The Last Time We Met by Anna E. Wahlgren on August 6, 2024
Genres: Fiction / Thrillers / Domestic, Fiction / Thrillers / Psychological, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Pages: 336
Format: ARC
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Old friends. Old grudges. One evening back together again. The last time they all had dinner, someone wound up dead. What could go wrong? Sophie Lind hasn’t seen her college friends in a decade when a dinner invitation from one of the friends, Ava, arrives on her doorstep. They used to all be inseparable, meeting for dinner every week even after graduation. But the last time they all had dinner, ten years ago, someone was dead by the end of the night. It was Sophie’s then-fiancé William who died that night in his apartment, just a room away from the friends he called family. Sophie isn’t sure if it’s curiosity, or guilt, that pushes her to accept Ava’s dinner invitation and unbury those old wounds. When the six friends arrive for the dinner, there’s a small box waiting for each of them by their plates. Each box uncovers secrets that the friends have kept hidden all these years, and with the door to the apartment locked from the outside, it’s clear that Ava didn’t plan this dinner just to reminisce about the past. What happened to William is buried beneath someone’s lies, and nobody’s leaving this dinner table until the truth comes out.
To start off, this isn’t nearly so deliciously vicious as the cover implies. The cover leads you to think this is something completely different than it is. Yes, its a thriller with murder, but its also just sad. It felt more of a drama read than a thriller, but with a twist of mystery with everyone keeping so many secrets. It got confusing for me at times with the alternating timelines and the number of characters. It was just hard for me to get to know each one of them because there were so many. I found myself having to keep them organized the right way in my head constantly to stay in tune with the story.
I gave this novel 3.5 stars. Though it was not what I was wanting going into the novel, it was not a bad read. It was a slow burn mystery and I also found the “who dun it” easy to figure out.
A special thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing me with a digital reviewer copy of this mysterious read in exchange for my honest thoughts.