Book Review and Excerpt: The Last to See Her by Courtney Evan Tate

Today I’m pleased to bring you the first in a series of books from the Fall 2020 Mystery/Thriller Blog Tour from Harlequin Trade Publishing. Keep your eyes out for the others in the banner, they’ll appear over the course of the next number of weeks… Enjoy!

About the Book
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Courtney Evan Tate’s The Last to See Her (MIRA; 12/29) is a twisty, fast-paced domestic suspense about sisters, secrets and betrayal–for fans of B.A. Paris and Riley Sager.

Genevieve, a writer, is about to finalize her divorce from her cheating husband Todd. So when her sister Meg, an ambitious physician, has a convention to attend in New York City, she invites Gen along to celebrate her return to single life. It will be a perfect sisters’ getaway in the big city! But things go awry when, on their first evening at the hotel, Gen decides to take a late night walk and disappears without a trace. Eventually she is officially declared a missing person.

Suspicion soon falls on her sister Meg, who was the last person to see her.

Through twists and turns, it is revealed that Meg has been sleeping with her brother-in-law Todd… And then there is a question of a newly purchased insurance policy that just has just gone into effect before Gen’s disappearance. Both Todd and Meg deny any knowledge of it.

But has an actual crime been committed? Can it be proven? And if so, who is really the guilty one?

Book Review
I liked this one a lot in the beginning, but about half-way through it started getting a little less believable and a little more cliched… I still enjoyed reading it, but it lost some of the magic I felt in the beginning – it seemed like suddenly there was a HUGE piece of backstory that got alluded to and assumed but was never referenced in any way earlier in the story. That piece turned out to be pivotal to the revelations underpinning the entire story, but because there was never any indication that it was an element that might play into things, it felt very out-of-left-field and conveniently incorporated (and unquestioned by those who weren’t aware of it).

[I know that’s pretty oblique, but to explain it any better is to give spoilers, sorry…]

Tate’s writing style is engaging and easy to fall into, I just felt like things got rushed along into the big reveal. It changed the feel of the story for me, and not in a good way. The beginning and first half were very edge-of-my-seat as I tried to figure out what happened to Gen and how her sister, ex-husband, and sister’s husband all played into things since it was clear from the get-go that Something Was Up with all of them… The interplay between her sister Meg and the investigating detective was a little odd. It didn’t feel at all plausible that he would act as (or give away all) he did, but I still found him an interesting character and from a dramatic perspective he did his job of filling in gaps/setting up plot questions nicely.

While there were some issues with the book, on the whole I found it an entertaining read – and a quick one. Once I started, I pretty much kept reading straight through until I finished – which I don’t say a lot these days. It was an escape read for me. I don’t mind a little suspended disbelief now and then!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my obligation-free review copy.

Excerpt
FYI – there is some adult language in the excerpt.

Chapter 1

Genevieve tipped the courier and set the certified letter on the coffee table.

She knew what it was. She’d been waiting for it for almost a week.

Every day, she’d wondered, Will it be today?

And each day it wasn’t.

Until today.

Nervous energy buzzed through her fingers and toes, tingling through her veins, like ants scurrying in a thousand directions. She paced for a minute, stopping at the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring at the magnificent cityscape lining the horizon. Buildings burst through the hazy pollution, their tips scraping the clouds.

People far below her were bustling here and there, quick to walk, slow to linger. They had things to do, places to be, and she didn’t.

Not anymore.

She ripped open the envelope, pulling the banded documents out, scanning through the words, hunting for the official stamps and signatures that declared this an official act of the court.

They were all there.

This was real.

It was finally happening.

She focused her gaze on the words before her.

Honestly, they were simple.

The black-and-whiteness of them was stark and startling. There were no gray areas, no areas open to interpretation.
They reduced the last ten years of her life into a handful of legal phrases and technical terms. Incompatible differences associated with adultery, marriage dissolution and absolute divorce.

She stared at the words.

Soon, she would be absolutely divorced. She just had to sign the papers.

It had only taken six months of her life to iron out the details. To separate all of their worldly possessions into two camps, his and hers, to figure out who got what. Divorcing a lawyer was the only thing worse than being married to one. No matter that he was the one in err, because he repeatedly fucked someone else, he was out for blood and it took months to sort it all out.

But thank God no children were involved.

That’s what people kept saying, like it was a good thing or a blessing.

But if she’d had a child, she wouldn’t be all alone, and someone would still love her.

She felt like she was floundering. For so long, she’d put all of her energy into a man who hadn’t deemed her worthy to stay faithful to. That had done something to her self-confidence. Something terrible. It wounded her in places she hadn’t known she had, and now she had to figure out who she was without him.

