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Hanna Jameson Shares Her Inspiration for The Last

by  | May 21

If you are a fan of dystopian fiction and psychological thrillers, add this book to your TBR! From the first page I had a “WTF, this is a little too real” moment….

Imagine you’re sitting at home having breakfast and all of a sudden you get one of the emergency alerts on your phone. This time the alert doesn’t notify you of a flash flood or hurricane, instead the words nuclear explosion flash across your screen. There is no time to run to a bunker and seek shelter; you are stuck.

Jon is at a conference at a Swiss hotel when someone at the table next to him gets the alert. The hotel guests all check their phones and quickly learn that around the world there are nuclear bombs being dropped. That’s all they find out before all the news outlets and media channels go dark and the clouds on the horizon are tainted in an ominous shade of orange.

Flash-forward two months…still no updates on what’s happening outside the hotel. Anybody who left after receiving the news alerts hasn’t returned. But when a body is found in the hotel, their safe haven no longer seems so safe. How long has the body been there? Is the killer still at the hotel or did they flee during the chaos of the nuclear bombs?

This book will have you flipping through the pages searching for the answers!

In this video, the author Hanna Jameson shares her inspiration for this chilling read. 

The Last

The Last

by Hanna Jameson

Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife’s text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you. But as he’s waiting in the lobby of the L’Hotel Sixieme in Switzerland after an academic conference, still mulling over how to respond to his wife, he receives a string of horrifying push notifications. Washington, DC has been hit with a nuclear bomb, then New York, then London, and finally Berlin. That’s all he knows before news outlets and social media goes black—and before the clouds on the horizon turn orange.

Now, two months later, there are twenty survivors holed up at the hotel, a place already tainted by its strange history of suicides and murders. Those who can’t bear to stay commit suicide or wander off into the woods. Jon and the others try to maintain some semblance of civilization. But when the water pressure disappears, and Jon and a crew of survivors investigate the hotel’s water tanks, they are shocked to discover the body of a young girl.

As supplies dwindle and tensions rise, Jon becomes obsessed with investigating the death of the little girl as a way to cling to his own humanity. Yet the real question remains: can he afford to lose his mind in this hotel, or should he take his chances in the outside world?

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Photo Credit // The Last jacket art by Donna Cheng

Categories // Publishing

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Saimah works on the Corporate Digital Marketing team at Simon & Schuster. She is a fan of dystopian fiction, celeb memoirs, contemporary rom-coms and murder mysteries. When she's not reading, she is binge-watching her favorite shows, exploring the best rooftop bars in the city and watching sports. Follow her on Instagram at @fire.escape.reads!