Thank you to NetGalley and Atria for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Our Last Wild Days is an atmospheric thriller / mystery novel set in rural Louisiana. Cutter Labasque is found dead and because her family is looked down on no one really seems to care. Cue her childhood friend Loyal May who is a reporter and does not buy the suicide ruling of Cutter's death. Their friendship ended on a sour note and Loyal feels the least she can do for her friend is uncover the truth.

The pacing of this story was a bit off for me -there just wasn't as much suspense as I typically would like in a thriller. Because of this parts of the story just felt a bit slow for me. There were quite a few side characters and I didn't feel a strong connection to the main characters. I also didn't love the last minute romance -it just felt a bit unnecessary/rushed. I didn't feel a sense of urgency to complete this which I typically do with thrillers. Despite these things I thought the ending was really successful. Ultimately I think it was worth a read but not something I will re-read or probably think of again unfortunately.

5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. This is my first novel by Anna Bailey, and I am so impressed with her gorgeous, lyrical writing style. I also love the way she makes the Louisiana swamps a character in the book. This novel is very atmospheric, and very tautly paced. This is the story of Loyal May, who returns to her small hometown in Louisiana to care for her ailing mother. She is a journalist, and after leaving her job in Houston, she takes a position with the small local paper. On her first day on the job, she learns of a death in the bayou and it turns out to be her close childhood friend, Cutter. The death is immediately ruled a suicide, and no real investigation appears to be forthcoming. Loyal takes it upon herself to start digging, as she has a lot of questions. As her research unfolds, more questions continue to come to the surface. In partnership with the paper’s Editor and photographer, they start discovering that not all is well in the town, and out in the swamps there is a who lot of trouble brewing. I will leave it there, as I do not want to get into spoiler territory. This is not a fast-paced thriller, if that is what you are seeking. This is instead a beautifully written, slowly-unfolding mystery that is absolutely worth the read. The author’s ability to develop her characters, and her sense of atmosphere and place, make the book a page-turner. I was so invested in this story that I could not stop reading until I knew exactly what had happened to Cutter. Highly recommend!

Let me be real……I am from Louisiana. So reading stories about it from people who don’t live here can be hit or miss. A lot of times the bayou people are heavily overdone. This one definitely went over that line a couple times. What really brought my rating down was the huge obsession with Loyal and her weight. The internal thoughts and external comments took me completely out of the story. I can also promise you, that unless you have deeply offend someone in the south they are not going to walk around calling people “lardass, fatty, etc, etc”.
In chapter 5 “this lardass with you, man?”
This from a sheriffs deputy talking to a reporter and our fmc…..I almost quit reading here.
Now onto the story, who killed cutter? And why? I felt that the mystery of that was done well. We see how deeply flawed cutter and her brothers are but also their sides they don’t show the world.
I have to say 3/5 stars for me……
I received an ARC of this title, all opinions are my own.

Book review 📖

📜Our Last Wild Days
✍️Anna Bailey
📠Atria Books
📚Mystery/Thriller Fiction
🗓️Pub date: May 20, 2025

⭐️⭐️⭐️

✨Thank you @NetGalley and @atriabooks @atriathrillers for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

✨Jacknife, Louisiana is a dark, alligator-infested swampland, and the Labasques are proud to call it home. In a small shack in the swamps, the family are known to the community as outcasts and trouble.

✨When Cutter Labesque is found dead and face-down in the swamp, it doesn’t come as a surprise to some of them, and her family doesn’t seem to care. It takes her best friend, Loyal May, to question suicide as the official cause of death.

✨Working with her group of collegues at the local newspaper, Loyal uncovers a darker side of the swamplands that has nothing to do with wildlife, but the people who live there. Corruption and deceipt have come a long way.

✨With a voice so rich and deep, gutteral and grisly, Bailey’s writing is easy to get lost in—a magnetic prose—which provides a vivid landscape of the deep south. Think of a darker Where The Crawdads Sing or Deliverance.
I did think the book moved slowly, which made me lose interest in spots, but a well-told story.

