One Last Breath

by Lisa Jackson, Nancy Bush

EVERY FAMILY HAS ITS SECRETS
Rory Abernathy's wedding to Liam Bastian turned into a bloodbath. She fled after stabbing a masked intruder, just before a gunman opened fire on the wedding party. Five years on, Rory still has no idea who was behind the attacks. Fearful she and her daughter remain targets, she's made a new life far from Liam and the wealthy, powerful Bastians.

BUT SOME
But even in remote Point Roberts, Washington, she can't hide from the past. Liam tracks Rory down, stunned to learn they have a child. Did someone in Rory's family try to kill him for his portion of the Bastian estate? As they gradually overcome distrust in search of the truth, Rory knows one thing for certain: someone is watching her...

ARE WORTH KILLING FOR
Time has passed, but the killer's need for vengeance hasn't. And as a nightmare stirs to life again, Rory will find that this time, there's nowhere left to run...


PRAISE FOR LISA JACKSON AND NANCY BUSH

"Superb . . . a masterpiece of romantic suspense."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Something Wicked

"Definitely one you don't want to read alone at night."
--Library Journal on Wicked Lies

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Romantic Suspense, Romance, Mystery Thriller

480 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 24, 2018

About the author

Lisa Jackson is the number-one New York Times bestselling author of over ninety-five novels, including the Rick Bentz and Reuben Montoya Series, the Pescoli and Alvarez Series, the Savannah series, and numerous stand alone novels. She also is the co-author of One Last Breath, Last Girl Standing, and the Colony Series, written with her sister and bestselling author Nancy Bush, as well as the collaborative novels Sinister and Ominous, written with Nancy Bush and Rosalind Noonan. There are over thirty million copies of her novels in print and her writing has been translated into twenty languages.

Before she became a nationally bestselling author, she was a mother struggling to keep food on the table by writing novels, hoping against hope that someone would pay her for them. Today, neck deep in murder, her books appear on The New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly national bestseller lists.

With dozens of bestsellers to her name, Lisa Jackson is a master of taking readers to the edge of sanity—and back—in novels that buzz with dangerous secrets and deadly passions. She continues to be fascinated by the minds and motives of both her killers and their pursuers—the personal, the professional, and the downright twisted. As she builds the puzzle of relationships, actions, clues, lies, and personal histories that haunt her protagonists, she must also confront the fear and terror faced by her victims and the harsh and enduring truth that, in the real world, terror and madness touch far too many lives and families.

Visit http://www.LisaJackson.com where you can find a Media Kit with photos and more information.

Reviews

[Linda Strong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rory should be the happiest bride around ... she's marrying Liam, the man she actually married 2 months ago. To appease her new mother-in-law she's consented to remarry in a church service.

But as she's getting ready. a masked man attacks her. She manages to stab him and make her escape, but not before he threatens to find her and finish the job.

Not knowing what to do and being so scared, she does what makes sense to her at the time ...run! Protect the unborn baby she carries that no one ... not even her husband.. . knows anything about.

Meanwhile someone has fired upon the wedding party. Rory's brother is killed, Liam is badly injured, her father in law is paralyzed.

It is now 5 years later and Rory has changed her identity and now dotes on her daughter. She's working as a waitress and most people think she is hiding from an abusive husband.

And one day the unthinkable happens ... Liam shows up looking for her.

The book started out with a bang ... literally. It's action -packed, yet slowed down for a short while before picking up speed again. There are a lot of characters to keep track of ..some living, some dead. For those who really enjoy, this Romantic Suspense will work just fine.

Many thanks to the authors / Kensington Books - Zebra / Netgalley for the digital copy of this Romantic Suspense. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

[Kelly Kosinski · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first book from the team Lisa Jackson and Nancy Bush. This was a fairly good read and I enjoyed it.

[Sherri Thacker · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is my 6th book I’ve read by Lisa Jackson and I love most of her books and I love her writing style. But this book did NOTHING for me and I’m stopping at page 158. Too much to keep track of ...

[Melody Chase · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually love Lisa Jackson's books, but One Last Breath was a big disappointment. I do not recommend this book. There are way too many inconsistencies. There are also too many things in the book that seems too improbable.

