The Last Resort by Raji Mukherjee is a short story filled with inspiration and hope. It is also a story about helping people, even strangers, in their time of need. It is a quick read, but worth every minute. It will warm your heart as Dev and Ana help a man who lost his sister in a car accident.

I received this book on Netgalley and I always review every book that I read. I recommend this one.

I enjoyed Mukherjee's story but the writing was simply not up to par. The brevity of the it made the experience pleasurable and quick.

The blurb and intriguing cover are what first attracted me to this short story.  

Our protagonist is riding home from work on pubic transport somewhere in New Jersey. He is scanning the videos he took of his girlfriend Ana, the love of his life. A stranger seems inordinately interested in his videos. He explains that Ana is the spitting image of his sister, who was killed in a car accident the previous year. He wonders if our protagonist would share his photos as he doesn't have anything to remember his sister by. Feeling sorry for the man, he complies.  When he visits the man in his home, he comes to realize that the niece the man spoke of is just an hallucination - the girl died in the accident with her mother...

"What had started out as a gesture of goodwill was turning into a fool's errand for my stupidity."

So far, this story has all the makings of a thriller, but alas, this is not the case.  Told in two parts, with the second part occurring several years later when our protagonist is now happily married to his love Ana, and the father of a little girl.  They meet up again with the man who is going to be put into an institution for his psychosis.  Altruistically they believe that they can 'cure' him if they banish his guilt over the accident. They plan a deception that will hopefully alleviate his guilt and make him come to terms with his loss.

This story just didn't do anything for me. The writing didn't have a good flow. The potential was there, it just didn't evolve.  There was a plot twist, but by that point, I was no longer invested in the outcome. It just seemed pointless... The protagonists seemed to be naive and more involved in the man's life than the situation seemed to warrant.  Perhaps another reader would get more out of this read than I did, but for me it was a resounding disappointment.

This short story was a bit confusing. I wasn't immediately drawn to the characters. I kept anticipating a twist showing how these two families were connected but nothing surfaced. I felt the mental health aspect was definitely very much a fictitious response to a person experiencing post traumatic stress.

I enjoyed the brevity of the story and the plot was interesting, although a bit unfulfilling.

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of the story in exchange for this honest review.

First, I would like to thank Rajib Mukerjee and NetGalley with providing me with this book so I may bring you this review.

The Last Resort by Rajib Mukerjee is a short story that instantly swooped me into the story on the first page.

My heart strings were pulled hard for Ron and the tragedy of his lost sister and niece. Ironically, she looked just like Ana the woman Devon was dating. As the story unfolds you see how much this tragedy affected him and his life. It was a very interesting and powerful story.

In this short story the author makes a statement for the act of human kindness. Its meaning was clear. We're not too busy where we can't take a few minutes out of our precious lives to help someone. Someone in desperate need. This well-written narrative spelled it all out: there is no greater reward.

A man loses his entire family in an unavoidable car accident. Regardless, he blames himself. Distraught, he has no one to turn to. He's slowly deteriorated to a borderline psychosis. Quite by chance, he finds a young couple that were eager to offer help. A friend in need...

They secretly devised a plan to reenact the night of the accident. They wanted to play the part of the victims and tell the man that he was forgiven. The plan had not gone entirely as predicted. Though the ending was an unpredictable marvel.

I enjoyed this short story. It was a quick read, which was nice and kept my attention that I wanted to find out what happened to the characters. There were a few places that confused me a little due to not being specific on details but it did not take away from the story. I haven’t read anything like this before. It was different and very intriguing!