Yes!! This is how you write nuanced characters.

This was a heartfelt (and sometimes heartbreaking) tale that spans several decades and periods of human tribulation, from World War II to the Vietnam War to the recent pandemic. On the surface, this novel is a historical fiction, but on a deeper level, it is a layered story about conflict, compassion, close-mindedness, and acceptance. I really enjoyed The Last House (I read it in two sittings!) and will probably pick up more stories from this author in the future.

Last House follows a couple, Nick and Bette, starting in the 1950s and forward to now, folding in each generation. Nick is involved in the oil industry and many of the events revolve around this, particularly as their kids come of age in the activist 60s. The book grabbed my interest quickly and become fully engrossing—I did now want to put it down.

I think the cover is quite pretty, but also think it does the book a disservice. It suggests a pastoral novel, which this is not. Rather, it’s an exploration of family and the conflict between generations under the specter of fossil fuels. I hope the cover doesn’t prevent this one from finding its best audience.

I haven’t read Shattuck before, but would certainly read more from her on the strength of this book.

Title: The Last House
Genre: Historical Fiction
This is the story of an American couple who meet during and survive WWII , marry and have a family. The female fades from a code breaker to housewife, and the father works in a fuzzy capacity for the CIA. The initial part of this story seemed interesting since the main characters are introduced with detail and appear complex, but the plot fast forwards way too quickly, leaving these potentially interesting characters behind, skimming through the years and focusing instead on the next generation. This is where the author lost me. The years went by too quickly with little detail to let me engage. The story is told from multiple points of view, but none were developed enough to capture my emotional involvement past the first couple chapters. By the time I gave up on the book, I still didn’t get why the author chose to write it in the first place. It just lacked oomph and focus and seemed to meander thoughtlessly. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Jessica Shattuck's novel, The Last House tells the story of the Taylor family, a young family in 1953 when Nick is starting is career as a lawyer for an oil company, and working on the fringes of the CIA's involvement in Iran. The novel develops over the course of Nick's career, and that of his daughter, a casual radical in the late 1960s. For those of us who grew up in the 50's and 60's, the tensions and fears of the times feel very familiar. Duck and cover drills were part of our understanding of the world. I enjoyed reading about the dynamic in the Taylor family, but wish we understood more about the son, Harry's story.

Although the times were difficult and often tragic, Shattuck's story still seems to hold hope for upcoming generations.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I remember enjoying Shattuck's The Women in the Castle and was eager to dive into Last House. While TWITC was set in Europe and focused on the immediate aftermath of WWII, Last House begins in the early stages of the Cold War, with American oil-man-lawyer patriarch Nick Taylor, a WWII veteran, negotiating deals in Iran. Last House looks forward from that perspective, telling the story from both Nick's and his wife Bet's perspectives, as well as a first person account from their daughter Katherine.

So we have a sprawling family saga, time jumping, going backwards and forwards, multiple POVs, political commentary (we go deep into the era of 60s protests (i.e. the Weather Underground), the Vietnam war, oil as the fuel for the war machine), and the generational conflict of the time. Idealism and activism clashing with the country club culture. There is tragedy, there are twists.

The characters were well drawn. I would have loved more of Bet, the 50s housewife and former codebreaker. The quiet pillar of the family. Her relationship with Kat felt real, and fraught. The time jumps showed us other familial relationships in the Taylor lineage, and that clashing and blending felt like a through line of the novel. That and, of course, oil. Family dynamics and legacy.

My thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow Publishing for the ARC.

Quick and Dirty
-historical litfic
-family saga
-geopolitics and revolution
-quiet, ambling, and powerful

“From the New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle comes a sweeping story of a nation on the rise and one family’s deeply complicated relationship to the resource that built their fortune and fueled their greatest tragedy, perfect for fans of The Dutch House and Great Circle.”

What Worked
I honestly didn’t know what to expect from this novel. Family sagas are my jam, but I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the politics in this story. Thankfully, the author masterfully wove geopolitics into the story so that it was essential to the story, making the subject both relevant and exciting. I learned a lot from this novel, something I appreciate in any historical novel. But the story’s best part must be the people and the place, Last House. This family’s story is one for the ages, told over decades, many of which were turbulent at best. The story’s intergenerational aspects were fascinating, illuminating why we (humans) do what we do and how we become who we are. It’s a story of love, rage, humanity, and connection that I won’t soon forget.

What Didn’t Work
One thing I think people may struggle with is the pacing. This book is SLOW! But it’s in those slow moments where the true beauty of the story lives. The inner thoughts and observations of the characters fill your heart and mind, allowing you to connect with the story despite the momentary absence of the plot (though there is one). I also think folks may not like the shift narration the author used. In the early chapters, Bet and Nick’s story is narrated in a third-person perspective. Still, Katherine’s story is later told from a first-person perspective, which further ingratiates the reader.

