Review: Our Last Resort by Clemence Michallon

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!

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The Book: Our Last Resort by Clemence Michallon

Content warnings

• SA

The Synopsis (from memory)

Frida and Gabriel grew up in a cult, though they didn’t know it at the time. Eventually they leave and go their separate ways, but nine years later they reunite at the luxurious Ara Resort in Escalante, Utah.

Here, a woman is murdered and Frida and Gabriel become persons of interest. She works to clear their names before their vacation is over.

The Review (TLDR)

Ugh. I wanted to love this so much! I loved The Quiet Tenant so my expectations were high, and unfortunately I was let down. The cult story wasn’t really necessary and it took up A LOT of pages. I didn’t like either of the main characters, or the side characters.

The location was a major let down (and I was very excited about that because I love Escalante). It’s set in Escalante but the cover is Monument valley (egregious!). As egregious as that is, I do love the cover, it’s beautiful. None of the twists surprised me even a little bit and I was only a little entertained.

I obviously didn’t hate it enough to DNF but the more I read, the less I liked. I wanted to love this so much but it just wasn’t for me.

The Good

The cover. Knowing nothing about the location of the book, and even knowing that, it’s a beautiful cover, so props for the design. I also just noticed the burned corner which I love.

The location. After living in southern Utah/northern Arizona for six years, I saw this was set in Escalante and immediately requested it. I love Escalante so I was very excited for a book, a thriller no less, to be set there.

The writing. While I don’t love the content of the book, it is well written so I have to give props for that. I didn’t notice any typos or weird grammar stuff so I can appreciate that.

The Bad

I will say now, a lot of my grievances with this book are because I know the area. And I really dislike when books use real places but they aren’t accurate to the actual place. I actually feel bad how much I disliked this because I wanted to love it so much.

Shady Hubby. Gabriel was suspected of murdering his wife nine years ago and the nickname that the media came up with for him was Shady Hubby. Shady. Hubby. This was like, half a page of the book and it’s possibly my least favorite thing about it. This is the worst name for a suspected murderer, fiction or not, that I’ve ever seen in my life.

The cover. I love the cover, it’s beautiful, right? Obviously. But it’s Monument Valley, which is almost five and a half hours from Escalante! If you know nothing about southern Utah, this doesn’t matter, but come on.

The location. Again, I LOVE Escalante, but this could have been set literally anywhere because we don’t get anything Escalante. Half of the book is flashbacks to New Jersey, which was way more than I expected. Then when we were in Escalante, it was just at the resort.

And this resort is basically Amangiri, but moved to Escalante. Which is fine but not that interesting. We do go into the town of Escalante once but it wasn’t really great for experiencing Escalante. Should have just kept it where it actually is.

And I know this is fiction but if you’re setting it in a real town, I expect it to be accurate to the real place. These people keep talking about getting flights out, and at one point a lawyer was flying back to Salt Lake but there is no airport in Escalante. There’s a small airstrip/airport for government agencies but there are no commercial flights here of any size.

I even looked it up and searching flights to Escalante showed me flights to Page which is three and a half hours away. Should have just kept the fancy resort where it originally is.

At one point, the main suspect is “tipping off the Escalante News” which is so silly to me. It’s like the newspaper in this tiny little town is some major celebrity tabloid. It was just weird.

Finally, the law enforcement here. This lady is murdered and detectives are here within like, 30 minutes. (Correct me if I’m wrong on this.) I cannot be convinced that the town of Escalante has the law enforcement available to properly investigate a murder this efficiently. These sounded like special investigators, not just regular cops investigating. They don’t even have their own force, I just checked, the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office is responsible for it.

The cult. I didn’t mind the idea of a cult aspect to this, but this was too much. Like, half of the book is cult flashbacks and in the end, all of the cult stuff probably could have been taken out and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference to the whole mystery.

The cult storyline itself wasn’t bad by any means, it just felt like a very different book, which I also would have read, but it didn’t fit with this one for me.

Frida. I feel generally neutral on Frida, I didn’t love her but she wasn’t the worst. I didn’t really care about her. This grievance is just her name. I don’t like it and kept forgetting her name was Frida, and anytime anyone used it, it just annoyed me and pulled me out of the story.

It wasn’t that surprising. I am not good at guessing twists in thrillers, but this one, I figured it all out. Nothing was really surprising to me. Kayla from Booksandlala always says she just wants to be entertained and surprised by thrillers, which is an idea I can subscribe to, and this one failed both of those for me.

The action. First, no action happens until the last like, 15%. Then, when it does happen, it’s not even that exciting, more frustrating because it doesn’t make sense.

VAGUE SPOILERS BELOW THIS UNTIL THE NEXT SECTION, NOTHING SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE BIG REVEALS

I have four complaints about this.

1. I’m sure some housekeepers out there would let people into other guests rooms, but my brain just won’t allow me to accept this happening, especially somewhere with such high brow celebrity clients.
2. Why the heck would an influencer need to see the secret hidden parking garage on their hotel tour? Honestly, who even cares about that?
3. Are there really car alarms that go off just by getting a little too close to them without touching them? Google isn’t showing me anything like this exists.
4. If you just smashed a car window in with a fire extinguisher, WHY would you punch more glass out with your fist wrapped in your shirt instead of just using the fire extinguisher again?
5. There is no button to open the trunk in the main part of this fancy sports car? She HAS to go through the backseat to get into the trunk? I don’t believe that.

SPOILERS ARE DONE NOW

Should you read Our Last Resort, too?

If you like cults and domestic thrillers, you’ll probably like this. Or books about rich people on vacation. It’s far from the worst book I’ve ever read so don’t let this scare you off, it was just not for me.

If you loved The Quiet Tenant, this is very different from that. That doesn’t meant you shouldn’t give it a shot, just don’t expect a similar type of story/thriller.

Buy Our Last Resort here

Have you read Our Last Resort? What did you think of it? Would you recommend it? I want to hear your thoughts!