Her Last Holiday is tightly plotted, with a cast of intriguing characters – none of whom are quite what they seem. The man behind the retreats, Tom Wade was recently released from prison after serving his sentence for the deaths of two people. Present day: Fran, an information and communications technology teacher, has a vested interest in what the Wades do next because her younger sister Jenna vanished from the same Gozo retreat, leaving all her possessions in her room and blood on the rocks. It was labeled suicide but Fran needs answers so she's attending the latest retreat by the same self-help guru as Jenna did.

She works hard to manage their ruined reputation but it’s not gonna be so easy and her lovely husband is not such a good help when he’s still stuck with the memories of Jenna. Now Fran's mother has pushed Fran into going to the retreat in Wales to find out what really happened in Gozo. Now, Tom is out of jail and his wife Kate, who does all the admin and marketing for the retreats, has organised the first retreat since the disastrous one of three years ago.L. Taylor’s eighth crime novel, will be published on 29th April 2021 by Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins UK. You can see how brittle and strained things are between them which is heightened after Tom's prison release. The pace in the first half is good and a number of unsettling events occur, there’s a lot of suspicion in the Welsh retreat and a good puzzle to unlock. She’s clearly upset and traumatized BUT why on earth would you send your only surviving daughter into the clutches of the man you believe to be responsible for your youngest daughters’ death? Fran's time at the retreat in Wales really dragged and felt repetitious with the story becoming a really slow burn to get to the point where we find out what happened to Jenna.

As I have found with all of her books, I was desperate to keep turning the pages once I got to the end of each chapter. I think it stems from the fact that any logical reader must suspend disbelief at an astronomical level. Her Last Holiday is a non-stop drama thriller set on an island retreat where the protagonist, Fran, tries to discover the secrets of her sister's disappearance. They might have found a way to cover up your sister's murder but they're not going to intimidate me into letting this drop. Her Last Holiday is a chillingly plausible tale of why you should never, ever go on a wellness retreat.

This is a perfect holiday read with a plot that is easy to follow yet testing enough to deliver many surprises. Tom Wade, the man behind Soul Shrink Retreats has just been released from prison after serving time for his role in the death of two people.

Jenna disappeared while at a SoulShrink wellness retreat ran by Tom and Kate Wade where two other people died after a sweat lodge. Geraldine Fitzgerald, the grieving mother of Jenna (the woman who went missing at the Gozo retreat) has never gotten over not knowing what happened to her daughter, and is sure that Tom holds the key to the truth. Too much contrived drama, too much melodrama, too many unstable people who should be on medication and too many highly unlikely happenings.Tom, the leader of the SoulShrink retreat, has had trauma in his own life, which led him to where he is. The sibling rivalry forced onto the sisters by an overbearing mother, and that overwhelming feeling that the other sibling is the favoured child, while you are considered the family disappointment, must have built such thick walls between Fran and Jenna, it was no wonder they weren’t the best at communication.

It was a fairly good book that did indeed keep me turning those pages, but it wasn’t one that I was particularly excited to get back to reading though. Thanks to the pressure and guilt tripping of her miserable parents who lost rest of their sanities after sudden disappearance of their young daughter, Fran attends to the same retreat because the same health guru couple Tom and Kate reopen the place after Tom has been set free from two years long prison time. Fran is a woman with a strong personality who has been suppressing her emotions and distancing herself from other people for years. It centers primarily on Fran, who joins a wellness retreat to try to figure out what happened to her sister Jenna, who disappeared on a similar trip over 2 years prior.

Now Fran is on the hunt trying to find out what happened and she books a wellness retreat of her own with the same health guru. Now, Fran is determined to find out what happened to her sister Jenna, who disappeared at the same time. I am a fan of CL Taylor’s books, but this story reminded me of one of those songs that a band releases after a few successes, one that feels hurried in its writing and slightly tired, maybe sliding from the quality camp to the quantity camp. They specialize in mental wellbeing and giving the clients the tools needed to recover from anxiety and depression.