Review: The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

Jane lives a simple life as a farmer's wife. Each day blends into the next as she follows a mundane routine of cooking and cleaning. Her husband, Leonard, works all day in the fields and rules his home with an iron fist. He punishes Jane for any act of disobedience by burning her prized possessions, one by one. What makes this punishment all the more harsh is that Jane is a victim of human trafficking and hardly has anything to call her own other than some letters from her sister and an old copy of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Leonard keeps her captive in the isolated farmhouse where she is monitored by security cameras that record her every move. After exhausting all attempts to escape in the first few years of her captivity and suffering a terrible injury to one of her ankles, Jane has more or less become resigned to her twisted role as Leonard's wife. That changes when Jane becomes pregnant.

Determined that her daughter will not grow up to be preyed upon by such a monster as Leonard, Jane again begins dreaming about escaping one day. Things get even more interesting when her husband kidnaps a local woman and keeps her in the cellar below the farmhouse where is forced to endure unspeakable horrors. Kidnapping and holding Jane against her will was easy enough since she was a Vietnamese woman who had been smuggled into the country illegally. There was no one looking for her when she went missing. It's an entirely different ball game with Cynthia, Leonard's latest victim, who is on the nightly news and has become the focus of local law enforcement. He's starting to feel the pressure and it's not long before Jane realizes that this situation might provide her with her one and only chance for freedom, if she's brave enough to risk everything and try.

When I first heard about this novel, it was being compared a lot to Room, which I read several years ago. I have to say that I enjoyed both novels, but The Last Thing to Burn was so much more engrossing to me. I practically devoured it in one sitting. Kudos to Will Dean for being able to write about such a mundane existence without actually boring the reader. There was always something going on to keep me turning the pages. While there were instances of abuse mentioned in the novel, I appreciated that they were more alluded to rather than described. I was already unsettled by Jane's situation and I think gratuitous descriptions of rape would have made this too much for me to stomach. If you are looking for a thrilling page-turner, look no further!

My Rating: ★★★★1/2

*Thanks to the author, Atria Books, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review!