Ashley Winstead (In My Dreams I Hold a Knife) takes dark academia to chilling new depths in The Last Housewife. Shay Deroy is a rich Dallas housewife who has worked hard to leave behind the ugly events of her past. But Shay can't help her addiction to true-crime podcasts, particularly Transgressions, the podcast of her childhood best friend, Jamie Knight. One day, lazing by her backyard pool, Shay is astonished to hear Jamie say that his next investigation will be into the apparent suicide of Laurel, Shay's college roommate, while he delivers a coded appeal for help, one that is clearly directed at Shay.
Shay is compelled to go back to upstate New York and the Whitney College campus, a place she had sworn never to revisit. Shockingly, Laurel's suicide mimics the way their friend Clementine died eight years earlier, which surely cannot be a coincidence. And now, Shay wonders, could dark undercurrents at Whitney have caused the deaths of both Clem and Laurel? As Shay and Jamie team up, readers will be drawn into a truly disturbing series of events. The life that Shay chose to leave behind is terrifying, and she must reenter that world to investigate what happened to Laurel.
The Last Housewife is a propulsive thriller that turns the idea of the contemporary housewife upside down. As Winstead plays with power and patriarchy and the effects they have on beautiful women like Shay, readers are sure to see alarming parallels in modern society. --Jessica Howard, freelance book reviewer