#netgalley #ourlastwilddays #annabailey #atriabooks #advancedreadercopy #arc #bookreview #bookstagrammer #bookstagram #springreleases #thrillerfiction

I started this book quickly convinced I would give it a 5 star review. I loved everything about it: the premise, the setting, the colorful small town characters, and the writing was just so beautiful. But then it got slow. Really, painfully slow and unfortunately I could not finish it.
Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This was a bit of a slog for me to get through. The characters were underdeveloped which left me uninterested. I really was hoping this would be a five star. Thank you to Net Galley and Atria Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
2 star

Cutter Labasque is found dead but nobody seems to care . The Labasque family is considered trouble and worthless and even the police do not seem interested in. But her friend, Loyal, needs to look into the deathand it gets really messy!
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I was absolutely sucked in by the atmosphere and storytelling that Anna Bailey created. This book is full of Southern Gothic atmosphere. I was really drawn in by the supernatural elements and wondering what may actually be happening in Jackknife. I could feel the fear and unknown when reading about the people in animal masks and finding things in the woods. This is one of the parts that really brought me into the story. I couldn't wait to find out if it was a real supernatural element, just the fear of the supernatural or a group of people who were creating these weird and fatal happenings in Jackknife. I was also thinking about the characters late into the night after reading this book. I found them all compelling and I enjoyed reading from different characters perspective and finding out bits and pieces of what truly happened on that night.

The plot and characters kept the book suspenseful and intriguing. The ending had me guessing and I was surprised at the end. Really enjoyable and hard to put down.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria for this ARC.

Unfortunately I appear to be in a minority reading this book. I did not enjoy it at all.

It is so SLOW. I literally felt like I was dredging through the literal swamps. I thought maybe it was starting slow but it would pick up. It never did. It took me forever to get through. I just kept losing attention.

It also just felt like Where The Crawdads Sing except everyone was kind of a bad person in a bad town.

The romance thrown in just really didn't make sense and wasn't developed until late in the book.

It definitely felt like a grimy episode of True Detective and I also was not a fan of that, so this is probably just a taste preference.

I will say the author wrote well and that's why I stuck through. I just didn't like the story.

I really should have trusted my gut on this one and DNF-ed when I felt it was not my thing in the beginning.

This was great! Perfect for fans of Where The Crawdads Sing (but even better, IMO). Intensely atmospheric and beautifully written! Anna Bailey definitely has a new fan. I immediately ran to order their first book and can't wait to see what they write next!

Thank you to Atria Books & NetGalley for the ARC!

I don’t know how I feel about this book but I probably will be thinking about it for a while. The characters were very easy to follow and I enjoyed the twists and turns of the story.

A Southern Gothic? That's a new subset of thriller I haven't read before.
I found this to be really well written and entertaining. I think Bailey is talented and does a great job at keeping the reader invested.

Haunting, lyrical, and dripping with Southern gothic atmosphere—Anna Bailey’s Our Last Wild Days completely consumed me.
From the moment I stepped into the sweltering, mosquito-bitten swamps of Jackknife, Louisiana, I was hooked. This is not just a thriller—this is a slow-burn character study, a meditation on guilt, grief, and the messy business of making amends.

The Labasques aren’t like anyone else in this tight-knit, judgmental town. Outcasts who survive off the land by hunting alligators and selling their meat, they’ve always been treated like misfits raised by wolves—feral, feared, and shunned. But when Cutter Labasque is found face-down in the bayou, her supposed suicide barely raises an eyebrow… except from one person: Loyal May, her estranged childhood friend who once betrayed her.

Loyal had escaped this town at eighteen, leaving behind a trail of heartbreak, her eccentric mother, and a version of herself the town refused to accept. She built a life elsewhere, only to return ten years later when her mother, showing early signs of dementia, begins digging up the garden with her bare hands in the middle of the night.

Now back in Jackknife, working a thankless job at the local paper, Loyal is assigned to cover a routine case with a phone-obsessed photographer—only to stumble upon Cutter’s body. The sheriff’s department wants it shut and buried. But Loyal can’t accept that—not with the guilt she carries, not with the gnawing instinct that this wasn’t an accident.

As she tries to reconnect with Cutter’s brothers—one numbed by addiction, the other menacing and unreadable—Loyal becomes entangled in a dangerous web of corruption, old town secrets, and smoldering resentments. Her pursuit of justice may cost her more than her peace—it could cost her her life.

Bailey’s writing is unflinching and atmospheric, painting the oppressive humidity and decay of rural Louisiana with tactile, almost cinematic detail. You feel the rot beneath the surface—of the town, of the politics, and of the people desperately trying to hold themselves together. The characters are deeply flawed, achingly human, and unforgettable. Loyal, in particular, is a brilliant creation—wounded but unyielding, driven by remorse and something close to redemption.

This story crawls under your skin like swamp heat—it’s not fast-paced, but it’s relentless. The mystery unravels in unexpected, quietly devastating ways, and the emotional stakes stay razor-sharp.

✨ Final thoughts:
If you loved Where the Crawdads Sing but wanted something darker, grittier, and more morally complex, Our Last Wild Days will absolutely deliver. This is a heart-wrenching, thought-provoking, stunningly written thriller that explores what it means to be loyal—to your past, to the dead, to your own wounded self.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4.5 rounded up because the writing deserves it!)

