About The Book
Book: Our Last Wild Days
Author: Anna Bailey
Standalone or Series: Standalone
Publisher: Doubleday
Publication Date (UK): 24th April 2025
My Review
Our Last Wild Days is a brilliant example of a novel where place becomes a character in its own right. Prepare to be immersed in the atmospheric swamps and gritty backroads of southeastern Louisiana.
Loyal returns to her hometown of Jacknife to care for her ailing mother, taking a job at the local newspaper. But when her childhood friend Cutter Labasque is found face down in a swamp, Loyal refuses to accept it was suicide and uses her reporter instincts to uncover the truth.
Cutter’s two brothers don’t seem surprised by her death. The family makes a living hunting and rearing alligators, selling both the meat and skins, and their world is as murky and dangerous as the waters they work in.
The town is full of secrets and colourful characters and while Loyal’s investigation unfolds at a slow pace, I felt completely immersed throughout. The vivid setting had me slightly apprehensive that it may be too literary for my tastes, but while the writing is beautiful, it’s also gritty and accessible. And the no-nonsense characters deliver some brilliant lines like “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”
A fantastic second novel from Bailey.
Thank you to Alison Barrow and Doubleday for my gifted proof copy.
Beth Reads Crime 
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