Hooked from the first few pages. Couldn’t put it down as I just needed to know what happened. A brilliant book of its genre

As always Claire Mackintosh creates a gripping and nail biting read. I couldn't put this book down and was guessing right up to the last chapter Don't miss this nail biting and brilliant read, and hopefully we will get to see more from Ffion in the not too distant future.

I'm a great fan of Clare Macintosh having read and enjoyed all of her previous books so was delighted to get the chance of reading The Last Party. Although I found the book rather slow to start with as all the many characters were introduced, it really picked up the pace half way through. A very enjoyable read which is the first in a series featuring DC Ffion Morgan. There were lots of twists and turns and the ending came as a complete surprise..

Clare never fails to be incredible and her first go at writing a series is no different. Brilliant plot, fantastic characters, Clare's signature writing style.
Loved it!

Please see the links below in which I have reviewed The Last Party in the Didsbury Post, the Cheadle Post, the Chorlton Post and the Heatons Post.

“A place like Cwm Coed needs four generations in the graveyard before you can call yourself local.”

On New Year's Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests for a party to end all parties. But not everyone is there to celebrate. By midnight, Rhys will be floating dead in the freezing waters of the lake.
On New Year's Day, DC Ffion Morgan has a village full of suspects - her neighbours, friends and family - and Ffion has her own secrets to protect. With a lie uncovered at every turn, soon the question isn't who wanted Rhys dead . . . but who finally killed him.

Clare Mackintosh’s newest psychological thriller is the first in a brand new crime series set in North Wales, lead by Detective Constable Ffion Morgan.

The book opens with a murder and the characters are introduced as DC Ffion proceeds with the investigation. Meanwhile, the events leading up to the murder are built up in the past from the point of view of the locals and the Shore Residents.

Even with multiple POVs, Mackintosh doesn’t loosen her grip on the pace. The story is plotted flawlessly and you quickly familiarise yourself with all the different characters as you weave through their understanding of how things happened.

One of the reasons I love Clare Mackintosh’s books is because she leads you down multiple paths. She refuses to reveal the suspense until the last moment and even then, she might smack you with a twist so hard it will turn your interpretation of the book on its axis.

Another Mackintosh classic with a relentlessly gripping mystery that leaves you gasping for breath. I can’t wait to read what Ffion Morgan does next.

This ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Little Brown Book Group, UK.

I'm a big fan of Clare's previous books so was absolutely thrilled to be invited on the book tour for this one!
The story goes between the past and the present, every chapter or two. Though it's easy to follow and allows the story to slowly develop. There are quite a lot of characters but they all seem so relatable and you get to know them through the story so it's easy to fit in with them all with it being confusing.
I love the character of Ffion, she's intelligent, feisty and flawed, all the attributes of a great fictional detective. It's so exciting to have a new female detective series, I can't wait for the next installment!
It's quite hard to review whilst not giving any spoilers but don't worry about trying to work out who the suspects are, you won't, just enjoy the ride 😁

This was a slow build up with not much happening until towards the end. But even towards the end it was slow paced. I felt the over description of the scenery too much I did like the ending so based on that I gave it a three star.

Thanks goes to net galley and the publishers for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Shore. Glitzy holiday havens for the rich and famous. A New Year's Eve party welcoming the locals to try and ease tension with these rich interlopers. However, a body is found the following morning. Everyone becomes a potential suspect as everyone seems to hold a grievance with the deceased. A light and intriguing thriller. An enjoyable read.

The Last Party by Clare Mackintosh is the first in a brand new series featuring DC Ffion Morgan. Predominantly set in beautiful Wales, this is a police procedural thriller that will keep you guessing throughout. Although different to her previous novels, The Last Party does however feature the many twists, turns, shocks and surprises I’ve come to expect from a Clare Mackintosh book.

It’s New Year’s Day and the tiny Welsh community of Cwm Coed have gathered for their annual swim. But no sooner have they taken to the water of the freezing cold Mirror Lake than an alarmed cry rings out. The body of a man has been found floating face down in the water. But who is he? And why on earth would anyone want him dead?

DC Ffion Morgan soon finds herself working alongside DC Leo Brady as the hunt for a killer gets underway. The dead man is the wealthy co-owner of The Shore, a lakeside complex that comes under the jurisdiction of the English side of the border. But following a lively New Year’s Eve party at the complex the night before, there are witnesses who fall on both sides of the border, making it a joint investigation between the Welsh and English police.