Endless thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the digital review copy in exchange for my honest thoughts. I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.

What a great book! Our Last Wild Days is my first from Anna Bailey. Based in Louisiana was the first plus before even reading it. I love Louisiana and she described it wonderfully. So well written and includes my favorite thing in psychological thrillers…Twists and Turns! I was seriously hooked from page one. It pulled me in and didn’t let me go until the very last word. I’m sad I finished it. I definitely recommend this one. Hopefully you enjoy it as much as I did.
Thank you Atria Books, NetGalley and of course Anna Bailey for this eARC.

Loyal has returned to her hometown in Louisiana. She hasn’t been there for a decade since falling out with her best friend, Cutter. She won’t get to reconcile though, as Cutter’s body is found days after her return.

I will preface this with noting that I was not a huge fan of Where the Truth Lies, but I am always willing to give an author another chance because sometimes it’s just not the book for you at that time. I am so glad that I picked this one up because I loved it. It is dark and atmospheric; you really get the feel for the swamp and the town, but it’s also got a great mystery and plot to it. The characters are all great, especially how there are some bad ass tough characters, who you think may be antagonists, but not all of them are…. I am now a huge fan of alligators and can’t wait to read Bailey’s next book!

“I think if you leave a place, it just gets worse and worse in your head, until you hate to think about it, and I don’t ever want to hate all this.”

Our Last Wild Days comes out 5/20.

This novel wasn’t for me. I think a lot of thrillers these days have become very predictable and lack urgency. I don’t think I will be reading from this certain genre again. I didn’t care for the plot or writing style. I was bored and there is nothing worse than a boring book.

Title: Our Last Wild Days
Author: Anna Bailey
Genre: Mystery/thriller   
Rating: 4 out of 5

 The Labasques aren’t like other families.

Living in a shack out in the swamps, they made do by hunting down alligators and other animals. To the good people of Jacknife, Louisiana, they are troublemakers and outcasts, the kind of people you wouldn’t want in your community.

So, when Cutter Labasque is found face down in the muddy swamp, no one seems to care, not even her two 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 mother. When she left town at eighteen years old, she betrayed Cutter. Now with a ragtag group from the local paper where she works, Loyal goes in search of answers, uncovering a web of deceit and corruption that implicates those in town. It may be too late to apologize to Cutter, but Loyal has restitution in mind.

I didn’t like any of these characters except maybe Sasha—and what was up with the staples in his hair? Excellent setting description and worldbuilding here…enough that the small town feel almost made me nauseous. Seriously. A place this tiny and run down is a no for me. I don’t really feel like there was any resolution with the whistling/masks in the woods or the dirty cops, so the ending felt a bit unresolved to me, and Loyal wasn’t likable enough for me to get truly invested in this story.

Anna Bailey is the author of Our Last Wild Days.

(Galley courtesy of Atria Books in exchange for an honest review.)

(Blog link live 5/24).

I’m always always down for a swampy southern gothic atmospheric setting and Our Last Wild Days nailed that.

I loved reading about The Labasques, the people around them and the shady situations they get themselves in. The story starts as a slow burn but it’s done in an interesting way and the payoff is worth it.

Dewall ended up being one of my favorite characters and I wish we were able to know Cutter better.

Such a good atmospheric mystery - definitely can’t wait to read more by Anna Bailey.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

I absolutely loved Anna Bailey's Where the Truth Lies, so I knew that I needed to immediately read their newest novel, OUR LAST WILD DAYS. This book is a slow-burning, atmospheric Southern Gothic mystery that plunges readers into the murky depths of small-town secrets and long-buried betrayals.

When journalist Loyal May returns to her rural Louisiana hometown to care for her ailing mother, she’s quickly pulled into a chilling mystery: the suspicious death of her estranged childhood friend, Cutter Labasque. Determined to seek justice where no one else will, Loyal and a team from the local newspaper begin an investigation that slowly unravels a tangled web of corruption, secrets, and heartbreak.

This novel thrives on its rich setting—the humid, haunting Louisiana bayou practically becomes a character of its own—paired with lyrical and creeping writing. While the slow pace and abundance of characters can sometimes make the plot feel unwieldy, the core of the story remains strong. Fans of Southern Gothic fiction, complex characters, and slow-burn mysteries that simmer with tension until the final reveal will find themselves thoroughly immersed. If you enjoyed Where the Crawdads Sing or Chris Whitaker's We Begin at the End or All the Colors of the Dark, you will love OUR LAST WILD DAYS.