She wasn’t Genevieve Tibault anymore, one half of a whole. She was Genevieve McCready again, and what was Genevieve McCready going to do now, now that she had to stand alone?

She pushed herself off the couch and ran water in her coffee cup. It was a habit Thad had taught her. He hated it when the cups developed coffee rings. She stared at the running water, and then set her cup down.

She didn’t have to do what he wanted anymore. If she wanted coffee rings or tea rings or any kind of fucking rings, she could have them.

It was an epiphany.

She was her own person again. It had been so long since she was a me instead of a we.

She looked around, at the condo she had fought so hard for…the marble floors that they couldn’t agree on—she’d wanted slate, he’d wanted marble—at the modern light fixtures that he’d gotten his way on, at even the tan wall colors. She’d wanted gray.

Why had she even wanted this place?

It was all Thad, and none of Genevieve.

A sense of exuberance, a strange jubilation, welled up in her as she searched online for a realtor and then dialed the phone.

Bubbles of excitement swelled in her belly as she arranged a time for the realtor to come see the place.

And then again, as she stared at a map.

Unlike Thad, someone who had spent years building up his legal practice and honing his networking skills in this one city, she could work from anywhere.

She wrote novels.

She could work in Antarctica if she wanted to.

She didn’t want to, but she could.

She already had a plan. She knew where she was going, and what she was doing. She just had to have the courage to do it.

She picked up the phone and called her only sister, Meghan.

“Meg, I’m moving home.”

Her sister paused. “Home as in…?”

“Cedarburg.” There was a long pregnant pause now.

“Um. Why would you want to move back to Wisconsin? You haven’t lived there in…”

“In eighteen years. Since I left for college. Yes.”

“But…why?”

“I don’t know,” Gen said honestly. “I just feel a need to get back to my roots. I love Chicago, but the traffic and the noise…” She stared out from her twentieth floor windows again. Even from up here, even though the vehicles looked like Matchbox cars, she could still hear the honking. “This feels like Thad. I want to feel like me.”

“There’s nothing there,” Meg said carefully. “Nothing but fields and cold and—”

“And friendly people,” Gen interrupted. “And our parents, and familiarity, and open spaces, and distance from Thad.”

“But I won’t be there,” Meg reminded her gently. “I’m not moving back. I think you need to be near me, Gen. You need a support system. Divorce is no joke.”

“I know that,” Gen said patiently. “I’m the one living it. You’re still with your Prince Charming and point five children living the American Dream, and I’m the one sitting in an empty condo.”

She fought to keep the bitterness out of her voice, as she compared Meg’s bustling, messy home to her own stark and empty condo in her mind’s eye.

“I’ll tell Joey that you’re counting him as a point five,” Meg chuckled.

“Well, he’s only five, so it’s fitting. I mean, honestly. He’s not a whole person yet.”

They laughed again, and then Meg sobered up.

“Is this really something you want to do?”

Gen nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”

Meg took a big breath. “Well, let’s do it, then. I’ll help you with your condo, and finding a moving company, and looking online for a house there, and hell’s bells, we’ve got a lot to do!”

“You don’t have to help with all that…” Gen trailed off, but Meg interrupted with their life-long pact.

“Sisters forever,” she decreed. They’d used that pact since they were kids. Whenever one didn’t want to do something, the other would remind them “sisters forever,” and they would concede.

Gen realized she wasn’t going to get away with not letting Meg get her hands in all the new plans.

“Sisters forever,” she agreed.

“But first, you promised to go to my convention with me,” Meg reminded her.

Gen hesitated.

“Don’t tell me you forgot. New York City? Spa days, shopping—you need a new wardrobe, sis—and nights on the town. You promised.”

Gen paused again, and Meghan cajoled, “Pleassssse. We need this. You need this. It can be your divorce party.”
“Okay,” Gen found herself saying. “Fine. I’ll still come.”

Her sister squealed and Gen hung up before Meg could get too excited. She was moving away from everything she’d known for over a decade. Even though the world seemed unsettled and uncertain, for the first time in at least five years, she felt at peace.

Excerpted from The Last to See Her by Courtney Evan Tate, Copyright © 2020 by Lakehouse Press, Inc. Published by MIRA Books

About the Author
Courtney Evan Tate is the nom de plume (and darker side) of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Courtney Cole. As Courtney Evan Tate, she is the author of Such Dark Things and I’ll Be Watching You. Courtney grew up in rural Kansas and now lives with her husband and kids in Florida, where spends her days dreaming of new characters and storylines and surprising plot twists and writing them beneath rustling palm trees. Visit her on Facebook or at courtneycolewriters.com