I don’t read much crime fiction, but if this type of novel is held up by The Australian newspaper as a ‘carefully constructed, impeccably paced psycho-thriller’; I won’t be reading anymore in a hurry. Awful characters - ALL of them. Her husband rigs a murder and gets away with it. Lina quietly turns a blind eye at the end. Nonsense from start to finish. My mouth feels like it’s been chewing on cardboard.

i needed a break from a tome I'm less than way through and this was perfect. I whizzed through. Lina and Cain list their holiday house online for casual stays. She's not keen, but they really need the money. They have secrets, and someone may be watching. As usual, @jppomare is super engaging and his books are hard to put down. Probably not one to read while you're in an airbnb though.

J.P. Pomare won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel with his debut CALL ME EVIE. Since then he's carved out a name for himself when it comes to precisely plotted, atmospheric, tense psychological thrillers populated by cleverly constructed characters, designed to keep readers guessing, disconcerted and utterly fascinated.

In THE LAST GUESTS he's combined high technology and human frailty to create a plot that takes readers into a careful examination of morality, via the avenues of voyeurism, trauma, exposure, trust, and the things we will (and won't do) for love. Through the interesting lens of the current day short term holiday rental craze.

Although, the twist here is that newlyweds, Lina and Cain, who are struggling financially, eventually agree to renting out her family's weekender house after lots of persuasion from him. She's reluctant - the house means a lot to Lina and her family, but it's all the rage at Lake Tarawera now, with their neighbours there already signing up renters.

Relations are strained between Lina and Cain - he's a returned soldier, struggling with many demons, hiding a lot of secrets some of which are very personal. She's not short of secrets of her own, and it's these secrets that threaten to come out, when in the process of readying the house for guests, a shadowy presence lurks, watching. The strange things that start to happen, end up in a deadly twist, and Lina starts to feel threatened and very vulnerable.

Pomare has never been frightened of taking on some tricky issues in any of this books thus far. Conflict, trauma, addiction and obsession are areas he's delved into before. In THE LAST GUESTS he's pushing those right into the strains that can happen in a marriage - adding infertility and financial pressure to the mess. Overlay the whole thing with cyber-voyeurism and the creepy feeling that comes from the idea that it could be so easy for somebody to stalk or spy on you these days, it's not going to be surprising if some readers will be carefully checking their houses whilst reading this novel.

In this outing, in particular, though, Pomare's provided readers with a real possibility of playing detective, although the diversions, red herrings and potential outcomes list is pretty big, and became all a bit too much for this reader, who quickly opted for a bit of "go with the flow" and frankly "I'm a bit too tense to be ticking boxes and creating incident boards" here.

If you're new to J.P. Pomare's work (CALL ME EVIE, IN THE CLEARING and TELL ME LIES are his earlier books), then you're fine to leap in here - they are all standalone stories. They are all also very good, and if you get THE LAST GUEST then you'll undoubtedly be searching out the earlier works.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/last-guests-jp-pomare

Full disclosure: I finished this book when I should've been going to sleep so the details are a little fuzzy. However, I did so because I just couldn't spend much more time on it. So...

It was fine. The reveal that Cain knew about Lina sleeping with Daniel and made Daniel pretend to be a voyeur in the lake house so that he could kill him was surprising. But also not? At least not Cain's involvement. Lina suspected it so many times and then seemed to be totally surprised by the idea over and over again?

So many side plots felt unnecessary- Scotty being on drugs, Lina reporting the abusive politician.

The idea that Lina was cheating only to get pregnant was surprising but also I hated it. I truly have no patience for the "woman who can't get pregnant acts in insane ways" trope that comes up so often. I have even less patience when it's being written by a man.

I also feel like, once she knew Cain had orchestrated everything to kill her "lover", Lina should've left him. This whole "we both had secrets" bs is so dumb. Especially when she seemed to not really like Cain most of the time?

I will say that knowing the author is Maori made some bits way less weird. There were some lines that sounded almost fetishizing and would've been really problematic for a white author.

It was all just okay and I kind of wish I hadn't spent the time on it when I saw it available at the library.

I absolutely loved this book, I didn’t guess the ending and it was the definition of a psychological thriller! It was not just thrilling but scary, the details were so realistic it had my heart racing while I was on the edge of my seat, listening to the creaks in my own house - I couldn’t put it down and read it in one five hour sitting.
This author is so clever, the concept is so unique, I loved both the main plot and the sub plots and how everything ties together in the end. Couldn’t praise more the way the book is written, the storyline and how it is set out with articles in-between chapters was captivating!
J.P. Pomare is one of my favourite authors, he produces perfect books! Would recommend this book to anyone.

2.5