seat tension. Besides that, there wasn't a single character for whom I would have cried had he or she been bumped off somewhere along the line.

That includes Abigail Lovett, who sort of wandered into town a decade ago and stayed to help run The Passage Inn, situated not far from an Appalachian Trail trailhead. Accessing that means traversing what's now known as the "Vanishing Trail" that ends at Shallow Falls - a place best known as the site of the disappearance of the so-called "Fraternity Four." This group of four friends ventured out on a hike 15 years ago, never returned and never have been seen again. Since then, two women have gone missing and never been found, as did, more recently, journalist Landon West, who was investigating their disappearances. Now, that journalist's brother Trey has come to town looking for clues as to what happened, staying at a cabin at the Inn and making Abby, her co-worker Gloria and Inn builder/owner Celeste quite nervous for reasons not really clear. Maybe that's on purpose, intended to make readers more curious as well; instead, it only gave me another reason not to care much about what happens to any of the three characters.

Meanwhile, the townspeople seem to have closed in around themselves, allowing the rumors surrounding the disappearances to fuel the fires of the tourist trade while avoiding any meaningful discussion of the facts. They totally dismiss rumors of a strange man who lives a secluded life in the woods who, some say, might have had something to do with what happened to the missing people. Glimpses of other townspeople, including the sheriff, seem to suggest some kind of awareness or even culpability, but nothing is fleshed out enough to make for a really intriguing theory.

Abby herself remains mostly in the dark, musing over possibilities until incriminating evidence turns up in an unexpected place. At that point, some of what may have happened years ago begins to make sense, but mostly it arouses more suspicions about who her co-workers and neighbors really are and what they really know right up to the end, when Abby learns the hard way that there's good reason for the truth to be hidden all these years.

All told, it's an enjoyable book that, if I were taking a vacation, I'd be happy I toted along to read on the beach. Thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review a pre-release copy.

Megan Miranda delivers a smart suspenseful book again as always!!!

Abby runs The Passage Inn in Cutter’s Pass, NC. It is located near the Appalachian Trail sms lots of hikers stay here to get off the trail for a night. There has been the disappearance of 7 people over the years in this area and all remain unsolved mysteries!!

Landon is a journalist who was trying to piece together the missing people when he goes missing himself. His brother, Trey, arrives at the inn 4 months and his brother disappears. Will he be able to figure out anything? Will he bring Abby and others into this hub??

Miranda tells the story by starting with the most recent disappearance and working back to the first which was the Fraternity Four in 1997. Readers will be immersed in this riveting story right from the beginning.

Thank you for the early digital copy that I received.

Loved the North Carolina setting - I’ve lived there and it was so well captured. The people, the feeling ah! Enjoyed the ride!

Megan Miranda does it again!

The Last to Vanish was a slow built thriller full of suspicion and trying to catch clues. I couldn’t put it down once I got into it. Thanks so much for the ARC!

Abby Lovett works at the Passage Inn in Cutter’s Pass. She landed there 10 years ago when escaping her own life and has tried to meld into the towns fabric ever since. The issue with this little town in North Carolina, tucked next to the Appalachians, is that people vanish.

Now it seems likely given the terrain of the mountains that people can go missing. The issue is that now 7 people have vanished (over the years) and there seems to be more to it. The latest to vanish is a young man named Landon West. When his brother comes in search of finding his own answers- Abby gets the “bug.” She can’t stop thinking about all of the missing people, who is hiding what and if she can really trust anyone in this town.

Each character made me wonder about them but just enough. I love the way Miranda plants itty-bitty seeds and the reader tries desperately to crack the case. Almost everyone seems suspicious but also trustworthy. This book had so many shocks as the fabric of this small town is unwoven. I loved Abby as the main character and loved following along. This story had just enough of a creepy vibe. I’ll definitely be recommending this to friends!

Megan Miranda is always hit or miss with me. I loved All The Missing Girls, and then wasn't crazy about The Last House Guest, but then I really enjoyed The Girl from Widow Hills. Now, this book was simply sooooo slow and nothing happened for the sixty pages that I read that I simply couldn't will myself to power through another 300 pages of this. When Miranda is good she's REALLY good but when her thriller is dull, it's really dull, and this one was on that side, sadly.

Oh my gosh I absolutely LOVED this book so much! It hooked me from the very beginning and kept me glued to the edge of my seat!

I think I just have to accept that Megan Miranda's books are just not for me. The setting seemed fun, but the writing was too bland for me.

Megan Miranda can simply do no wrong! I love all her books and this cabin in the woods meets trail hiking mystery is right up my alley!!

Coming from a small town myself, I appreciate the small town vibe. The these are my people mentality.

But those hidden, do not tell secrets, end up costing the people of this town BIG TIME.

I loved the characters, I would LOVE to visit this cabin and trail, and I truly enjoy the character development.

5 STARS!!

I love Megan Miranda books! The way she develops the characters is always so well done. I get invested in the characters and have to know what happens! Her latest was no different. I needed to find out the mystery behind the missing people of Cutter’s Pass and why Abby got so involved. I loved how everything was wrapped up. Overall, the perfect summer read that I expect my patrons will also enjoy!!

Such a good book! I love Megan Miranda books and this one did not disappoint. It was a little slow at first but once I got 1/3 of the way in, I didn’t want to put it down! It was very suspenseful and the end was shocking! Great read! Thank you NetGalley for letting me read the advance reader copy!

I can't believe I finished this book. I felt like Megan Miranda was trying to bore me to death. This story hardly makes sense. The plotting was so slow and just not that interesting.

This was a great creepy read that kept me on my toes! Cutters Pass in North Carolina is near the Appalachian Trail, its population 1,000, however, it is known as one of the most dangerous places in the state as visitors are constantly going missing. This story had a few unexpected twists that made it so enjoyable and I had chills through most of it.

Thank you #Netgalley for an early read of #TheLastToVanish

The writing here is descriptive - heavy and atmospheric, and the slow pace worked really well.. It pulled me in slowly but it got to the point where I kept thinking about it when I wasn’t reading.

Fun and tense, this one kept me wondering. While I did find the ending to be a bit anticlimactic, overall, I enjoyed this one.





eARC kindly provided by Marysue Rucci Books / Scribner and NetGalley. Opinions shared are my own.

Abby is considered an outsider to Cutter's Pass even though she's resided there for 10 years. She works at the infamous inn where people have been known to stay right before they vanish. She stays with the owner of the inn, Celeste, who took her in after the death of Abby's mother. Abby has always been curious about the disappearances that have plagued Cutter's Pass, but when the brother of one of the victims comes to visit the inn, she becomes more motivated to help him uncover the truth, especially after finding a key piece of evidence.

There were a few lulls in the book, but not many. I was interested and invested for most of the book and I really enjoyed the twists and turns at the end. Trust me, you won't see some of them coming, or at least I didn't. I would rate this book a 3.5, but I rounded it to 4 because I loved the moody, spooky vibes. The setting is one of the best parts of the book!

I would not describe this book as a fast-paced thriller, so if that's what you're into or looking for, then you will be disappointed. It's more of a slow-burn mystery. The only thing I think would have made this book better for me was if the author would have given the readers more background information on the people who disappeared. I do not feel like those characters were developed enough, and truly the only character that was well developed was Abby, the MC.

Special thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.