Katharine Schellman's "Last Call at the Nightingale" is a riveting journey into the heart of Prohibition-era New York, where Vivian Kelly, a young woman burdened by the drudgeries of her daytime life, finds solace and escape in the vibrant underworld of The Nightingale. Set against the backdrop of the Roaring Twenties, Schellman paints a vivid picture of illegal dance halls, jazz-filled nights, and the thrill of rebellion. However, the atmosphere takes a dark turn when Vivian stumbles upon a body behind the club, thrusting her into a dangerous web of crime, police raids, and a society divided by class and privilege. As Vivian grapples with the perilous consequences of her newfound knowledge, "Last Call at the Nightingale" masterfully intertwines mystery, historical authenticity, and a compelling portrayal of a woman navigating the complexities of both the underground and the privileged elite. Schellman's narrative is a captivating dance between danger and glamour, offering readers a gripping tale that transcends the boundaries of time and social strata.

Give me all the mysteries set in the Jazz Age! Speak easies, flappers, bathtub gin, police raids...love this audio book, looking forward to book 2.

I think the best parts of this for me were that it was 1) focused on working class/poor characters and 2) how casually diverse the characters were. But the mystery itself wasn't my favorite, I just didn't find it all that engaging. Would definitely try another book by the same author, though.

This was a fun mystery novel set during prohibition! It had a diverse cast, layers of mystery, and keep me wondering what would happen next! I kept trying to predict what would happen but the author did a great job of keeping the truth hidden until she wanted you to know it.

3.5/5 Stars

Vivian Kelley finds herself caught up in a murder investigation when she finds a dead body behind The Nightingale, an underground dance hall she frequents often. When the club is raided, the club owner, Honor Huxley bails Viv out of jail. Now in her debt, Hux asks Vivian to find out more about a recent club visitor, Leo Green who may know more about the dead man then he is admitting.

This was a fun read set in New York during the 1920s during the prohibition. This is more of a slow-paced read, but it is very character driven. I liked it, but I think I wanted a bit more from it. The murder mystery was fun, and I enjoyed trying to piece it all together along side Viv. I think the best part was the will they/won't they between Vivian and Hux, I was rooting for them so badly... There was also a touch of a love triangle, which I'm not always the biggest fan of, but I didn't hate this one. Although I definitely preferred the one side over the other. I also really liked how the romance took more of a backseat to the murder investigation. I loved the diversity in this, with characters of different races and sexualities as well. I listened to this on audio, and I think the narrator did a fabulous job with all the characters and overall vibes of the story!

I liked the 'world building' and the characters had some great chemistry but I did feel like the mystery lacked some pizza (that's autocorrect for pizzazz that I refuse it fix cause ha). It really didn't feel like our main character should really be involved so the story had to keep bending to her in it. But seriously the best part of the story was the will they/wont they between our main character and the lady club owner. It was good writing which made me wish it was full romance rather than mystery.

Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of this audiobook.

I'm a sucker for a murder mystery set during prohibition featuring nightclubs filled with illegal alcohol and people trying to dance (and drink) their worries away. I loved that The Nightingale was owned by a queer woman, and the subtle nods to different lifestyle choices than the accepted man-woman partnership was a great touch.

While I didn't love Vivian, I was invested enough to want to know how she would make it out of this mess. My favorite character was Danny and I'd love to know more of his story. None of the characters were larger than life, but I didn't entirely mind that.

Schellman gave readers some entertaining red herrings along the way and I was pleasantly surprised by how the entire mystery played out. It also felt like a realistic plot (which isn't always the case). I'm not sure about making this in to a series, but I'm curious to see where Schellman takes readers to next. Overall this was a good read that readers of historical fiction with a side of murder will enjoy.

I'm not sure if it was Schellman's writing style, or Sara Young's delivery, but I didn't really enjoy the audiobook. Every line felt like it was being said curtly with very distinct periods.

Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by NetGalley and Dreamscape Media in exchange for an honest review.

Last Call at the Nightingale is a fun 1920's murder mystery. I was instantly drawn to the beautiful cover, which reminded me of a bar in Italy I once went. The narrator was amazing too.

What a fun cozy historical mystery to kick off this series!

LAST CALL AT THE NIGHTINGALE, set in New York during Prohibition-era of the 1920s.

Vivian, a seamstress by day, looking to have a night of dancing on the town at night, discovers the body of a dead man outside the speakeasy she frequents. It’s here that Viv gets called to help find the motive behind the murder, while discovering the secrets the other patrons might be hiding.

