If you have ever read a book by JP Pomare you know that you are in for a wild ride. In the Clearing is one of my favourite books and one that I regularly recommend to others. I was really excited to get an early copy of The Last Guests and dived straight in. A few hours later I was finished. I just could not stop reading it. It is dark and twisty and it will shock you. The fact that it could so easily happen as well will scare you. Has definitely made me think twice about staying in an Air BNB.

Set in NZ, The Last Guests is the story of Lina and Cain, a married couple with money issues. Lina is a paramedic and Cain is an ex-SAS officer, now personal trainer. Lina desperately wants a baby and Cain is still having nightmares about his tour overseas. Friends convince them to make some extra money by renting out Lina's family home at Lake Tarawere, that she inherited from her grandfather. At first she isn't keen but Cain manages to talk her round, saying that it will give him a project. It is the start of a nightmare for the couple with their secrets threatening to be exposed.

Whilst reading this I was feeling Lina's fear and anxiety. Pomare writes such great characters and you can relate to them and what is happening to them. I hope that this is a situation that I never find myself in!!

Thanks to Hachette Australia for my advanced copy of this book to read. Publication date in Australia is July 28th

Now this is a thriller the book hooked me in and soon scared me!
Living in New Zealand, Lina a paramedic whose married to Cain a former NZSAS are struggling financially. It doesn’t help Cain has a gambling problem. After discussing with a few friends, Cain and Lina decide to rent out the lake house she inherited from her grandfather on Lake Tarawera. Much to their surprise the house gets rented quickly. With extra money coming in what could go wrong.
Soon we discover someone has snuck in and has installed small cameras all over the home, inside bedrooms and bathrooms, the cameras are going back to a private website for voyeurs. The cameras track every move. Unbeknownst to the people who rent the homes. Soon we see a nightmare unfold. Lina and Cain are both hiding secrets from eachother and they soon will be living a nightmare. Secrets have a way of being revealed. One night can change everything! Wow what’s scary is this could actually happen. I highly recommend five stars!

Oh I really wanted to love this one. I loved his previous book, Tell Me Lies, and I’d seen such rave reviews about The Last Guests, but here it comes…..unpopular opinion…….I didn’t love this one.

Fantastic premise for a story, super creepy vibe to it and I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to stay at an Air BnB for a while, but something just didn’t grab me.

I think it was the main characters. I just couldn’t get drawn into their lives. I couldn’t understand Lina’s behaviour and instant guilt, even before she’d done anything wrong, it felt to me her reasoning was explained too far down the storyline so by then I just found her annoying.

Meanwhile her husband Cain seemed so one-dimensional that I couldn’t care less what he had to say.

Set in New Zealand, Lina and Cain decide to rent out their lakehouse as a holiday home to earn some extra income, unfortunately things don’t quite pan out the way they had hoped.

With Lina seemingly the target of a stalker whose advances seem to be escalating and Cain keeping secrets of his own everything soon threatens to fall apart.

Intertwined amongst their stories are random pages devoted to what appears to be some kind of secret voyeur’s club where complete strangers get off from spying on the goings-on through secret cameras installed in random B&B’s around the world. These sections just seemed so separate to the story and unnecessary that I still can’t work out what purpose they played in the overall story.

I honestly struggle leaving negative reviews and especially for an author whose previous work I’ve just loved, so please don’t let my negativity put you off if this one is on your TBR list. I found last month a bit of a struggle with some of my reads so maybe I was just in a bad mood when I read this one.

The premise of the story was good, but the author went all over the place unnecessarily, and they lost me. Very little character development.

I thought I was done with this author after giving the other two books of his that I read 3 and 1 stars, but the premise of this one reeled me in. It didn’t take me long to start regretting my decision and by the end, all I can say is that I really am done with Pomare.

Unlikeable characters—some of whom are completely superfluous—who do stupid, nonsensical things. Red herring/dropped plot points. A lot of repetition. A ridiculous ending based on a “twist” not worthy of that label. Also, for some reason, Pomare consistently writes female first person and yet is so bad at it.