The Last Housewife

This is an extremely disturbing thriller. It almost crosses the line into horror.
Shay has disappeared from her former life, but is drawn back into it by her childhood friend, Jamie, who hosts a podcast called Transgressions. When her college roommate, Laurel, is found dead by hanging, Shay believes it is murder, not a suicide, because it is eerily familiar to the death of another of their roommates, Clem.
The book goes down into a terrifying look at a violent, patriarchal cult known as the Pater Society. It is a damning look at how women can be forced into submission and made to feel unworthy.
This book made me feel many things: horror, disgust, pity, sadness, disbelief, and more. The author interview at the end of the book is quite show more interesting. Please get help if you feel that you are being made to feel unworthy and that you deserve it -- you don't! show less

Another thriller audiobook that I listened to while driving back home from the Utah Shakespeare Festival. This one has stayed with me in the weeks since finishing it and still gives me the chills. I may even have to change what kind of romance smut I read due to this, I don't know. It was just intense, so be aware of the content warnings: on the page descriptions of suicide, physical and sexual violence, trauma, self-harm, misogyny, gender essentialism, and drug use.

With that out of the way, I love when books include interesting or unique narrative elements. For The Last Housewife, this was done through the podcast that Shay listens to who's host happens to be the boy she was best friends with growing up until she left for college. show more Throughout the novel there is podcast transcripts of the episodes he'll eventually post about Shay's life growing up and her time at Whitney college in between the regular story narrative.

To be honest, the story telling was a bit predictable. Shay's relationship with her husband, Cal, goes down hill as she continues to investigate what happened to Laurel and the reemergence of the cult she was in in college. At the same time, her relationship with Jamie is reinvigorated, especially as we find out that he's been in love with Shay since they were teens. Also, the big reveal of what happened to Laurel and who was behind everything was not surprising. It was actually a bit annoying in that basement scene when Shay was super slow on the uptake that Laurel was never the one dead, but that Rachel was. I get that she's in an intense situation and it may have taken her a second to figure it out, but it's not for a few more pages and if I remember correctly, Laurel basically has to spell it out for her (I feel like John Oliver complaining about how long it took Robert Langdon to solve the cryptex puzzle but yea, same energy here). So why would I give this novel four stars and a lot of praise? Because of everything surrounding it. Similar to my review of The Cartographers, the mystery was never the point of the novel, it was the characters and the themes themselves that were important. The same can be said for The Last Housewife.

Everyone thinks they're smart enough, savvy enough, have enough common sense to not fall victim to a cult. I mean I can even admit to myself that I've felt that way to at times when looking at our current political landscape wondering how certain people can get behind these policies or truly, wholeheartedly believe in what's being said about certain groups or peoples. For want of a better way to phrase it, a more palatable, or understanding way, there's no way I can not say what I think here: I thought I was better than them. I'm not only educated with a bachelor's degree, but with two Masters's degrees. How could I not be better? Thankfully, over the past few years of learning and growing, I've moved away from that mindset, but it still pops up everyone once and a while. I'm revealing this about myself in this review because one of the major themes of the novel is Shay's introspection. By alternating between the narration and the podcast transcripts, readers are taken on an emotional roller-caster ride where Shay bares it all. She doesn't shy away or cover up the choices she's made. She'll tell a story from her childhood not to excuse or explain away her choices but to provide context for why she did what she did. Taking a true look at your own self takes a shit ton of courage and vulnerability to admit and acknowledge the wrongs you've done, even when you yourself were a victim. It was powerful novel that delves into the ideas of victim and perpetrator in a compassionate manner.

Many compare the cult in this novel NXIVM, but the author states that she had an obsession with the Sarah Lawrence sex cult where a father moves into his daughter's dorm room at Sarah Lawrence College in 2010, and over the course of a decade, indoctrinated a variety of her friends into a patriarchal cult that twisted feminist ideas. There's actually a scene in this novel where after Shay talks about one of the times they met up with Don, Jamie questions why she fell for what he said, and she's able to quote word for word philosophical thinkers from Aristotle to Kant and many others. The quotes are all about how women are inferior and these thinkers were the same ones on their reading lists at college, so Shay thinks Don must be on the right path. He appeals to their intelligence but more than that it's to their childhood trauma and the way society in general looks and thinks about women. '"What if you're a woman," I said, feeling each word like fire in my throat, "and the world teaches you who you are, and where your place is, from the moment you're born, but all along, it's a lie. What if the lie chains you everyday? If you're not thinking straight any minute of your life, and even your defiance, even your pleasure, is suspect?" I pressed my palm against the cold glass. "How does consent work then? What makes you want the things you want? Is it your choice, or were you molded?”'

