Book Review | The Last Housewife

A pitch-black thriller about a woman determined to destroy a powerful cult and avenge the deaths of the women taken in by it, no matter the cost.

While in college in upstate New York, Shay Evans and her best friends met a captivating man who seduced them with a web of lies about the way the world works, bringing them under his thrall. By senior year, Shay and her friend Laurel were the only ones who managed to escape. Now, eight years later, Shay's built a new life in a tiny Texas suburb. But when she hears the horrifying news of Laurel's death—delivered, of all ways, by her favorite true-crime podcast crusader—she begins to suspect that the past she thought she buried is still very much alive, and the predators more dangerous than ever.

Recruiting the help of the podcast host, Shay goes back to the place she vowed never to return to in search of answers. As she follows the threads of her friend's life, she's pulled into a dark, seductive world, where wealth and privilege shield brutal philosophies that feel all too familiar. When Shay's obsession with uncovering the truth becomes so consuming she can no longer separate her desire for justice from darker desires newly reawakened, she must confront the depths of her own complicity and conditioning. But in a world built for men to rule it—both inside the cult and outside of it—is justice even possible, and if so, how far will Shay go to get it?

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. 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.