Overall I really enjoyed this story, and thought the audiobook narration by Sara Youngs was great!

*many thanks to Minotaur/Macmillan Audio for the gifted copy for review

A start to a new mystery series, this leaves a bit desired. While there was lots of talk about the night club and jazz, it didn't really feel like this was set in the 1920s. The main character Viv is an orphan that has been raised by nuns along with her older sister. Now they both work for a dressmaker, but Viv spends her nights at the Nightingale dancing with whatever man will take her. One night she stumbles across a dead body, and some how gets roped into figuring out what really happened. There's lots of hints to what the 1920s were like, but I really wish they had gotten permission to play some jazz under the narration to build it out better. There are a lot of twists and a few close calls, but in the end, everything is concluded and swept under the rug. I'm curious to see where this series goes and if Viv will be the main character for all of them. She was entertaining, but also felt like she was trying to hard and got everyone else to save her. The narrator was great though, I enjoyed listening to her.

I loved this book - I felt completely immersed in the story of the forbidden speak easy clubs, I loved the description of the girls outfits and the dance moves and the thrill of the dance clubs. It was so interestong to read about the sewing job thr sisters had and about the mobster men. Just a truly great story.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ALC in exchange for my honest review.

I was so sad when this book was over. It was atmospheric and enveloping in a way that made me able to enjoy the story fully instead of trying to figure out the ending in my head the entire time. All of the characters felt authentic and believable. It was also narrated very well, nearly perfect. I enjoyed it from start to finish. If you’re looking for an easy but complex murder mystery set in 1920’s NYC, this one is great.

Why I listen to Last Call at the Nightingale?

Last Call at the Nightingale caught my attention due to it being set during the 1920s. I imagined a beautifully written story filled with colorful atmospheres and characters. I imagined there would be flappers, business men, and from the synopsis a bit of mystery. So, I was excited to enter the world of The Nightingale.

What's the story here?

Vivian is a seamstress by day and a dancing girl at night. She becomes a dancing girl when she goes to The Nightingale which is a local speak easy. Going there is kind of an escape for Vivian as her day life is rather unpleasant. She lives with her older sister in an apartment where they barely make ends meet from working as seamstresses. Everything is upended when Vivian and her friend Bea find a body in the alleyway behind the speak easy. From them onward, there is a mystery of who the man was, who murdered him, why he was murdered, and how it will affect The Nightingale.

How did I like Last Call at the Nightingale?

Last Call at the Nightingale was exactly what I pictured in terms of characters and settings. There are flappers and business men, and most of the time they are interacting at the club. They come from different worlds but the booze and the music have a way of bringing people together. The Nightingale is a safe haven for people like Vivian. She is accepted there and would be devastated if anything happened to the sultry speak easy. I felt like I was in the club dancing out on the floor by all the descriptions of the smoky dance hall.

When the body is discovered in the alleyway, it turns things upside down. It turns out that it is the body of a seedy business man who may have had many enemies. The night after the murder, The Nightingale is raided by the police, and Vivian is caught up and arrested. When the owner of the speak easy bails her out, she winds up in her debt, and finds herself right in the middle of the mystery. The mystery is well-written and kept me guessing.

There is a touch of romance within the story but it is never the focus of the story. In fact, there are times that it honestly may have taken away from it a bit. It didn't feel like it was needed at certain points and like it may have taken away from the mystery. I wanted to focus simply on the mystery and characters! I actually felt like this story could do without romance.

How was the narration?

Last Call at the Nightingale is narrated by Sara Youngs and is approximately 9 hours in length. I listened to it at 1.50x speed which I felt was a comfortable pacing. The narrator did a nice job with the characters and I liked the way she told the story. It was very soothing.

This started slow for me and it felt like trite but it quickly picked up. I hope this is the beginning of more stories coming out of the Nightingale!

This was so fun. When two sisters in New York city trying to make ends meet, they find ways to let loose at the Jazz club called The Nightingale, It was very atmospheric and fun. I have always been interested in the prohibition era and this book did not disappoint.
One thing I admired about this book was how topics such as class, race and gender are treated and seen during the roaring 20s.
I would recommend taking this book on vacation and get swept up in this murder mystery.

This book was archived before I had time to read it, so I am not able to give accurate feedback. Thank you for the opportunity, sorry I was unable to get to it in time.

Get your dancing shoes out! I received this as an audio eARC from NetGalley.
Last Call at the Nightingale is a mystery set in Prohibition Era New York. This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend to others.

