Score: 4.5/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to Minotaur Books for gifting me a review copy of Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay.

This book is a mystery within a mystery—it’s so deliciously twisty I couldn’t put it down! Part murder mystery, part police procedural, it will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up!

FBI agents greet Matt Pine at his NYU dorm after a night out, to tell him that most of his family has been found dead while on spring break in Mexico. But this isn’t the first time the Pine family has been in the news under horrific circumstances. Matt’s older brother was convicted of brutally killing his girlfriend, and is currently serving a life sentence. That murder was the subject of a true-crime documentary that changed so many people’s lives, and not for the better. Nothing is quite as it seems though, and it all starts to unravel as Matt, and the FBI, learns more about the truth.

I wanted a little more from the FBI agent’s perspective, and a more in-depth explanation at the ending—the motive wasn’t fully explained to my satisfaction—but it didn’t detract much from my enjoyment of the book. I was hooked from the start and seriously couldn’t put it down.

This would make such a phenomenal movie or tv series. I can already picture it in my head now! Grab your own copy via the button below.

Synopsis:

“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.