The Last Morning: A Thriller
By Camden Baird
Pub Date: Sept 16, 2025 | Thomas & Mercer
Book 1 of 1: The Secrets of Chapel Roads

Thank you @netgalley , @authorcamdenbaird & Thomas & Mercer for the ARC!

"The bus came. Emma got on. She never made it to school. What happened next blew my mind"

Description:
In her chilling psychological thriller debut, Camden Baird captures a mother’s worst nightmare—her young child disappears without a trace.

Sadie Wilson’s five-year-old daughter, Emma, vanishes on her first day of kindergarten. As the list of suspects grows—a secretive teacher, a delusional neighbor, a registered sex offender, an evasive principal and Sadie spirals deeper into grief and fear. Everyone has a secret. And even her loving husband Allen may not be telling the whole truth.

Told through multiple POVs, The Last Morning is a pulse-pounding thriller that peels back layers of secrets one shocking twist at a time.

My Thoughts:
This book wrecked me. I’m not a mom, but I still prayed for little Emma like she was real. That’s how deeply this story got into my head and heart. The suspense, the emotions, the fear—it all felt so real.

Every single character felt like a suspect, and the way Camden Baird revealed their pasts and motives one by one? Pure brilliance. It’s emotional, raw, and so twisty you won’t know who to trust.
I finished it in 6 hours flat—holding my breath, flipping pages like my life depended on it.

And if I were in Sadie’s place? Allen would've been out of that house in a heartbeat.
That man had me on edge the entire time!

Camden Baird, what a phenomenal debut.
If you love Lisa Jewell, get ready to obsess over this author.
Highly highly recommended to every thriller lover out there.

Mark your calendars—The Last Morning drops September 16th, and you do not want to miss it.



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I really really enjoyed this!! It was a fun concept, and really good thriller, and had me guessing. I didn't like how many characters were added and really frequently, but otherwise enjoyed it!

OMG - every parent's nightmare - put your child on the bus in the morning and get a call from the school alerting you ... your child did not make it to the classroom. Sadie, the mother, was nervous about Emma's first day of school (would she make friends, would she like the teacher) but never expected Emma to go missing!

Unraveling the mystery of what happened to Emma was crazy. Throughout the book, my suspect list changed a few times. I think the only one i was sure did not take Emma was Sadie.
And the more I read, the less I liked Allen - filled with secrets and lies!

Finding out who did it and why was not what I expected.

I did like this and would recommend to fans of mysteries.

This one had a solid plot. As a mom missing kid books are always a bit chilling. I enjoyed the storyline. The writing itself was solid. My problem with this one was all the.l bouncing view points. There were so many characters to have to follow. It caused me to have a lack of depth and feeling for the main characters. The read was good but I didn’t feel as immersed as I could have due to the many characters we are reading about.
Overall I would still recommend it as the read itself was good but more of a light read

I expected to fly through this book but it took me forever. I think it was just confusing as I didn’t like the multiple povs and the flashbacks etc. I would’ve preferred it told in one go, and two or three pov max. It’s heartbreaking to read as a mother goes through such trauma, and a good thriller just not brilliant.

Camden Baird delivers a stunning debut that grips you from the first page and refuses to let go. With haunting emotional depth and razor-sharp tension, Baird crafts a psychological thriller that is as heartbreaking as it is suspenseful as she weaves a harrowing tale of a mother's worst nightmare.

Told through multiple perspectives, each chapter peels back another layer of the mystery. From a seemingly ordinary teacher with a shadowy past, to a husband hiding more than he's admitting, every character is richly drawn and adds depth to the tangled web of secrets surrounding Emma's disappearance. The pacing is tight, the stakes feel real, and the twists are genuinely surprising.

What really elevates The Last Morning is Baird's insight into the human psyche. The novel explores the fragility of trust, the masks we wear even with those we love, and the lengths people will go to protect themselves or those they care about. It's both a suspenseful page-turner and an emotional deep dive.