The story is told from various points of view, the narrative moving between the past and the present as more and more details are slowly revealed. As the list of murder suspects grows longer, long held secrets begin to emerge that could blow the whole case wide apart…

The Last Party is a clever page turner of a psychological thriller that kept me on my toes from beginning to end, throwing in curveballs along the way that took me completely by surprise, changing everything I thought I knew and turning the story completely on its head.

With strong characters and an emotive storyline, Clare Mackintosh has surpassed herself once again. Wales was very much a character in its own right, with the tension between the Welsh community of Cwm Coed and the English lakeside lodge owners becoming more and more palpable as the story continued. I loved the growing partnership between Ffion Morgan and Leo Brady and can’t wait to see where the series is going to take these two complicated but likeable characters next.

Writing a review of The Last Party without giving anything away isn’t easy, so all I will say is that it’s a fantastic read with complex, interesting characters who never fail to surprise right up until the final page has been turned.

The Last Party is everything I hoped it would be and more and is a stunning crime thriller that I would highly recommend.

There are plenty of dark secrets in this gripping whodunnit. This is the first in a new police crime series featuring the charismatic heroine, DC Ffion Morgan. On New Year's Eve, local Welsh boy done well Rhys Lloyd, is hosting a big splash party for the local community at his luxury lakeside holiday home development. But by the end of the night his body is found floating in the lake. Ffion will need to wade through a village full of suspects to undercover the truth. An atmospheric unputdownable thriller that wows.

Brilliant as usual. I'm really hoping we will be seeing more of Ffion Morgan. Claire Mackintosh never disappoints, I highly recommend.

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this shocking book

rhys lloyd is having a new years eve party like no other, all his neighbours and some of the villagers are invited but by morning he will be found dead in the water

there are quite a few characters to get your head around and at times a bit confusing but who amongst the party guests and villagers wanted him dead....

red herrings galore with this one with many a twist and turn to it...

When washed up Welsh singer Rhys Lloyd is found dead in a Welsh lake close to his home town it soon becomes apparent that there are many people in the locality who really did not like him. He was not a pleasant man at all.
DC Ffion Morgan and DC Leo Brady are flung together to investigate- Ffion from the Welsh police and Leo from Cheshire as the lake and the swish resort where Rhys and his family were staying was right on the border.
However Lloyd’s death stirs up a lot of bad feelings and secrets and even Ffion herself has something to hide. The private lives of Ffion and Leo become just as important as the case itself and there is definitely a spark between the two which they try to hide. Fiona is local and seems to be inextricably linked to many of the suspects making the investigation extremely difficult.
The suspects themselves are all carefully described by the author through flashbacks to the fatal night and the build up to it although the reader has no idea who the perpetrator is until the very end of the book.
There are a number of people to investigate- those in the small welsh town and also the wealthy English lodge owners who had been celebrating New Years Eve. All have reason to want Rhys Lloyd dead.
I enjoyed “The Last Party” although there were a lot of characters to get my head around and I didn’t think the dual time line worked quite as well as it could have. I’ve read and loved the author’s other books and in my opinion this one wasn’t quite as compelling as her previous novels.
However it was an entertaining murder mystery with some clever twists and I shall certainly be looking out for any future books by Clare Mackintosh. A solid four stars from me.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my arc.

Last Party is a compelling murder mystery told with warmth, welcoming DC Ffion Morgan and her small community in Wales. The story althought slow as in theory, only spans 10 days with a few flashbacks it has
lots of twist and turns with a host of interesting characters. The characters are all relevant to the storyline, and they were all written really well. The book is well interwoven with everyone’s points of view and the piecing together of the timeline with overlaps from one perspective to another. i found the story to be cleverly executed, a great crime mystery.

I've really enjoyed Clare Mackintosh's books and The Last Party was no different. A highly entertaining murder mystery with bags of atmosphere and tense moments.

It's New Years Eve and Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests. On new Years Day Police officer Ffion Morgan will have a dead body floating on a lake and a community of suspects.

I love a whodunnit and this one has bags of atmosphere! It's set in the beautiful backdrop of Wales and has a small tight knit community where everybody knows everybody. Not everybody knows everybody else's secrets though and believe me they have them. With pretty much everyone having motive to kill Rhys the race is on to find the guilty party.

I did struggle with the pacing slightly. It seemed in places quite slow and I don't know how invested I was by the time the conclusion was drawn. I didn't guess the ending which is always a positive but sometimes just felt like I didn't really care. There's a huge cast of characters and although I liked Ffion most of them are pretty unlikeable. Don't get me wrong I did enjoy this book and I would continue on with the series. It was good, and I think it has potential it just didn't wow me.