Read This If
If you loved Hello Beautiful, you will probably love this one!

I was impressed with Jessica Shattuck's novel, The Women in the Castle, an intriguing post-WWII story set in Germany. Her latest book, Last House is very different yet also engaging. The subject of the U.S. involvement in Iran for the sake of oil, was an interesting one. The book captures the spirit of the various movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It's a well-researched story that takes one family through the decades and how each character is impacted by the political climate of the period and their own beliefs and ultimately the decisions they make. This book moved more slowly than most of the books I read. My favorite "character" was the Vermont house as it served as a place of unity for the Taylor family over time.

Nick a WWII veteran and Bet a Vassar grad set up their lives in the suburbs of Connecticut with Nick working for American oil interests in Iran and Bet staying at home with their two children. At the invitation of a friend, they end up buying a vacation home, “the last house” in rural Vermont, where the couple hope to have a chance to escape from the real world (or as I see it their first world problems).

What follows is a multigenerational tale of the Taylor family told from the perspective of Nick, Bet, and their daughter Katherine. We follow the family has it expands with each generation and through many significant time periods in history all the way to the present. The constant in the Taylor’s lives is the Last House where they can gather as a family and ruminate on happenings in the world. The family addresses communism, racism, pacifism, sexism—truly they tackle a lot of “isms” and their true colors both good and bad shine brightly in their discussions/debates. The Taylor’s are an interesting family and Shattuck has written them as very real and flawed characters.

The first two generations were interesting, but I did feel like once they finished with Katherine and her brother Harry’s generation, the subsequent family members were glossed over. I also wish Harry’s perspective was thrown into the mix. This was clearly an ambitious novel to cover so many generations, and perhaps it should have stopped after two because there is much to learn from the parent/child relationship especially how feelings change as the child becomes the adult. Overall if you are in the mood for a family drama with a socio-political backdrop, this story will do the trick!

Thank you to NetGalley, William Morrow, and of course the author Jessica Shattuck for the advanced copy of the book. Last House is out now. All opinions are my own.

The Last House follows a family through the decades, beginning in 1953. Nick Taylor, a WWII veteran and lawyer, is working for American Oil. He decides to buy a vacation home in Vermont that is surrounded by woods and sits in secluded location.

Over the years the Taylor children grow up and stray from the core beliefs of their parents. Katherine, their daughter, gets caught up in all kinds of social issues that young people of the 60’s were protesting.

Their son Harry tries to enlist in the Vietnam War, but is denied and slips into depression. Katherine brings Harry into her group to give him some purpose in life, which turns out to be the downfall for the Taylor family.

The book follows Katherine through the years until she is an elderly woman with children and grandchildren of her own.

I liked following the family as they moved through the years, but grew weary of Katherine’s constant anger over the issues of the time that are quite often still prevalent in todays world.

Many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for allowing me to read an advance copy. I am happy to give my honest review and recommend to readers.

Last House by Jessica Shattuck is a family saga that begins in 1953. The characters slowly take shape. Instead of getting to see the characters develop as the story progresses, we are told about their developments. The story focuses on Nick, Bet, and Katherine. I was not able to connect with any of the characters. Just when I was getting to know Nick and Bet, the story switched to Katherine, and, in the third section, it switches back to Nick and Bet. The story moves at a terribly slow pace (the third section felt like I was trudging uphill on a sweltering day wearing a thick winter coat and carrying a backpack filled with heavy rocks). I felt that the story lost focus after the family was introduced and they purchased Last House. The story covers the environmental, political, social, and human rights issues that occurred over the decades. I learned more than I wanted to know about Iran and the oil conflict in 1953. In the last third, there were too many characters and topics. I liked that the ending (when I finally got to it) focused on the family, but the conclusion was rushed (which I thought was funny considering the rest of the story moved at a snail’s pace). The story did not seem to have a point or a plot. I was happy to reach the conclusion of Last House.

“Life may be filled with struggle, but what you struggle for is what matters.”
This book had an interesting premise as well as a setting not typically seen. For those reasons, it gets three stars from me.
However, there wasn’t a main character I felt connected to, the end result being a feeling of ‘what else’. Like most books I consider three star reads, I’m glad I read it, but it won’t be a reread, nor will I likely recommend it to anyone other than someone drawn to that time period/ setting.