***Spoilers***


First of all, there are way too many references to the "wedding". I know it is a the main event that the book centers around, however, it seems every chapter refers "the wedding" where Liam was shot, or where Aaron was killed or where Geoff was shot. We already know what has happened at the wedding and know who was hurt and who was killed. The book mentioned "the wedding" and the details of it way too many times. There are several inconsistencies that bother me. In Chapter 3 it states Beth lived with her parents because she released her apartment in hopes of moving in with Liam. But in Chapter 23, it states Beth was having a private pity party in her living room of her apartment. It goes on to state that she threw all of Liam's pictures away that was decorating her apartment. There are several of these inconsistencies in the book. It throws the whole story off. Reading an intense scene and then something pops up that is inconsistent, it makes no sense.
Also, there are a lot of improbable situations. Liam hasn't seen Rory in 5 years. He learns that he has a daughter and he and Rory go to his place and have sex. He doesn't want to get to know his daughter? And Rory has been running for 5 years and leaves her daughter with Rory's mom who the daughter has never met??? And even the whole plot of the story is inconceivable. Rory and her unborn child is threatened at her wedding, so she takes off? She doesn't tell her husband nor the police, she runs to another country and then another state with a fake ID and hides out for 5 years. She had a fake ID made 2 years prior because she thought maybe one day her past would catch up with her. The only thing that it states that could catch up to her was that she left her ex, Cal after she had a miscarriage. She wasn't afraid of him and he never bothered her (to her knowledge). So why would any normal person think they would need to run in the future? There are so many problems with this book, I couldn't enjoy it. This is unfortunate because I normally love Lisa Jackson's books.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once again Nancy Bush and Lisa Jackson have teamed up to write an engaging mystery. Though there were lots of characters to keep up with, I have to admit I didn't guess the culprit. I had my suspicions but then my guess turned up dead. From the first page I was hooked and had to stay up late just to find out who was behind all of the troubles plaguing Liam and Rory.

[Crystal Seymore · Rating 2 out of 5]

My goodness, the main character was stupid and did things I don’t think any woman would do. Instead of running to the police after being nearly stabbed by a helium inhaling masked man she just decides to run. Except she has no idea who she’s running from and she’s pregnant, decides her husband doesn’t need to know about the baby and goes on with her life. Added to that craziness this could have all been solved in under a hundred pages but no they just kept adding characters with angst and it kept going and going.

[Annastasia Sikel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a fan of Rory gotta say. Little sympathy for her and her flawed reasoning. Finished the book mostly out of curiosity, trying to see if it got better. Won't spoil it for you but not likely to jump on another Jackson/Bush collaboration.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel by authors and sisters Lisa Jackson and Nancy Bush was a good mystery, as well as good depiction of an extremely dysfunctional family. The Bastion family is a well-known construction firm in the Portland, Oregon area. The father of the family, Geoff Bastion, runs his business with an iron fist. He is currently married to Stella with whom he has two children, and his oldest son by a previous marriage. When the book begins, Liam Bastion had met Aurora (Rory) Abernathy on the city streets. Both were extremely taken with each other, and had secretly been married for a few months. Stella, his mother, had hoped Liam would marry Bethany Van Horne, a woman she thought would suit him better, as she had come from a family more like the Bastions. Rory had a middle class family and education, and her mother Darlene had remarried several years after Rory's father was out of the picture. Rory has two stepbrothers, and her stepfather is currently in prison. When Stella finds out that Liam and Rory were married, she insists upon a 'formal' wedding with family and friends present. Rory is getting ready for the wedding at Lake Washington, when there is a knock on her door; she is expecting her stepbrother Aaron, who will be walking her down the aisle. However, a stranger is on the other side of the door with a huge number of helium balloons and his voice has been altered by inhaling helium. The stranger threatens her with a knife, and also threatens the life of her unborn baby. Rory takes a paring knife and stabs the man before he can use the knife he brought on her, and by instinct, she becomes a runaway bride, leaving her bloody wedding dress in a dumpster. She has friends of her mother help her get away to a small town in Washington near the Canadian border at British Columbia. Here she lives for five years under an assumed name and working at a coffee shop. She simply does not know who to trust in the Bastion family anymore, since after the incident in Rory's hotel room, a sniper open fired on the wedding party, killing her stepbrother, wounding her groom and Geoff ends up permanently in a wheelchair due to the shooting injuries he received. This leaves the day to day company business to son Liam, as Derek claims he only want to work at the company, and not make executive decisions. During the five years Rory has been 'missing', Liam keeps looking for her using the services of a private investigator and also a cop who worked on the case at the beginning, but now has his own P.I. agency. As luck would have it, Rory is working the drive up window one afternoon at the coffee shop when she sees Liam in line. She asks another employee to take her place, and she gets ready to run again, this time with her daughter Charlotte, who is Liam's child (he never knew Rory was pregnant when she ran away from all the violence). She is planning to go all the way to California if need be, but Charlotte ends up with an especially virulent strain of influenza and has to be admitted to a hospital in Oregon (there have been deaths from this particular strain, so Rory and the doctor do not want to take a chance with Charlotte's health). Of course Liam finds out about this, and shows up at the hospital. When he sees Charlotte, he is struck by the fact that she looks almost identical to his sister when she was a baby - he had been thinking Rory had had another boyfriend after she left, but that was not the case. Slowly, Liam and Rory restore their bonds; neither one had been truly interested in another partner despite the circumstances. Liam had been dating Bethany Van Horne, but his heart was not into the relationship at all, although he claimed he was searching for Rory to serve her with divorce papers. From this point on, the story becomes extremely complicated, and as a reader I had an idea of who was behind the family violence and also two murders which occurred after Rory moves back to Portland, but I was totally wrong. I guessed correctly on one of them, but had no idea at all who the partner in crime was. I thought the story was very good, although some of these people had very sick relationships within their own families. The book will keep the reader guessing all the way through. I thought it was a great escape read.