This was a wild ride and a good start of a new series. I love when I get to read the first book where we met the main characters slowly and they just grow up on me.

Detective Ffion Morgan is a female character that I would want to know more about her in the future. Her newly started life as a divorcee and trying to get on with her career made me tooth for her at all times in this book.

It is twisted, so much so that the author made me believe I knew who the killer was, but I was so far away from the truth in the end. And that’s something that always stands out for me. The ability to create an unpredictable villain is not quite for everyone, but Macintosh did it well and good.

It was interesting to see the town members and their worries about the disruption of their own routine when someone builds a luxury apartment residential in the beautiful borders between England and Wales. I liked to read about the Welsh names of the characters, as we rarely get to see now in most stories set in the UK.

A must read new police procedural/thriller that will have you engaged throughout the pages to expose who was the villain. Believe nothing and go in blind.

🆓📖 Very grateful to the publisher for my review copy

Having read all of Clare Mackintosh previous books and loved them all I couldn't wait to pick up her new book, especially knowing it was to be part of a series. However, I feel very disappointed to say for the first time ever of a book written by Clare Mackintosh, that this was not a book I'd enjoyed of hers as much as I had her previous texts. Knowing how Mackintosh moved to Wales with her family it was good to see how she had used this to form the main setting of this book, and could understand why she would choose such a setting close to home when composing a series of books to be set here. We are first introduced to the Welsh village of Cwm Coed on New Year's day. Tradition has it for the villagers of Cwm Coed to swim in the freezing cold waters of Mirror lake, bordering England and Wales, on the morning of New Year's day. However, as locals begin their annual winter swim so a body emerges to the top of the water, who we later find out is Rhys Lloyd, owner of new holiday complex on the side of the lake; a holiday complex much opposed by locals. We are then introduced to our main character Ffion Morgan, awaking from a New Year's fling, quietly slipping out and returning to her family home in Cwm Coed, where she lives with her mother and sister. Not been home long she receives a call, and as a local DI is set upon the task to find out who the body in the lake is and how it came to be there. As the lake borders England so Ffion has to work with Cheshire police force, in particular Leo Brady, her New Year's eve encounter. Overcoming this situation, the two DI's work together to try and solve the crime. The narrative jumps back and forward in time, leading to a build up of events on New Year's eve, and giving background to the various characters and suspects involved. As events unfold and characters are introduced, Mackintosh builds a strong picture of the Welsh village, where families have lived for many years and are wary of outsiders. Whilst I was interested in knowing what happened to Rhys Lloyd and how he ended up in the lake, I felt that the pace of the book was quite slow, leading to a lack of interest in some of the characters at times. Whilst Mackintosh needed to establish a few characters and the setting, being the first in this new series, I felt that many of the characters were not just very superficial (deliberate on the author's part) but also very stereotypical. This led to many of the characters being unlikeable and myself having little empathy with any of them, including Ffion Morgan. Whilst I really wanted to get into this book, being so excited to read it, I found as the book went on my interest waned and I just wanted to finish it. Knowing how Mackintosh always writes with a good twist at the end I knew it would be worth finishing the novel. However, even the end seemed slightly predictable and not the huge surprise 'that I never saw coming' that I usually find in so many of her other books. I hope that this slight blip I've experienced in her writing is due to the fact she has spent more of her time establishing characters for further books in the series. My thanks go out to netgalley and Little Brown Book Group UK for the opportunity to read and review and ARC of this.

this is a book of 2 halves really. The first book was alot of set-up and character introduction, which i found a bit slow and a bit difficult to get through if i am honest.

But then, the first bombshell of many is dropped at about 58%, and from then, i was hooked.

I was glad that it ended in the way it did. I hadn’t guess That end, and it came as a surprise. I liked the mini reveals along the way, and i especially liked the final reveal. That was a true delight to read, as i thought that means of death had developed into a plot hole.

I will say, go into this one as blind as you can, and enjoy the ride of the second half.

The first half of this book was a little slow paced and I didn’t really know where it was going to go! BUT the second part was a wild ride and it kept me on edge the whole time, I was constantly flicking back and forth of who I had thought “done it” which was really great and kept me reading!
I loved ffion and Leo as characters and loved seeing their relationship evolve and how they worked really well together.
Was a thriller that kept you on edge and with a twist that I was completely here for!