Reviews with content warning for Drug use - The Last Housewife

Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

The Last Housewife by Ashley Winstead

91 reviews

alyssaoakley04's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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quadlutz22's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

This book was dark and at points difficult to read. But as I say that, I also liked it. But I encourage those interested in reading to check trigger warnings because this book isn’t going to be for everyone.

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seriouslyshannon's review against another edition

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3.5

“There would never be another antagonist more insidious than her own mind.”

Lots of trigger warnings on this one (grooming, rape, sexual/physical violence, suicide, drug use, trauma, cults). The story sucked me in around the 20% mark. If you are fascinated to learn about the NXIVM cult, this is the book for you. I had a hard time connecting with the main character, which is the only reason I didn’t rate this book higher.

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pkrantz's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

First off, to call this a thriller would be wrong. A mystery, maybe.

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife is one of my all time fav thrillers. Imagine my shock when I found out this book is about 75% explicit se-ual a-ault of women in extremely gruesome ways.

I don't necessarily dislike dark, heavy and complex subjects and I do think this could have been done so well but it wasn't. I love morally grey and complex characters but I think that implying that female characters might have enjoyed what is essentially r**e is not the way to go.

The relationships also felt weird. Shay feels Laurel is like a sister to her, but she knew her 2 years and haven't talked to her in 8 years? The romance plot also felt forced, and I didn't really see the point of Shay being married at all.

The plot had good bones, it really did. But none of the twists were unexpected and I felt like the s**ual violence was used for shock value sometimes more than anything.

I have to say that I never did think of DNF:ing so I was interested in the plot. But the ending felt dumb overall. The one thing I liked about it was that Shay

killed Don

, but the fact that

Laurel k**led herself, they air a podcast and apparently FBI cares about that, and then they think the charges against Shay will be dropped when she hacked someone with an axe in plain sight of the FBI (very Clytemnestra coded btw, loved it)

, come on. Do better.

The book could easily have been 100 pages shorter and yet the ending felt rushed.

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jeeprn's review against another edition

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Let me start by saying I’m not easily offended nor do I have any significant triggers when it comes to books and nor do I kink shame but this book crossed a line. The BDSM described within the book was nothing short of abuse and a couple of the scenes depicted mirrored attempted murder.

The MC, Shay, learns her college roommate Laurel was found hung in a tree on their college campus. Police ruled the death a suicide but the Shay listens to a podcast about the case where the host, Jamie, insinuates it’s murder and not a suicide. The Shay embarks on a journey with the podcast host to uncover the truth. It leads them through underground sex clubs that participate in prostitution and kink.

The story takes a hard left turn when Shay unveils to Jamie that she was once a live in sub for one of their other roommates (Rachel) father. A third roommate, Clem, died previously and seemingly tied to Rachel’s father. Shay, Laurel, and Clem were all submissives to Rachel’s father and seemingly held captive in his home. He only allowed them so much outside contact so as not to raise suspicion to the three women’s whereabouts. Shay slips back into the underground sex and kink world in an effort to find Laurel’s killer. And Rachel appears to have targeted these three women on behalf of her father’s request.

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