📖 Book Review ~ Our Last Wild Days by Anna Bailey

Penguin Random House/ Transworld
25 April 2025

My thanks to the publisher for my copy if this book to review

 

The Labasques aren’t like other families. Living in a shack out in the swamps, they scrape a living hunting down alligators and other animals just to get by. To the good people of Jacknife, Louisiana, they are trouble-makers, outcasts, the kind of people you wouldn’t want living on your doorstep. So when Cutter Labasque is found face down in the muddy swamp, no one seems to care, not even her two rough-cut brothers. The only person who questions the official verdict of suicide is Cutter’s childhood friend, Loyal May, who has just returned home to care for her ageing mother. Loyal left town at the age of 18, having betrayed Cutter. Now there may be no way to find forgiveness, but there may be restitution…

📖 My Review…

The Labasque siblings eke out a meagre living hunting alligators in the muddy swamps of Jacknife, Louisiana. Outcasts from the townsfolk, Dewall, Beau and Cutter live a lonely life, plagued by their own peculiar demons and always just on the edge of the law. When Cutter’s body is found in the swamp there is no-one to mourn her passing except her friend, Loyal May, who has recently returned to Jacknife to look after her aging mother and also to work on the local newspaper. 

This is a bleak and rather sad story which places small town America in the spotlight, revealing old hurts, misguided superstitions and downright hostility from those who should be trying to solve the mystery of Cutter’s untimely death. There’s an edgy creepiness to the story which I found quite unsettling and yet I couldn’t put the book down even though I jumped at shadows when reading long into the night. The author describes the town well, its place within the southern states and the townsfolk who would rather not admit that they should also take their share of blame. With clues sparse and no-one really trying too hard to discover what happened to Cutter, Loyal, using her journalistic skills, turns detective to piece together the last few days of Cutter’s sad and complicated life.

Rich in atmosphere, Our Last Wild Days is a slow and beautifully layered story which creeps under the surface of the skin, with characters who linger in the shadows of the swamps which surround Jacknife like a dirty blanket. It is a place which gives up its secrets ever so slowly but which is ultimately compelling, it is a story which is already firmly placed on my book of the year list for 2025.

About the Author

Anna Bailey is a Sunday Times bestselling author from Gloucestershire. Their debut novel, Tall Bones, inspired by their experiences living in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, was nominated for the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year and Goldsboro Glass Bell awards, as well as the Prix Nouvelles Voix du Polar. Their short stories, based on their travels through rural America, have been dramatised for BBC Radio 4, including ‘Long Way to Come For a Sip of Water’, which was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. They live in Bordeaux with their wife.