2.5- Often times as I’m reading as advanced copy I find myself wondering what I found compelling about the book when I first saw it on NetGalley. I loved that this was a multigenerational family drama that was also historical fiction outside of the flooded WW2 setting. Unfortunately, though, this wasn’t nearly as scintillating or as interesting as I had hoped.
Lost House follows the Taylor Family from 1953 when Nick is newly working for an oil company and doing quite a bit of traveling to the Middle East and Bet is doing her best being a stay at home Mom to 5 year old Katherine and 1 year old Harry after having been a code breaker during WW2. As the years pass Katherine and Harry grow up and their ideas and values differ from those of their parents. Both are hippies, but Katherine joins a peaceful protesting movement to fight for civil rights and women’s rights. Harry cares more about the environment and hates that is father’s company is killing wildlife. Through the years and generational differences, they always have Last House- a cabin deep in the Vermont Mountains that was built to sustain the ending of the world. The world changes, the family changes, but Last House stays the same and gives off a comforting knowledge that even should the world run amok, the Taylors will always have a place to be safe.
There was so much going on in this book. I wasn’t expecting the heaviness of the civili rights movement, war protests, and environmental issues to be at the forefront of this book and I felt like the author’s main goal was to show us how bad things used to be and how we still have a long way to go.
I had been looking forward to the parts about Nick’s job, but sadly the scenes that took place in the Middle East were so boring and mostly narrative.
I did greatly appreciate the amount of research Ms. Shattuck put into this. She did a fantastic job weaving the fictional Taylor family with the very real events of the early 1950s through the late 1960s.
I prefer my novels to entertain and I feel this one was written with such a preachy undertone that it was as far as entertaining a book can get. Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for an advanced copy of this. Lost House hit the shelves on May 14th.

A sweeping family saga rooted in exploring the ideals of generations and the way the shifts and changes happen while exploring at its heart what family is and can be.

I loved this book and couldn't put it down. I appreciated Shattuck's commitment to weaving truth of history as a backdrop to one family's life stretching from WWII to 2026. I could tell it was well researched without being preachy or self-important. The characters, all of the characters, are well developed in their own way.
I did find some phrases repetitively used, and a few times the narration seems to slip between two different styles, but not so much it put me off from finishing the work. I understand some if not all of this may not be in the final book.

This book is for anyone that loves a family drama, historical fiction, or simply good literature.


Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC of this work in exchange for my honest review.

This story weaves together quite a bit about the 60s…and then some…all in one family. The father works as a lawyer for American Oil. Bet, his wife, is a former codebreaker. Katherine the daughter becomes involved in the radical thinking of the 60s and her brother, Henry, he is the calm one, until he isn’t.

While reading this novel, I truly did not know what to think. Is this tale espionage, is it family drama, is it about radicalism? It is all of the above.

The story spans several decades and encompasses many radical ideas and political views. It is a bit long and wordy in places. But I enjoyed how this family changed with the times and how their lives were affected by choices.

Need a good family drama with some interesting details…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

I love multi generational sagas, and Last House did not disappoint. I liked the characters, and the story flowed well throughout the book. This is another great book by Jessica Shattuck.

Thank you William Morrow for allowing me to read and review Last House on NetGalley.

Published: 05/14 /24

Stars: 2.5

From the beginning I was bored. There were times (a few sentences) where my attention was grabbed, but only for a minute or two. I didn't resonate with the writing, the characters or sadly the time periods. The '53 and '68 historical periods appealed to me.

Unfortunately, this just didn't work for me. I had to force myself to pick this up and focus on reading a chapter at a time.

I hope your is different.

Last House by Jessica Shattuck is an ambitious effort to record the history of a family during a significant time in American history. Some will like the book and enjoy it and the characters. I could not follow the trail through the book and often was lost and found myself going back to remind myself who was who in the book. I enjoy books on history and those that involve families and how their lives intertwined with that history. For those who like to read slowly and can keep up with the characters and what was happening this may be a great book. I found myself struggling to finish it. Thanks to #netGalley#LastHouse for the opportunity to read and review this book. .

I really enjoyed this book and found the characters and settings believable and interesting. The central premise of the Last House is the connective tissue between the story lines and characters worked well. I probably enjoyed the scenes that took place in Iran the most, since they were unusual and the ones I've read about the least previously.

Granted I didn’t make it all the way to the end, but the story felt disjointed. I struggled to see even the thread that was holding it all together. I also only know a tiny bit about the geo-political and historical context so I was a bit lost.

I enjoyed The Women in the Castle and I also appreciate Shattuck’s writing but I think it was too ambititious to try to pull all the elements together cohesively and compellingly. If the book were longer, I think it could have worked better; there could have been more time devoted to explaining the context, connecting the generations in a seamless way, etc.

A Well written thought provoking story! There is a lot of sadness but also a story that makes you stop and think! An excellent novel for a book club discussion group!