The Last Morning is not just a story about a missing child - it's about the fracture lines that run through seemingly ordinary lives, and what happens when they split wide open. This is a powerful. unforgettable debut.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Listen, I read a LOT of thrillers. I enjoy most of them, even if they’re predictable and a bit monotonous. I’m also usually quick to guess the ending. Boy, did this one keep me guessing until the very end!

I’m not a parent, so I don’t know how realistic Sadie and Allen’s reactions were. I felt like they each made choices that felt a little unbelievable at times, but parents may be able to identify easier with those choices than I do.

Overall, the tension and pacing were very well threaded in this novel. I love short chapters, and I really flew through this one.

The Last Morning by Cambden Baird is an absolutely stunning and thought-provoking novel that captivated me from the first page. Baird's writing is beautifully lyrical, weaving together emotion, depth, and intricate character development. The story, with its layers of grief, hope, and self-discovery, resonates long after you've finished reading. The pacing is perfect, balancing moments of quiet reflection with gripping, heartfelt drama. The characters are so well-crafted that you feel every triumph and heartache alongside them. With its raw honesty and emotional weight, The Last Morning is a masterpiece that I can't recommend enough. It’s a 5-star read that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

Talk about a moms worst nightmare. I was not expecting any of the reveals that this book had. The twists and turns that this book took were crazy. The entire time I was questioning who took Emma. I totally agreed and understood why the mom was doing what she was doing while waiting to figure out where and what happened to Emma. Overall a great thriller that really has you on the edge of your seat.

Struggling to push aside her grief to focus on getting her daughter back, Sadie finds herself slipping deeper into despair. The growing list of suspects weighs heavily on her the secretive teacher, the registered sex offender, the delusional neighbor, the disgruntled ex-wife, the evasive principal—everyone seems to have a connection to Emma. And a surprising grudge to bear.

A riveting enthralling thriller that had me on the edge of my seat.
The Last Morning completely ensnares you in its hold from the very first chapter.
If you think this is just an easy to guess thriller, you are mistaken. The story is intrinsically woven with many other storylines and every single one could have easily carried out the kidnapping.
If you enjoy a fast paced, emotional, every one is a suspect, dark story then this is for you.
This is my first read of a book by Camden Baird, but it definitely will not be the last.

Review of The Last Morning by Camden Baird published 16 September 2025 by Thomas & Mercer.

Debut thriller by the author - a great addition to the market.

The story is told from several viewpoints, centred around a child, Emma, going missing on her first day of Kindergarten, with secrets, twists and plenty of mystery.

Perfect for fans of psychological thrillers.

The story follows a family in North Carolina. Emma who is starting her first day of kindergarten goes missing somewhere between being put on the bus and arriving at school.
This book keeps you guessing. Who’s hiding something and who can you believe? When I thought I had it figured out I was so wrong.

I received an eARC from NetGalley

This book was incredible! It deserves more than 5 stars! I was at the edge of my seat with every turn of the page blaming everyone that I thought was to blame! Never in my mind did I think of the actual outcome. Well played!

Thrilling and hard to put down. A 5 year old girl goes missing somewhere between being on the school bus and entering the actual school's kindergarten. Everyone around her is a suspect, and her mother doesn't know who she can trust.

the last morning by Camden Baird is a New Adult mystery thriller that is set to be released on September 16th, 2025.

The book includes Povs of multiple characters to help get a glimpse of every character's thoughts and motives. That exact addition had helped add to the thriller part in my opinion.
I'm usually not phased and don't scare easily by thriller books. But when A thriller book actually hit my nervous system and makes me question my whole surroundings and be afraid of my shadow then i know that the book is thrillering. And i had experienced such feelings while reading this book.
I was actually left with trust issues that could fill a river, and the fact that we got multiple povs and i still wasn't able to detect the person responsible IS ACTUALLY INSANE BECAUSE WDYM?

At first i wanna make sure to mention that the VIBES WERE VIBING. i was absolutely attached to the story from start to end and i kept moving to the next chapter needing more and more. And i guess what helped the most with getting me so engaged was that the chapters were relatively short to a decent length which helped me go through different versions of the story.