Ask any woman, girl, assigned female at birth person in your life the first time they realized that men, grown men, men who are held up as pillars of the community, looked at them with desire or lust or want. We all have an answer. Yes, we've made progress in what women can do and achieve but we still don't believe women who are assaulted or raped, we still have to prove that we belong in certain spaces, we have to justify the why always. This becomes even worse when women of color are persecuted for taking up space or speaking up.

The Last Housewife was definitely a heavy novel and not one I would recommend listening to while driving in the pitch black of night in the desert area of Arizona, hoping and praying that the Google Maps was taking you the right way. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything. At first, I gave this a 3 out of 5 star rating, but when I started writing this I realized I needed to bump it up to 4 stars. As I said above, the story is predictable but everything going on around it and how it all comes down is the main takeaway from the novel. I'm seriously debating buying my own copy to annotate it was that impactful. show less

The Last Housewife follows Shay Evans who lives what many would call a dream life in Texas. When Shay hears a true crime podcaster announce one of her old friend's deaths, she decides to team up with the podcast host and step back into a world she vowed to leave and never look back. This thriller was an absolutely wild ride. I finished it earlier today and I cannot stop thinking about it. This story is extremely dark and uncomfortable and oddly enough, I enjoyed every minute of it. I loved the podcast transcripts mixed into Shay's POV and her walking through her past and current paths. The unraveling of Shay's past kept me gripped from the very beginning and THAT ending is just wow. My only small thing I didn't love was Shay's personal show more relationships in the now. I don't want to spoil anything, but really that was the only complaint I had. Highly recommend if you go in knowing this is a wild, twisty, dark thriller.

As a full warning, this book covers extremely dark topics. There are content warnings on the author's website detailing things the book covers and it is a lot. show less

Technically I think this is more a 4.5 star read, but... you can't give half stars on Goodreads. The reason for the half star reduction is because I still have questions that I selfishly want answered, nothing that takes away from the ending or makes it a "bad" ending because it's a fine ending; I just want more information, this book was so good that I want more and more. I won't say too much because spoilers would be the worst for anyone going into this, but I will say this story is not as outlandish as one might want to believe. In fact, at the end, there's an excellent real-life example of a very, very similar "organization".
Just read this, it's very good and the audio was done very well if you choose that route.

This was my first Ashely Winstead book, and I truly enjoyed this novel. Shay is a bored, wealthy housewife who seems to feel trapped in her mansion and marriage. While we may be inclined to think “poor little rich girl”, this story gets very interesting. Shay learns about the suicide of her best friend from college, and she decides to look into it due to their shared trauma history she’s been running away from for 8 years. This is a timely novel, as it explores misogyny, class, and their intersection. Readers should be warned about rape, sexual abuse, suicide, and physical violence depicted in this novel. This is a worthwhile read and highly recommended.

I don’t know if I can properly rate this.
This was disturbing. So the writing did what it was supposed to do, but I discovered that I’m not a fan of feeling like I did after reading this. So the author did a great job with that and the rating is more about me and not the actual story.

DNF at 30%

I really enjoyed how this book started: a woman is forging a new path for herself as a full-time writer but feels like an imposter when she's unable to get started on the book she's always wanted to write. She's listening to a true-crime podcast when she's shocked to hear that a friend from college has died under mysterious circumstances - and it's her second college roommate to die.
It turns out the podcast host is also a childhood friend and she reaches out to him to learn more about what's happened. She makes the decision to travel to her alma mater to uncover the truth because apparently there's a dark and sordid history to unpack.
Suddenly, readers are learning that a former roommate's dad was a gross dude luring young show more women in to some kinky stuff and then our protagonist, in her attempt to learn what happened to her friend in the present, is joining what I assume is an S&M cult.
Well... that escalated quickly.
I'm not a prude, I just couldn't stomach another second of a man so full of himself impressing young women who are fawning all over him. Barf. show less