Protected: Closing out June
July 4, 2023
Protected: Fourth of July 2023
July 10, 2023
The Last Word
My Rating:
After posting a negative book review, a woman living in a remote location begins to wonder if the author is a little touchy—or very, very dangerous—in this pulse-pounding novel of psychological suspense and terror from the critically acclaimed author of No Exit and Hairpin Bridge.
Emma Carpenter lives in isolation with her golden retriever Laika, house-sitting an old beachfront home on the rainy Washington coast. Her only human contact is her enigmatic old neighbor, Deek, and (via text) the house’s owner, Jules.
One day, she reads a poorly written—but gruesome—horror novel by the author H. G. Kane, and posts a one-star review that drags her into an online argument with none other than the author himself. Soon after, disturbing incidents start to occur at night. To Emma, this can’t just be a coincidence. It was strange enough for this author to bicker with her online about a lousy review; could he be stalking her, too?
As Emma digs into Kane’s life and work, she learns he has published sixteen other novels, all similarly sadistic tales of stalking and murder. But who is he? How did he find her? And what else is he capable of?
Trigger Warnings:
Infant death, animal cruelty
Does the dog die?
No.
Characters
- Emma Carpenter – main character; she is house sitting, removed from the world
- Laika – Emma’s dog; a Golden Retriever that is Emma’s best friend
- Shawn – Emma’s husband
- H.G. Kane – writer of multiple self published books that are overly gruesome
- Deek – author of a popular book about a serial killer; lives next door to the house that Emma is house sitting for
- Jules – Owner of the house that Emma is house sitting for
My Review
This was my May 2023 Book of the Month Box choice. (Side note.. the price went up.. trying to decide if it’s worth renewing my annual subscription next month.) A little gory, but I expected that after reading No Exit (I really like this book review blog post on No Exit). I think this one was a little more creepy to me than No Exit. I enjoyed the white board banter/hangman games between neighbors. I enjoyed the banter between Emma and her dog even more. Also, a female character that was super logical pretty much the whole time while being attacked for once was kind of cool to read.
It definitely made me think how hard it must be to get a book published and read – and then actually reviewed…. not sure about murdering people over a 1 star review though.
While I would never want to be in Emma’s situation (the reasons she is at the house… or what happens once she is there…), being able to house sit someone’s beach house for a week or so and binge read on my e-reader sounds like a dream!
Again. Check the trigger warnings if you have them. It’s a little gruesome. A little slow, dreary start. Then action packed, creepy, with a few twists up to the very end.
Spoilers/Summary
Shawn is actually alive. The car accident killed their four month old daughter in a completely fluke accident. It turned out to be just a fender bender, but just the right timing of everything, the daughter didn’t survive.
H.G. Kline is actually the son of the Jules, the owner of the house. It is his house that he has grow up in his whole life. He was coming in and watching Emma sleep and stalking her before she even read his book. He developed a crush on her and didn’t want to kill her. She assumed all of his books were real but he had only killed one other person before and he considered it an accident. He had tied his high school crush up and she asphyxiated while he was at school.
A delivery driver comes to drop off the taser that Jules had ordered her. Howard ends up killing him when the driver hits him with a rock. It messes up Howard’s plan and makes him go very Emma ends up getting away. She comes back to save the dog. Deek comes over to help out but Emma accidentally stabs him thinking it was Howard. Jules comes and realizes that Howard was the one causing the issues. The situation seems to calm down until Howard attacks Emma as she is about to try to leave to call the cops. Howard ties Jules up and Jules ends up dying from positional asphyxiation. Emma runs Howard over with the delivery truck, calls 911 with his phone to tell them he is dead, and then shoots him.
Fast forward and Emma is out of the hospital and agrees to meet with Deek for ginger tea. She confronts him that she knows it was him that set the whole thing up – for Howard to kill her so he could make it a story to bring him back into the publishing world. He only came over to help when he thought Howard had trapped her in the basement and she wouldn’t be able to get out; he was surprised when she actually made it out alive. He had hoped that she would leave with Jules for help and then kill Howard while they were away to claim self defense – Emma had mentioned that “Howard had said something” that made her not completely trust him, so he decided he would kill her and stage it as a suicide. Deek poisons Emma’s tea and then fills her backpack with rocks and then throws her in the water to drown. Emma has a vision of holding her daughter again – but then wakes up in time to get out of the water and live.
The book ends with Deek calling into the police station with a welfare check for Emma because he is worried about her mental health. The police say that she has just walked into the building. They find him in his house, he has shot himself.. Emma calls Shawn to apologize and he meets her halfway on the drive back to Salt Lake because he misses her.