Last Girl Gone (Laura Chambers Mystery #1) by J.G. Hetherton #bookreview #thriller

Title: Last Girl Gone

Author: J.G. Hetherton

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Publication Date: June 12, 2018

Page Count: 309

My rating:  3 stars

About the book:

This pulse-pounding series debut is the next obsession for fans of Julia Keller and David Bell, and readers of unflinching thrillers.

Sometimes, the journey home is the most harrowing. And it’s every parent’s worst nightmare.

Investigative journalist Laura Chambers is back in her tiny hometown of Hillsborough, North Carolina, the one place she swore never to return. Fired from the Boston Globe, her career in shambles, she reluctantly takes a job with the local paper. The work is simple, unimportant, and worst of all, boring—at least until a missing girl turns up dead, the body impeccably clean, dressed to be the picture of innocence.

Years earlier, ten-year-old Patty Finch left home and never made it back. But for the people of Hillsborough, Patty was just the beginning. Child after child disappeared, a reign of terror the town desperately wants to forget. Now that terror has returned to seize another girl. And another. And another.

This is the story Laura’s been waiting for—her one last chance to get back onto the front page. She dives deeper into a case that runs colder by the second, only to discover the truth may be far closer to home than she could have ever imagined. Powerful, intricate, and tense, Last Girl Gone will have you looking over your shoulder long after the last page.

Last Girl Gone by J.G. Hetherton is the first book of the new Laura Chambers Mystery series. Laura Chambers is a journalist that had to return to her hometown of Hillsborough, North Carolina to take a job at the small town paper after being first from her job in Boston. With nothing but fluff pieces available Laura is just waiting for something worthwhile to write.

Suddenly the small town experiences a tragedy when the body of a young girl is found in a field having been washed and posed and another girl has gone missing yet to be found. Laura begs to be able to be the one to write the front page story and is given a deadline to go out and find out more about the girls.

Last Girl Gone was one of those books that on the surface will check all the boxes for thriller fans. The writing is solid and easy to read, the characters good, the setting and a crime to draw in readers.But then we come to the pacing which to me was a rather slow burn and that will make some happy but I’m not a huge fan myself. Sure there was action and twists but also areas that drag after a very slow start so in the end this one just turned out to be an OK read for me that lacked the promised “pulse pounding”.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Find this book online: 

Goodreads  /   Amazon

About the author:

J. G. Hetherton was in raised in rural Wisconsin, graduated from Northwestern University, and lived in Chicago for the better part of a decade. Along the way to his first novel, he dabbled in many different day jobs before moving to North Carolina for a girl. They live in Durham, North Carolina, with their twin daughters, and when he’s not writing, you can find him on the hiking trail or sitting down with a good book.