Our Last Wild Days by Anna Bailey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Loyal left her small hometown of Jacknife, Louisiana, when she was just 18-years old, after a falling out with her best friend, Cutter. When she left, she took a lot of guilt with her over what she’d done to Cutter.
Now a decade later, Loyal returns to Jacknife to help care for her Mom, who seems to be teetering on the edge of dementia. Loyal is nervous about being back. It feels like she’s been on the run from her past this whole time.
Luckily, Loyal, a journalist, is able to get a job working at the tiny local paper, which she’d contributed to when she had been in high school. She hasn’t burned every bridge.
Her first day on the job, she and her coworker, Sasha, get word that a body has been discovered in the swamps. They rush to the scene to see what info that can glean from the responding officers.
It’s quickly revealed that the body belongs to Loyal’s estranged best friend, Cutter. Loyal is devastated on so many levels. She was hoping for a chance to reconcile with her friend, to apologize for what she had done, but now she’s been robbed of that chance.
Cutter’s early ife had been filled with hardship and tragedy, and from what Loyal’s heard, it’s only gotten worse recently. Now she’s been taken out just as tragically.
Many believe Cutter most likely took her own life, but Loyal isn’t buying that. There’s no way the girl she knew would do that, but how well did she actually know Cutter anymore?
Loyal and Sasha begin digging for answers, discovering small town corruption and dangerous dealings along the way. Will they be able to expose the truth, or will Cutter end up just being another person lost to the swamp?
Our Last Wild Days is Anna Bailey’s 2nd-novel, and IMO, it’s an improvement over their debut, Where the Truth Lies, which was good, but nothing about it really stood out for me.
I feel like this novel is going to stick in my mind. The characters were fantastically-developed and I thought the South Louisiana setting, the atmosphere created around that, was excellent as well.
If you enjoy gritty Crime Fiction, with a touch of a Hillbilly Noir-type feel to it, you should definitely give this one a shot. It has a nice slow burn, that definitely pays off if you stick around until the end.
And when I say slow burn, I don’t mean that it feels slow. The story itself builds at a nice clip, I just feel like Bailey really invested the time in building out the story in a way that would pull the Reader in and make them care.
By the end, I needed answers as badly as Loyal did. I needed for Cutter’s true story to be told. The characters felt completely realistic. I think for anyone who grew up in a small town in the U.S., you may even start to see bits and pieces of your own hometown on display here.
I’m impressed with this. I think Bailey has found their stride, and it’s only going to keep getting stronger. I hope they stick in this lane. This sort of atmospheric Crime Thriller really suits their writing.
Thank you to the publisher, Atria, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I’m looking forward to Bailey’s next novel already!!!