Book Summary and Reviews of Our Last Wild Days by Anna Bailey

Our Last Wild Days by Anna Bailey

Our Last Wild Days

A Novel

by Anna Bailey

  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • May 2025, 352 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

From the author of the "irresistible" (Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Where the Truth Lies, an atmospheric novel about a young woman who searches for answers after her estranged friend is found dead in the bayou of their rural Louisiana hometown.

The Labasques aren't like other families.

Living in a shack out in the swamps, they made do by hunting down alligators and other animals. To the good people of Jacknife, Louisiana, they are troublemakers and outcasts, the kind of people you wouldn't want in your community.

So, when Cutter Labasque is found face down in the muddy swamp, no one seems to care, not even her two brothers. The only person who questions the official verdict of suicide is Cutter's childhood friend, Loyal May, who has just returned home to care for her mother. When she left town at eighteen years old, she betrayed Cutter. Now with a ragtag group from the local paper where she works, Loyal goes in search of answers, uncovering a web of deceit and corruption that implicates those in town. It may be too late to apologize to Cutter, but Loyal has restitution in mind.

Weaving through the swamps and bayous of rural Louisiana, Our Last Wild Days is an atmospheric, smoldering suspense about our darker impulses—and how to set things right.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"A bewitching slice of southern Gothic, in Our Last Wild Days, Anna Bailey cements thier reputation for writing thought-provoking, character-driven crime fiction." —Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and The Blue Hour

"A propulsive, bold and brutal slice of Southern Gothic brilliance. Anna Bailey writes so beautifully about family, friendship, loyalty and betrayal, yet also delivers a tough and truly atmospheric thriller." —Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark

"Raw and unflinching, Anna Bailey's Our Last Wild Days is about the mystery of how anyone survives as much as it is the mystery of how one woman didn't. In a beautifully observed story brimming with singular characters, small-town Louisiana still manages to steal the show, with Bailey playing anthropologist as much as fiction writer, painting a vivid portrait of a South that feels both familiar and fantastical. Out of alligators, fox skulls, violence, poverty, and love, they weave a spell that lasts from the first page until the shocking, unforgettable ending. This is a stunner." —Ashley Winstead, bestselling author of Midnight is the Darkest Hour

This information about Our Last Wild Days was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Trisha

slow burn dark mystery - I loved it!
"No one hates a woman like a man who thinks he owns her."

A dark mystery that started as a slow burn and then completely hooked me in. Loyal has come back to town because her mom is showing troubling behavior - forgetting things, found out wandering at night. Loyal hasn't been back in this town for a while - after she fought with her best friend, was attacked and then did an unforgiveable act. The longer she was gone, the easier it was to not face it and not come back.

But within days of her arrival, her old best friend is discovered floating in the swamp. There's speculation and assumption, there's whispered words like "suicide" and "troubled family." But all Loyal knows is that she let her friend down once, she won't do it again.

This is a very deep, dark look into family, poverty, addiction, and small town rural America. We get a few POV, Loyal, Sasha, Dan and Dewall. All these POV round out the story, giving us a look into what's happening town, out of town, what the police are doing and just how things are tied together when the town is so small, everyone's known each other since elementary school.

And Anna Bailey did an amazing thing - they really made me love these flawed, terrible, human characters. I nearly wept at Cutter's funeral when they were down one. Tears in my eyes as I read about the hand on a jawline. All these little things, the little pieces, made me love this town and feel for those in it. Loyal was an insider who was now on the outside looking in because she'd left. But this story was about all of them, this town that held each other up, protected their own, and failed some in the most fundamental ways. It was a beautiful, horrible, dark story and I loved it.

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Author Information

Anna Bailey

Anna Bailey is a Sunday Times (London) bestselling author from Gloucestershire. Their debut novel, Tall Bones (published in the US as Where the Truth Lies), inspired by their experiences living in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, was nominated for the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year and Goldsboro Glass Bell awards, as well as the Prix Nouvelles Voix du Polar. Their short stories, based on their travels through rural America, have been dramatised for BBC Radio 4, including "Long Way to Come for a Sip of Water," which was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. They live in Bordeaux with their wife.

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