The Last to Vanish takes place at The Passage Inn, a small unassuming hotel in a small North Carolina mountain town. Visitors come there to enjoy the outdoors and explore the Appalachian Trail. This book gives new meaning to the phrase slow burn, as it moved at glacial speed with literally nothing happening of interest until the last 20% of the book. Quite apt, given I’ve been out of the country for the last few weeks and actually spent time on and in a glacier (sorry, I couldn’t resist!) There are a lot of thrillers with a small town setting and a past/present format. Books like All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers or The Survivors by Jane Harper. Fraternity Four....4 guys from the same fraternity even had a bar named after their disappearance with a snapshot of them hanging above the bar The Last Stop.

Despite its appearance as a cozy resort town, Cutter’s Pass is portrayed—to the reader—as a cold, isolated, and moody place. Considering the fact that Abby is the book’s sole narrator, how might you read this characterization, and what implications does it have regarding her presence within Cutter’s Pass? Labeled by the national press as “the most dangerous town in North Carolina,” Cutter’s Pass is a pretty place in which hikers have over the years had a tendency to vanish. There were the Fraternity Four, as a group of students came to be called, who disappeared in 1997; Alice Kelly in 2012; Farrah Jordan in 2019; and Landon West in 2022. To Abby Lovett, however, Cutter’s Pass, and in particular the town’s hotel, the Passage Inn, has become her adopted home and her refuge from a troubled past. As manager of the inn, Abby has come to know everybody, to love the wild mountain trails, and to learn that appearances can be deceptive. “Things here were designed to appear more fragile than they were,” she notes of the inn’s folksy touches, “but reinforced, because they had to be. We lived in the mountains, on the edge of the woods, subject to the whims of weather and the forces of nature.” In economical yet elegant descriptions, author Miranda repeatedly conjures up this untamed natural world even as she unspools a labyrinthine plot that has its roots in the distant past but that originates in the present when Trey West appears one stormy night at the Passage Inn. “He believed he could find them all,” Abby realizes when she and Trey, drawn to each other and into the quest for Trey’s missing brother, find a clue that links the most recent mystery to each of the ones that went before. The novel’s characters are deftly sketched and its suspense is nicely tightened, though the plot finally loses itself somewhat in a tangle of strained connections.

Many different forms of “reality” appear in The Last to Vanish . Characters divulge rumors, talk about myths, and share practical (as well as comforting) explanations for the vanishings of past visitors. What does the novel suggest about truth and its relationship to myth? The beautiful atmosphere of this picturesque town in the mountains of North Carolina. Ms. Miranda always gives us a great atmosphere!!

This novel is one you won’t put down and full of twists and turns. It had me guessing until the end if the person responsible for the disappearances was a local or a stranger. Abigail is tied to this town and she is torn as she finds clues to who might be responsible. Can she figure out the mystery before more go missing? There were a lot of rumors about us here, as a collective about the things we knew, the secrets we kept. But they ignored the obvious." Don't miss this one!! I'm still reeling in it. Great job, Megan Miranda! You are still one of favorites! Think about an event in the past that strongly affected a community that you’re a part of. How has your perspective of this event changed with the passage of time? How has your community’s? Do you feel like you understand things better now than before? Cutter’s Pass, North Carolina is a place where people are known to disappear. In the last 25 years alone, a total of six people have disappeared. In the winter, it’s dark, cold, snowy, and treacherous, and the hiking trails are extremely dangerous. In the summer, however, it purports itself to be the kind of touristy place that makes you want to stay awhile. If only the locals were friendlier to outsiders!It starts with Fraternity Four’s vanishing into the thin air 25 years ago. Then Alice Kelly has lastly seen at the town’s Tavern and she also vanished just like nature photographer Farrah Jordan did. The reporter Landon West suspected something fishy was going on at the town. Could he be the last victim of the person who has been hunting the people for unknown reason? Did he get closer to the truth? So the gist is that a bunch of people over the years have disappeared without a trace from the idyllic mountain community of Cutters Pass, NC. Abbie, who runs the local Inn, sets out to find the truth when the brother of the latest guy to disappear shows up in town. MY THOUGHTS: I would recommend this novel to those who don’t mind a bit of a slower start and enjoy a great mystery. PUT ON YOUR DETECTIVE HATS!!

The description of THE LAST TO VANISH had me absolutely hooked. A book about through-hikers on the AT disappearing, written by one of my favorite thriller authors? Absolutely sold.

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stars). I’m a little disappointed as I’ve read other books by Megan Miranda which I’ve really loved. This book, not so much… Sounds good right?, only it wasn't. The many directions the author sets us upon are at times ridiculous, and then these directions ended, just ended with no explanations no reason why. There was also a plethora of characters who also wind up at that same dead end and then seem to "disappear, with no explanation for the why once again.

What caused all of these disappearances? Does Abby know her fellow townspeople as well as she thinks she does?Abby is the sole narrator. I never love MM’s heroines, but I found Abby the most likable of them all. Even though the plot is focused on events from the past, the narrative takes place in the present, which worked well to stoke the tension and suspense as the reader isn’t quite sure what is going on in Cutter’s Pass, as the town exists in a history built of myth, rumors, and reality.