NOTE: mystery and thriller alike are tricky and reading them isn't like watching. I was left confused at some points ngl but it was just because i needed to see these characters in front of me to better judge (that sounds irrational i know but HEAR ME OUT)

I did infact not expect the plot twist at the end even though i was making my best to crack the mystery before the end comes to prove that i am stronger than the mystery books (i have clearly failed but still i tried at the least)

However, as an emphasis to a point i wasn't so fathom of, i was ultimately confused at some points due to the excessive multiple POVs and how tricky they got at some points. As much as it is fun to get a glimpse through every characters brain, at some points it got crowded and it felt like so much was happening at once. I of course don't know if this was the aim behind having such a technique with so many point of views to actually hide the Person of Interest and to cloud the readers judgement to not biased.
I have to admit it was such a beautiful move if that was the aim behind it but i guess that my brain isn't used to that much chaos in one place.

(2.5 stars)
"We could live for years and years in this hell. Spiraling and spiraling into canyons of despair. Never learning the whole truth, whether she's dead or alive." The best thing I can say about The Last Morning is it's a fast read: if you think of it as airport fiction you'll probably like it more than I did. Author Camden Baird travels down a well-worn road, writing about the hunt for a missing kid, but tries to mix it up by explaining what's happening from a range of different perspectives.

There's a lot of telling, from a thin and annoying cast of characters (caricatures?) who don't really behave like normal people, and not a lot of showing. I wasn't convinced by mother Sadie Wilson's anguish, she sounded like a helicopter mum to begin with: "But a mom can't be too careful these days. Everybody knows that. It doesn't matter where you life. Scary people are everywhere." She's pretty fake, including about loving her step-son, Forrest: "Loving Forrest feels right. It's the natural course of things with family. That's what holds my heart open." Wanting to love a step-kid because you think it's what families do, is actually different from loving them.

Her husband, Allen, is a cheating douche, clearly leading his ex-wife on: "He meets my gaze and sensation hums through me like an old familiar song. One I'm desperate to hear again". She's frankly a bit weird, deciding that her future happy family will include a kid who has another parent... It's all kind of incestuous and wrong. Which makes you kind of stop caring who's taken Emma. Nobody seems to deserve her.

The most poorly drawn character is Kate, who keeps talking to Katherine in her own head, in such an obvious and stupid characterisation of dissociative identity disorder. "People liked Kate and she liked herself as Kate more too. So Katherine agreed to back down and let Kate have the first and final say." Cringeworthy, no? There's also a random woman who invites Emma over for a play date despite her kid being dead: "The gist is she wanted to pretend she was someone's mom again, if only briefly, not that she intended Emma any harm." Lots of reviewers mention the 'twists' and 'turns' this book takes. I felt they were all a bit arbitrary. Without filling out the characters, the plot was kind of nonsense.

When you go into a genre where there are thousands of existing books, if you don't add anything new, you're very easily outclassed...

Psychological thriller
Kidnapped child
Several suspects, you read each chapter from each characters perspective until they finally start piecing together during the last chapter.
I really enjoyed the guessing during each chapter, but I felt like the ending was a little out there and would have enjoyed it without the final twist.
4/5 stars

The book consist of every parents nightmare, I braved myself to read this.
I like the story where it easy to read and I'm eagerly to know who took Emma and what happen to her? Reading the book I cannot seat properly just to worried and thinking what happen to Emma.
The only thing that disturbed me was there's more than 3 POV characters so I get irritated by that.
Overall its and easy 4 star read for me. Thank you.

4.5⭐️! I absolutely devoured this book! The missing child plot hooked me in from the very start and I was swept up trying to determine who did it. The story follows a few main characters where you gain some much needed perspective on where each person was and how they connect to the story. I was so unsure throughout the whole story who actually did it and when they revealed I was shocked to say the least. There is most certainly and revenge plot in the mix and I was curious to see how they were going to tie it all together to make sense and not seem too outlandish. I think the author did a great job and I truly had such a good time reading this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Thomas and Mercer for the ARC of this book!