The Last Housewife

A Novel

By: Ashley Winstead

Narrated by: Alexis Van Aiken

From the author of the acclaimed In My Dreams I Hold a Knife comes a pitch-black thriller about a woman determined to destroy a powerful cult and avenge the deaths of the women taken in by it, no matter the cost.

While in college in upstate New York, Shay Evans and her best friends met a captivating man who seduced them with a web of lies about the way the world works, bringing them under his thrall. By senior year, Shay and her friend Laurel were the only ones who managed to escape. Now, eight years later, Shay’s built a new life in a tony Texas suburb. But when she hears the horrifying news of Laurel’s death―delivered, of all ways, by her favorite true-crime podcast crusader―she begins to suspect that the past she thought she buried is still very much alive, and the predators more dangerous than ever.

Recruiting the help of the podcast host, Shay goes back to the place she vowed never to return to in search of answers. As she follows the threads of her friend’s life, she’s pulled into a dark, seductive world, where wealth and privilege shield brutal philosophies that feel all too familiar. When Shay’s obsession with uncovering the truth becomes so consuming she can no longer separate her desire for justice from darker desires newly reawakened, she must confront the depths of her own complicity and conditioning. But in a world built for men to rule it—both inside the cult and outside of it—is justice even possible, and if so, how far will Shay go to get it?

©2022 Ashley Winstead (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Critic reviews

2022, LibraryReads

Disturbing and exceptional

HUGE TRIGGER WARNING for this book: I won’t list them all here, but massive TWs for SA/BDSM used as a cover for abuse, misogyny, violence…proceed into this book carefully if those things are complicated for you).

Shay lives the perfect modern housewife life, married to a wealthy handsome perfect man living in the suburbs, listening to true crime podcasts. Her favorite guilty pleasure is The Transgression, hosted by her long-estranged friend Jamie. But one episode pulls her in…when he says the name of her college best friend and roommate Laurel and tells his audience about her death. And then he mentions Shay, and her blood runs cold.

Her mind flies back to college. The man in the suit, the secret, the…and now it’s all happening again. When Shay decides to fly to New York to help Jamie investigate, the past flies back in her face in the form of an insidious cult, filled with a mockery of BDSM and deep misogynistic abuse. But what’s waiting behind the dark doors of this society is beyond anything Shay ever imagined…or ever wanted to relive.

This book blew my fucking mind. Profoundly dark and twisted, absolutely not for everyone (PLEASE google the full list of TWs before picking it up yourself), and sensationally written. This was a profound look into the dark underbelly of misogynistic terror, abuse, sexual dominance and submission twisted into backward knots and used as a tactic to manipulate and destroy…and what happens when a victim turns into a survivor and screams NO. MORE.

There were parts that left me literally breathless in horror and shock. This was an INCREDIBLE book. This is the best book I’ve read in 2022. Hands down.

wow

amazing. pulled me out of a bad reading slump. if you're thinking about it do it u won't be disappointed with this one!

What I liked the most was that it never lagged.

I would say it was a bit of a story of extremes, but the general culture of it is not out of America’s possibility. I was concerned when it stepped into the culture of kinky sex, but it never got explicit. It was a central factor, but the overall inequality and treatment was the biggest subject. It was very well read, and it kept my attention.

Great Story! Great Reader!

I loved the story with all the twists and turns of it! It kept me hooked from beginning to end and at the edge of my seat the whole time!

Pretty intense

So based off of the synopsis I really didn’t anticipate the dark, racy, and intensity of this book. It took me by surprise as what I think the base of this story was- was not touched on at all with the description. I enjoyed it, it was a change in my usual listening, an unexpected change!