The Last Resort by Marissa Stapley
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Out June 18th! Pre-order from Amazon here!
At a couple’s therapy retreat in sunny, beautiful Mexico run by a celebrity power couple a man is missing following a deadly hurricane. Rewind to a week earlier when the couples descend on the resort and journey through the drama. Because things aren’t really what they seem and the couples are in for an experience beyond what they signed up for.
I wish I could say I loved this book. Unfortunately, it was just okay for me. As a whole package, I enjoyed the content and how the story eventually came together. There were a lot of important, relevant, and timely issues presented throughout the prose which I found wonderful. But, I had some issues in the details.
First, I struggled with authenticity and believability. Some of the decisions the main characters made just didn’t feel realistic. I found myself wanting to smack a few of them in the face and tell them to use their brains. It made me frustrated more than anything.
The other thing that bothered me was that the transitions were awkward at times. This may have been due to the fact that I read an ARC and the formatting wasn’t yet complete. But one story line would end and the next story line would begin without a gap in paragraphs or a change in chapter. So there were times I was reading and found myself confused until I realized I was in another character’s story. There were also some parts told in transcript as well as use of TMZ articles to illustrate elements of the story, and while I thought these were useful and instrumental pieces of the book, they needed to be physically differentiated from the rest of the prose (i.e. on another page) rather than running into the rest of the story. Again, perhaps in the finished, published version of the book these issues will all be addressed, but in the ARC they were extremely distracting.
I did enjoy the ending and felt like Marissa Stapley did a good job of bringing everything together and tying up loose ends. I was a bit confused about the relevance of Grace’s brother, Garrett, in the story and felt like the book could have done without his presence. But otherwise, I understood the points Stapley was trying to make with the other story lines.
At the end of the day, this one was just okay for me. But I feel like I tend to always struggle a bit with domestic dramas. So if you’re a fan of the genre, I would definitely give it a try and see if you like it for yourself.
-I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Marissa Stapley, and Graydon House Books for the opportunity to review.-
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