Review: Famous Last Words, by Gillian McAllister

 

Title: Famous Last Words

Author: Gillian McAllister

Publisher: William Morrow

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Date of Publication: February 25th 2025

Number of Pages: 336

See it on Goodreads: Famous Last Words

Summary

From the author of Reese’s Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time comes an addictive thriller about a new mother’s world upended when her husband commits a terrifying crime. How well does she truly know the man she loves? And what danger does she face if her entire life has been built on a lie?

It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.

Then it starts. Breaking news: there's a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn't a hostage. Her husband—doting father, eternal optimist—is the gunman.

What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says...

Famous Last Words is the story of a crime, a marriage, and more secrets than Camilla ever could have imagined. This novel cements Gillian McAllister’s reputation as “the best at putting her characters in impossible situations and making her readers not only contemplate but feel what it would be like to find themselves in those situations.” (Emily Henry)

Review - Can Love Survive Through Extreme Situations?

When I read Wrong Place Wrong Time last year, I thought that it had a very interesting premise, even though I eventually thought that it could have concluded in a more interesting place. Nevertheless, I was eager to give Gillian McAllister another chance with Famous Last Words. As in her previous book, I thought that the premise was intriguing, and I was curious to see how it would end up.

As a mystery/thriller, Famous Last Words does a great job of grabbing your attention from the very beginning. Act 1 establishes the main story, having Camilla return to work and finding out that Luke is involved in a hostage situation. After such a strong start, my expectations grew even higher...

...only to be brought down page after page. I've been trying to think what really bothered me in these days that I've spent before writing this review. The answer I've come up with is the seven-year time jump. 

Was there a reason why we needed to get that far in the future? It didn't make sense to me that Camilla didn't move on with her life - she didn't even touch Luke's side of their bedroom. Seriously? For seven years? But what bothered me the most is that she found some hints after seven years, which she could have easily found all these years if she'd just cleaned her place. Or that she's approached by one of her husband's victims' wives all of a sudden, after seven years.

The only case where this time jump made sense was in the case of Niall, the hostage negotiator. He kept feeling like he had failed his mission, so it is perfectly logical that he wants to find out the truth, even when the case has been cold for so long.

Apart from that, I also didn't particularly like the writing style. One of my biggest complaints in Wrong Place Wrong Time was that the protagonist was always talking about her beautiful husband and her sweet, smart son. Well, the exact same applies here (except for the fact that Camilla doesn't have a son). It seemed to me that the most important thing for Camilla was to prove that Luke was innocent and couldn't have done what he did (although we do know that he did do it). And since we are spending a lot of time in her perspective, it felt very repetitive. Sure, I understand that if a person you love does something like this, you are in disbelief. Still, he clearly wasn't innocent, and after being seven years into hiding, I would expect at least some acceptance of that. 

All in all, Famous Last Words started off strong but failed to live up to its intriguing premise. I've read somewhere online that Wrong Place Wrong Time was a mom mystery/thriller, and I believe that we can say the same for this one as well.