Information:
- Author: Ginny Myers Sain
- Genre: Thriller, Horror, Paranormal
- Page Count: 384
- Year Published: 2024
Read This if You Like:
- Atmospheric Thrillers
- Unsolved Murders
- Sapphic Relationships
- Fake Towns in Florida (that also have mysterious secrets)
- Natural Hot Springs
- Star-crossed Romance
- Plenty of twists, plus a climactic ending
- Serial Killers
Spoiler-Free Summary:
Trulee knows that her hometown, Mount Orange, Florida, has one redeeming feature other than its famous hot springs- it’s also home to the unsolved murders of the teenage girls Bailey and Celeste. This summer is the 20th anniversary of their deaths, and Tru just wants the true crime fanatics to quit treating the case as entertainment- as well as answers for why she keeps dreaming about Bailey and Celeste. And Tru finally has a chance to find out the answers when a new girl named Rio arrives in town, eager to find out the truth about the murders. Soon, Tru and Rio discover a shocking connection between themselves, as well as a more otherworldly one between them and the dead girls. However, it appears someone is trying to prevent Tru and Rio from finding out the truth, to the point of which they’re willing to make things deadly…
Review/Opinions:
This was my second Ginny Myers Sain book: I read her debut Dark and Shallow Lies about a year and a half ago (and I have her second book, Secrets So Deep, sitting unread on my Kindle.) I did like Dark and Shallow Lies, even if it wasn’t the greatest book of all time (but I will never forgive the author for that ending. That was brutal.) So I decided to give her 2024 release a try, and I definitely preferred this one over her debut, even if I got serious writer’s block writing this review and I’m finishing it months after I started writing it. It still had some imperfections, but overall I ended up really enjoying this atmospheric read.
I don’t really read horror YA that focuses more on atmosphere and creepy vibes than shocking plot twists and slashers, but this book definitely had a lot of good twists and shocking moments. I really enjoyed the hot-springs setting, since it was more unique than a generic setting in the woods (also, the author has some obsession with setting her books near water), and this was elevated by how Tru described her experiences with diving in the water and how she always tried to go as deep as possible, even though it was dangerous. Despite the atmosphere, this also had a bunch of more classic slasher and true crime vibes- since there’s the murders with Bailey and Celeste, and there’s also a plot involving a serial killer. Despite all this, nothing really had me audibly gasping or anything- it just felt like it came a little unsatisfying for horror. Even if I didn’t have as large a reaction as I thought I would, there were definitely some good twists- I really wasn’t anticipating some of the creepier moments.
As standard with 90% of YA novels, there is also a small romance subplot mixed into the story in between the plot twists. Tru and Rio end up spending a lot of time together as they worked to solve the mystery, to the point of which a star-crossed connection theory started to spawn between the two girls, and it led to romance. Their romance wasn’t the best I’ve read, but it was still sweet and wrapped up nicely. I liked the idea of there being a whole romance based on the idea of them being destined for each other- it seems like a cringy idea in hindsight, but it’s more generic than a trope like friends to lovers- or a love triangle.
Yep, people, this book goes into love-triangle zone. It’s not as bad as the ones in the 2010s YA dystopian genre, but this book still has elements of one, so you have been warned, people who will burn any book with a love triangle. In a nutshell, even though Tru is starting to fall for Rio, she also currently has a boyfriend, East, who she has been dating since before the start of the book. I wasn’t the biggest fan of East- he didn’t have much personality outside being Tru’s boyfriend, and felt like a cardboard-cutout YA interest. I didn’t really hate him, I just wanted him to have more personality. But then [REDACTED SPOILER] happened and East got exactly what should’ve happened to him. That’s why I say this book doesn’t have the worst love triangle, because [REDACTED SPOILER] makes it fizzle out after a while. But if you are part of 90% of the YA reader population, most likely you’ll be irritated for a bit due to the love-triangle vibes.
Another thing that I feel like people will have mixed feelings about is the climax. One thing I will say about Ginny Myers Sain is that she knows how to write the perfect climax- as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, her earlier book Dark and Shallow Lies has one of YA’s most brutal endings that I’ve ever read, and that same energy flows into One Last Breath‘s climax. There are some great twists and revelations- but at the same time, the climax just has a lot going on. The book reveals a shocking twist, and then it turns out to be a red herring. And that same process goes on for a few chapters. I love when a book has a good amount of twists, but stuffing them all at the climax made it seem like there was too much going on. The climax would’ve been improved, in my opinion, if it focused on one major twist or red herring and had the rest be spread out throughout the book, or cut entirely, to avoid the cluttered feeling. But again, all the twists in the climax were really good, so it’s really a matter of quality over quantity, or vice-versa.
Overall, this was a fun thriller read, which had a good blend of atmosphere, twists, and romance. While I feel like some readers will have mixed views on the setup of some of the twists, especially during the climax, as while as the inclusion of a small love triangle, I personally liked this one despite some of the flaws, and Ginny Myers Sain is an author whose works I’ll continue to check out every once in a while.
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