Her Last Holiday

Author: C. L. Taylor

Publisher: Avon Publishers

Release Date: April 27, 2021

A complex thriller with a killer twist and characters that have all the right moves at all the right times!

It has been two years since Fran’s sister, Jenna, disappeared after attending a wellness retreat. The family hasn’t been close for a while, but they still want to know what happened to Jenna. Tom Wade, the founder of Soul Shrink Retreats, the same retreat Jenna disappeared on, has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for the deaths of two others that died on the same retreat as Jenna. Tom sets up another retreat and Fran decides the only way to get answers about what happened to her sister is to confront one of the last people to see her alive. The longer she is at the retreat the more questions Fran has and the more she fears she might end up just like Jenna.

This was my first C.L. Taylor book and I am torn as falls in the middle of the pack of what I’ve read this year. It is well written and has lots of great twists and turns. Readers will need to be aware that this is not set in America and some of the lingo and characters might be confusing at times. With that aside, I will say that the suspense and tension of the novel was spot on. So many times, I was really concerned for what might have happened to Jenna or was about to happen to one of the other characters that I couldn’t put the book down. Lots of language and mature themes throughout which was a turn off for me at points. I’m not saying I can’t handle a book with language and mature themes, but it must be done in such a way that helps the story and doesn’t take me out of it. Fran is a good bit older than Jenna and that makes their relationship tense at times but also gives her the big sister drive of wanting to know what happened to her sister and make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else again. There is a lot of back and forth between timelines and different characters point of views. The different point of views helps give the story a wider range making it easier to follow. A few errors in the writing that wasn’t consistent throughout that bugged me but that was more towards the end of the novel. Readers that enjoy a good thriller and don’t mind a little language will enjoy this one.

I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher.  The views and opinions expressed within are my own.