Prohibition was a noble concept, the execution of which was considerably less than noble. But as a setting for historical fiction, Prohibition and the Jazz Age that it spawned sparkles every bit as much as the spangled dresses that the “Flappers” of the period wore when they went dancing. At the speakeasies where liquor was bought from illegal bootleggers, ignored by cops on the take, and drunk by everyone who came to forget their troubles for a night of drinking and dancing.

Drinking can be a social lubricant even when it’s legal. Illegal booze drunk in barely hidden illegal establishments didn’t just break down individual’s inhibitions, it broke the social inhibitions between races, classes and identities.

Which is why Vivian Kelly dances at the Nightingale every night that she can, in spite of her older sister’s fear and disapproval. By day, Vivian lives in a constrained world. She’s Irish, she’s an orphan, she’s poor and she has a job that barely buys the necessities and has no prospects whatsoever. She and her sister seem doomed to be spinster seamstresses under the thumb of their overbearing, disapproving, autocratic boss until they step over a line or their eyesight gives out. They’re barely scraping by with little hope for better.

So Vivian dances as much as she can. She may not be able to dance away her problems, but she can certainly set them aside for a while when the drinks are flowing and someone is always looking for a dance partner.

Vivian also comes to the Nightingale because it’s where her best friend, Bea Henry, works as a dancer. Vivian may be white, but she’s also poor Irish. Bea is black, but in the poorer quarters of New York City where they live only a block apart, the Nightingale is a place where no one cares that they’re not supposed to be lifelong friends, just as no one bats an eye that the bartender is Chinese and the club’s owner is a woman who clearly prefers other women.

The Nightingale is a place where anyone can belong and everyone can be themselves – a place where people can put down whatever mask the outside world forces them to wear.

The night that Vivian and Bea find a dead body in an alley behind the club all of that is threatened. The police hush up the murder, but the dead man was high society and someone is determined to make the club and its owner, Honor Huxley, pay dearly for the privilege of staying open and keeping the secret.

All the secrets.

Vivian is in it up to her neck. She can’t get the scene out of her head, and she can’t help but gnaw at the few available threads of the mystery. When the club is raided, and Vivian finds herself owing Honor for her bail money, the only way she can pay the teasing, tantalizing woman back is to do a little bit of snooping. Vivian can’t admit to herself that she wants to please Honor, but she also wants to pay back what she owes and more importantly, she doesn’t know how she’ll live without the Nightingale.

But there’s someone wrapped in this mess who seems determined not to let the Nightingale, or Honor Huxley, or especially Vivian, go on living at all.

Escape Rating B: There has been a veritable spate of recent mysteries or fantasies with mystery elements set in the Jazz Age in recent months, all featuring female amateur detectives who are in over their heads so far that they nearly drown. The time period is fascinating because the illicit nature of the speakeasies encouraged a breakdown of social barriers, allowing all sorts of people to mix and mingle in ways that would have been impossible before.

The cover of Last Call at the Nightingale was so evocative of the era and the ambiance that I was hoping that the story would be up with the other recent trips back to the 1920s such as Dead, Dead Girls, Wild and Wicked Things, Bindle Punk Bruja and my absolute favorite, Comeuppance Served Cold.

This was a story where I flipped between listening and reading. I was in a time crunch and I really did want to find out whodunnit and whether I was right about the things I managed to guess in advance. Some books are much better one way than the other, but this turned out to be one where it didn’t matter. The narrator did a good job with the various accents and characters, but the performance didn’t elevate the material above and beyond what was on the page.

Whether in audio or text, I would say that this is a story that I liked more than I loved, and I think that’s down to its protagonist Vivian Kelly. In her mid-20s with no family other than her sister, raised in an orphanage, barely making ends meet, Vivian is poor and Irish and would probably be called “white trash” behind her back if not to her face. It would have to have been a “hard-knock life” as the play Annie put it, and she’d have to have more sharp edges and street smarts than she seems to.

She’s in so far over her head that she should be drowning. Or, she should be more cynical about pretty much everything. Not that she shouldn’t have dreams or be trying, in however messy a fashion, to make them true, but that she misses some of the realities of life that should be obvious.

Or it could be that the intervening century between her time and ours has made us much more jaded than she was. As soon as the public story about the situation with the dead man’s widow, her young sister and her bastard of a dead husband was revealed, it was screamingly obvious what the underlying cause of that part of the mess was – and Vivian didn’t even think it. Which felt off and made Vivian a bit more incongruous than I could quite believe.

