Book Review: Every Last Fear | Alex Finlay

The Stats

📖 BOOK REVIEW⠀📚

BOOK: Every Last Fear

AUTHOR: Alex Finlay @alexfinlayauthor

Publisher: Minotaur Books @minotaur_books

Stars: ⭐⭐⭐

Published: March 2, 2021

https://amzn.to/2NBqfjm

The Review

✨ The Title/Cover Draw:

• Originally this book was a pick for a book club but has since been removed for controversial reasons. However I did receive this from Netgalley and the premise sounded interesting.

💜 What I liked:

• The story itself was very twisty. It is told in the POV of the past and present through many different members of the Pine family and FBI agent Keller. It grabs you from the beginning. 

😱 What I didn’t like:

• I did not appreciate the “stereotypical” description of hispanics. It was problematic especially since there weren’t any views that were positive at all. There isn’t diversity and it’s really negative in that way. Also the story gets really convoluted in the middle which caused me to stumble there.

💁‍♀️ The Characters:

• The Pine family is Matt, Maggie, Tim, Danny and their parents. Also we see Charlotte who was killed in high school and Sarah Keller, the FBI agent. The story is told by Matt, Maggie, Matt’s dad, and Sarah.

🚦 The Ending:

• I kinda started to see it coming but I felt like it was mostly plausible.

💭 Consider if:

• You like complicated thrillers.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Received from Netgalley.

📘 Summary:

“They found the bodies on a Tuesday.” So begins this twisty and breathtaking novel that traces the fate of the Pine family, a thriller that will both leave you on the edge of your seat and move you to tears.

After a late night of partying, NYU student Matt Pine returns to his dorm room to devastating news: nearly his entire family—his mom, his dad, his little brother and sister—have been found dead from an apparent gas leak while vacationing in Mexico. The local police claim it was an accident, but the FBI and State Department seem far less certain—and they won’t tell Matt why.

The tragedy makes headlines everywhere because this isn’t the first time the Pine family has been thrust into the media spotlight. Matt’s older brother, Danny—currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his teenage girlfriend Charlotte—was the subject of a viral true crime documentary suggesting that Danny was wrongfully convicted. Though the country has rallied behind Danny, Matt holds a secret about his brother that he’s never told anyone: the night Charlotte was killed Matt saw something that makes him believe his brother is guilty of the crime.

When Matt returns to his small hometown to bury his parents and siblings, he’s faced with a hostile community that was villainized by the documentary, a frenzied media, and memories he’d hoped to leave behind forever. Now, as the deaths in Mexico appear increasingly suspicious and connected to Danny’s case, Matt must unearth the truth behind the crime that sent his brother to prison—putting his own life in peril—and forcing him to confront his every last fear.

Told through multiple points-of-view and alternating between past and present, Alex Finlay’s Every Last Fear is not only a page-turning thriller, it’s also a poignant story about a family managing heartbreak and tragedy, and living through a fame they never wanted.