The Last Word

Emma Carpenter is house-sitting in near-total isolation on the Washington coast. For company there’s Laika, her Golden Retriever; a retired alcoholic author a half-mile up the coast with whom she exchanges brief messages; and the occasional delivery person. Something’s bugging Emma. After all, you don’t take a gig like this unless you’ve got a project you’re working on or some issues you need to resolve, and for Emma it’s the latter. She keeps herself occupied by walking Laika and reading thrillers, plowing through two ebooks a day until she comes across a novel so misogynistic, so poorly written, she can’t help but give it a negative review, setting off an online dialog with the author, who demands the review be retracted. That’s when things start to get weird—and tension starts to heighten—as every evening the security lights switch on and off, or Emma hears footsteps in the house, or the CCTV catches an intruder outside her door—complete with ghoulish mask. Could it possibly be the author Emma has been arguing with? Whomever, it is, Emma is no damsel in distress, and she’d rather fight than run. From there the narrative speeds up, the terror mounts, and the layers of plot begin to unfold until the reader feels like they’re strapped to a one-person luge, runners greased and no way to get free. Perfect for the nail biters.