Which doesn’t mean that the setup of the story wasn’t fascinating, or that the reveal of both whodunnit and why wasn’t completely earned. In the end, this reads like Vivian Kelly’s coming-of-age story, and sets up the possibility of more to come. If that more doesn’t materialize, this one is absolutely complete in and of itself. It’s just that there’s a door in the back of the bar that could lead into another mystery.

One of the things that I very much did like was the way that we explore Vivian’s world, both the good parts and the bad, as she undertakes her undercover adventure for Honor Huxley. Vivian’s journey travels through the dark places and shines a light on them without being preachy but still showing clearly just how much was wrong and how hugely unequal the many, many inequities were. And that the Nightingale was a haven where those things didn’t have to happen.

By the time we leave Vivian, she is only a tiny bit older, but much sadder and maybe a little wiser. She learns that nothing she thought was true at the beginning was, and that the people we look up to are in position to use us and hurt us the most. And that she’s going to have to be a lot smarter and grow a much tougher skin if she’s going to survive in the world she has chosen to inhabit.

If this does turn out to be the first in a series as both the Goodreads and Amazon blurbs seem to indicate, I’ll be very curious to see how well, or even if, she manages either of those things.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio, Wednesday Books, and NetGalley for providing an ALC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a good, solid book (and very well read audiobook). It's creative, a little bit odd, and atmospheric.

I think our main character is okay - She is a bit inconsistent and frustrating at times (just can't seem to make up her mind) but that can easily be attributed to her feeling of being lost in the world.

My favorite part of the story was the queer representation. It's very well done. The themes of friendship, family, and grief also bring this story to life. I wish we got to feel closer to the characters, but liked seeing their different dynamics.

The audiobook experience is great, and the narrators are wonderful. The pacing could've been improved a bit, but the last 1/3 of the book is full of great content. I do think there was a point where it got muddled, however it does come together. This will be great for folks looking for a YA novel that has elements of horror, magical realism/fantasy, and romance.

TW: abuse (physical and emotional), death/vivid descriptions of decay, homophobia

I love reading mystery books set during the Roaring 20’s during Prohibition, mobsters, and shady speakeasies. I was in a long drought after reading and loving Vixen, Ingenue, and Diva, the flappers series by Jillian Larkin, so I was so excited to read Last Call At The Nightingale! It was my first time reading a book by Katharine Schellman and not only did it exceed my expectations, but I am now hooked on Schellman books!

I absolutely loved the characters in this book. In particular, two stood out as my favorite. Vivian - what a tough, courageous woman, being sucked into all the seedy drama after she finds a dead body in the alley of the Nightingale and tries to solve the murder mystery. I was so impressed by her character and the fact that despite all of the danger she put herself in, she still was able to squeeze in a little romance. That is my kind of girl! Honor Huxley, the Nightingale Club owner, comes through as such an intense and intimidating character, just like she is supposed to be, so I really looked forward to her scenes. And it was nice that an lgbtq+ character (Honor Huxley) not only got represented in this book, but really shined. Remember this was back in the 1920’s when it was more difficult to come out.

This book also showcases both extremes of a modest living and a lavish lifestyle. It also displays family dynamics that are not always perfect, so it was balanced and believable. But there is a sensitive topic in the book that is discussed that may be a trigger for some people that is relevant to the storyline, but the author handles it very tactfully.

This book really transports you into the 1920’s from the moment Vivian walks into the Nightingale for the first time. From the clothes to the live band playing relevant and popular jazzy tunes of the time, to the illegal drinking in the club. Lots and lots of booze! This book has lots of sexy flirting, dangerous moments, non-stop action and suspense, and will keep you guessing until the very end about who the murderer is. At one point I had about four suspects. Hints are smartly sprinkled in here and there, but I still did not figure it out until it was revealed. So this is an excellent mystery! And the TWIST at the end, wow! This is a very thought out and planned mystery, you can really tell, and that made it so much better. And the ending sets up the story nicely for the next installment of the Nightingale Mysteries, which I am excited for!

I thoroughly adored this book so much, I preordered a signed copy of the book with a personalized inscription. I highly recommend it!

My review is based on the audiobook version of Last Call at the Nightingale on netgalley. The narrator, Sara Young, did such a wonderful job really displaying each character and really engrossing you into the story with her pleasant voice. I would definitely listen to another audiobook by this narrator. So definitely check out the audiobook if possible.

*I received an audiobook download from netgalley in exchange for a review. My review is not influenced by netgalley or the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.