During the years of 2014 – 2016, I had a voracious appetite for reading books like Gone Girl, Girl on a Train and The Woman in Cabin 10. I then had to take a bit of a break as they all started to merge into one book in my mind. Well, fast forward to Corona 2020 and me literally reading or listening to a book every few weeks, I came across one of a similar ilk and unputdownable… Last Girl Gone: A Laura Chambers Novel. I was hooked from Chapter 1 and read the book in 2 days. It would have been 1 day if I didn’t have to work for a living!
This book (the first in a series) introduces us to journalist, Laura Chambers who has a somewhat sad childhood of growing up with an abusive mother. After being fired for reasons we find out later in the book from a prestigious investigative journalist job at the Boston Globe, Laura returns to her home town of Hillsborough, NC, a place she left vowing to never return.
Laura accepts a job for a local newspaper where nothing really happens. That is until the body of a missing girl turns up and completely washed clean with very few clues as to what happened. This is the start of Laura trying to uncover Hillsborough’s dark past of 10-year old missing girls and a reign of terror that gripped the town, which no-one really talks about.
Laura has to fight for the lead story with a nasty fellow journalist, gets police snippets from a Deputy she is having a causal relationship with and gathers understanding into a serial killers mind from her therapist, who of course is paid to listen to her.
As Laura investigates deeper and deeper into the past, it unravels in a gripping way with lots of twists, turns and surprises. I was honestly stumped with what was going to happen through to the end of the book. This is a fantastic mystery, crime and psychological thriller all in one. A must read if you love these types of books.
