The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda

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This story is set in the fictional town of Cutter's Pass, North Carolina, a town known for its natural beauty near the Appalachian Mountains. It's also known for a series of disappearances over the course of 25 years. The first 4 happened in 1997, dubbed the "Fraternity Four", was a group of guys named Brian, Neil, Jerome and Toby. Next was a woman named Alice Kelly in 2012, then Farrah Jordan in 2019 and Landon West in 2022. None of these have been solved or found. The town enjoys its infamy with tourists but try to suppress any negative publicity. 

The story starts with a mysterious man, trying to check into the local hotel, The Passage Inn. He doesn't give his real  name, but he's recognized by the inn manager Abigail Lovett (Abby) as the brother of the most recent missing person's case. Trey West immediately admits he is the brother of Landon West. Abby decides to put him in Cabin #4, the same cabin Landon West stayed in before he went missing. Trey is here to look into his brother's disappearance. 

We learn a little bit about Abby's past. She's been working and living in Cutter's Pass for the past 10 years. The inn's owner, Celeste, treats Abby like family (in a way, she IS family, because Abby is the niece of Celeste's late husband, Vincent). Abby used to date a local guy named Cory Shiles, who works as a tour guide and is the son of Ray and Marina Shiles, the owners of a local tavern. Abby and Trey discover a hidden jump drive in one of the bedposts and discover photos taken from Farrah's camera. They slowly discover more evidence, like Farrah's camera, Landon's cellphone, and a notebook. Throughout these discoveries, we are given reasons to suspect the killer might be Cory, or Georgia (Abby's coworker at the inn), or the town sheriff Patrick. In the meanwhile, the inn's phone line constantly gets disconnected mysteriously and Abby suspects Cory is the culprit because he's always lurking around and always telling Abby to stop investigating the missing persons cases. Abby calls the local repairman, Harris, to come and repair the phone line each time. Not much is said about Harris, just that he's a married father with two kids. I have a feeling Cory is a red herring and Harris is the actual bad guy.

Trey and Abby discovers a photograph of the Fraternity Four with the Passage Inn's logo on someone's t-shirt, and through the reflection of one of their sunglasses, Abby knows the photographer was Celeste. They question Celeste and got her to confess what happened. The Fraternity Four stayed at The Passage Inn as an intervention for Brian's substance addiction. Things turned ugly and Brian shot and killed 3 of his friends. Celeste was there and killed Brian in self defense. Before getting shot, Neil told the group he's the father of Abby. Celeste, Patrick and Vincent (Celeste's husband) decide to hide all the evidence and never bring it up again. Apparently, Abby came to town 10 years ago because her mom's dying words told her that her father was a member of Fraternity Four. Celeste gave her a job at the inn because she's always felt guilty for not saving Neil's life. She also has Abby as the sole heir for her inn.

So the mystery of the Fraternity Four is solved, but what about the other 3 missing persons cases? Abby decides to reach out to Alice's missing person instagram account. It's managed by Alice's sister Quinn. Quinn sends Abby pictures from Alice's final days and she notices Harris in a picture. Quinn labels the picture as Lucy, James, and Caroline, and tells her that James is Alice's ex-boyfriend. Abby calls Harris's wife Samantha, and confirms that his first name is James. Harris shows up at the inn. Abby knows he's there to kill her. Abby grabs a fire poker and texts Rochelle, Sheriff Patrick's assistant to tell her to send the sheriff here and that Harris is the killer. Abby turns off all the lights in the lobby in hopes to hide from Harris. Trey shows up with a cell phone flashlight and shows that Harris has a gun pointed at Abby. Abby tries to stab Harris with the fire poker, causing Harris to drop the gun. Trey grabs the gun, when Patrick, Rochelle, Jack (employee at a local outfitting store), Cory, Marina, Ray and Celeste all appear. Do we really need the whole gang? You'd think the sheriff would get there first to save Abby... Anyways, they de-escalate the situation and arrest Harris. Harris claims Alice slipped and hit her head and died, and he buried her body because he didn't think people would believe it was an accident. Later, Farrah and Landon came in town to investigate the disappearances and when he realized they were closing in on him, he killed them too. 

This is a LONG and DRAWN OUT story that feels really really unsatisfying at the end. I'm not a fan of thriller where the ending twist is just some random character who has changed their name to avoid getting caught. (Although in this case, I'm not sure if Harris would have gotten caught even if he didn't change his name. Because Quinn said Alice's friends were never interviewed due to Cory's lies about Alice's final whereabouts, which make 0 sense anyways.) I feel like the premise was good, but at the end, the twists are boring. 

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