SYNOPSIS
A luxury resort. Three missing women. One body.
When young London professional Alex Evans is informed that his sister's body has been pulled from an icy lake in Northern Lapland, he assumes his irresponsible sister accidentally drowned. He travels to the wealthy winter resort where Vicky worked as a tour-guide and meets Agatha Koskinen, the detective in charge. Agatha is a no-nonsense single mother of three who already thinks there's more to Vicky's case than meets the eye.
As the two form an unlikely alliance, Alex also begins to suspect the small town where his sister lived and died is harbouring secrets. It's not long before he learns that three other women have gone missing from the area in the past and that his sister may have left him a message.
On the surface, Koppe, Lapland is a winter wonderland. But in this remote, frozen place, death seems only ever a heartbeat away.
Title: The last to disappear
Author: Jo Spain
Publisher: Quercus
Publication date: May 12, 2022
REVIEW
RATING: ⭐⭐⭐💫
Last year, Jo Spain’s previous book, The Perfect Lie, completely blew my mind away with its clever twists and its “one sitting read” quality, being a clear 5 ⭐️ for me. I was hoping hew new release, The Last To Disappear, would hook me up the same way but, although entertaining overall, it didn’t quite reach the same level as her previous one.
A body is found in Lake Inari, Lapland. It is Vicky Evans, a British girl who was working in a resort over there. Her brother Alex will travel to Finland to bring her sister’s body home and, at the same time, try to find some answers about her death with the help of the Chief of Police, Agatha Koskinen. Soon, the surface of this idyllic winter wonderland will start to crack bringing to light the town’s long time buried secrets.
On paper, this one had everything for me to absolutely love it. The premise sounded amazing and the setting couldn’t be better (you already know about my love of cold remote settings), so you’ll be wondering…where was the problem then?
Well, in my opinion, the story was a bit all over the place with two many side plots that distracted from the main one. There’re present and past timelines, Vicky’s death investigation, the other missing girls’ one, Agatha’s personal issues…Too much for me to actually become truly engaged with the main mystery.
I also had a bit of a hard time warming up to Alex. His lack of trust and underlying anger were a bit hard to understand at first for me. Agatha, on the contrary, I liked right from the start. Her resilience in such a difficult environment and with a pretty hard personal situation was to be applauded. Some of the twists in this part of the story were the most shocking ones for me.
The ending didn’t leave any loose ends, culminating in a really tense scene, but I would have liked a little more connection between all the different plots.
Entertaining story in a beautiful setting that got a little bit lost in between everything it wanted to tell.
Thanks to NetGalley and Quercus for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
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