The Last to Die
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Sixteen-year-old Harper Jacobs and her bored friends make a pact to engage in a series of not-quite illegal break-ins. They steal from each other's homes, sharing their keys and alarm codes. But they don't take anything that can't be replaced by some retail therapy, so it's okay. It's thrilling. It's bad. And for Harper, it's payback for something she can't put into words-something to help her deal with her alcoholic mother, her delusional father, and to forget the lies she told that got her druggie brother arrested. It's not like Daniel wasn't rehab bound anyway.
So everything is okay-until the bold but aggravating Alex, looking to up the ante, suggests they break into the home of a classmate. It's crossing a line, but Harper no longer cares. She's proud of it. Until one of the group turns up dead, and Harper comes face-to-face with the moral dilemma that will make or break her-and, if she makes the wrong choice, will get her killed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Six high school students plan and carry out robberies of each other's homes for kicks in Garrett's debut novel. Narrator Harper Jacobs, 16, is bright, athletic, sarcastic, and bored. She and five wealthy friends her boyfriend Gin, as well as Sarah, Alex, Benji, and Paisley take turns robbing one another's homes, though they establish ground rules from the start, designed to limit their actions to mostly harmless mischief ("we wouldn't steal anything that insurance and an AMEX card couldn't replace"). When Alex suggests burgling the home of a student outside their group, things quickly go wrong, and Harper realizes that it's no longer a game. The decision to end the game becomes moot after Sarah dies from an overdose, but is it suicide, an accident, or murder? Garrett's teens are realistically (if one-dimensionally) self-involved, though Harper and some of the others have flashes of insight that point toward their evolving maturity as things spiral out of control. A second death paves the way to an unexpected conclusion in this quick-moving thriller. Ages 14 up.