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book at chapters. I enjoyed reading it. It had a good story to it. I liked the variety of characters in it. It was so good I read it in one day. I look forward to reading more books by this author.

[Kris Rafferty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yikes. What a story. Good writing, lots of suspense and angst. I love strong heroines and Rory certainly is warrior woman tough. A keeper.

[Dafydd · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books that keep you awake as you can't put them down. I really enjoyed it! There is one little thing I didn't really like and it is short periods about criminals. Names are not given, so they don't spoil anything but, in my opinion, don't give anything to the book. However maybe now when I know what happened, I'd read them differently.
Another thing that made me think if I should give 4 or 5 starts is the end. The answer was given out of nowhere. As if the author suddenly decided to finish the story. However, I decided to give 5 stars as it's a really good thriller and I am not that much of a thrillers reader.

[Ann Trouve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Total nonsense. Very disappointing. A great deal of the narrative was unnecessary and the characters were just not interesting.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rory Abernathy’s wedding to Liam Bastian turned into a bloodbath. She fled after stabbing a masked intruder, just before a gunman opened fire on the wedding party. Five years on, Rory still has no idea who was behind the attacks. Fearful she and her daughter remain targets, she’s made a new life far from Liam and the wealthy, powerful Bastians. But even in remote Point Roberts, Washington, she can’t hide from the past. Liam tracks Rory down, stunned to learn they have a child. Did someone in Rory’s family try to kill him for his portion of the Bastian estate? As they gradually overcome distrust in search of the truth, Rory knows one thing for certain: someone is watching her… Time has passed, but the killer’s need for vengeance hasn’t. And as a nightmare stirs to life again, Rory will find that this time, there’s nowhere left to run.

Please don't let my 3 star rating put you off reading this book. It's not an unreadable book...it's just not my kind of book. I knew better when I let the library talk me into this. I've read Lisa Jackson for years and have always had the same reaction to her stories....some I really like others are just so- so. The just so-so ones are the ones that are overloaded with romance and not enough mystery or suspense. This fare will certainly appeal to some and just because it didn't appeal to me is not a reason for skipping it.

[Book Him Danno · Rating 3 out of 5]

One Last Breathe pulls readers in but soon puts them to sleep as the story drags on until almost the end of the story than it picks up once again. The problem is getting though the slow parts of the book.

The characters are flat and have very little interest to keep this reader wanting more. Pushing though the story finding that Rory isn't feisty but the female lead you start to hate. Instead of going to the man she "Loves" she runs away to the point it becomes an eye rolling scenes.



One Last Breath isn't much more than a blip on the spring to read pile.



Thank you to Netgalley and Zebra for the advance copy of Lisa Jackson and Nancy Bush One Last Breath.

[Melissa Borsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tough book to review, it's a good story and I mostly liked the main characters but, there were so many characters to keep track of and so much of the book just dragged needlessly. The ending was a bit unexpected. I thank Netgalley for letting me read and review this book.

[Vanessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF 25%

I just couldn’t get into this. Besides the initial wedding assault nothing was happening. Everything was too wordy for me and I was ready to move the story along. The fact that it took me 2 weeks to get through 120 pages just shows that I wasn’t excited about it.

[Taylor Fenner]

Usually I love Lisa Jackson but this book just didn't do it for me. I couldn't get into it.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The prologue starts out 5 years earlier as Liam Bastian waits for this bride Rory to walk down the aisle to him. Although they officially married two months earlier, Liam is from a wealthy family and his mother insisted on a large wedding. Rory is attacked while getting ready in her hotel room where a masked intruder threatens her unborn child so she flees. Liam and other members of the family and wedding party are fired upon by a gunman.

Liam continues to search for Rory, unaware that he has a daughter. The action starts to ramp up as a private investigator locates Rory and circumstances force the family back together. The person behind the attacks have never been caught and still don't want to see this pair together.

Although I prefer Lisa Jackson's two series with Bentz/Montoya and Alvarez/Pescoli, this standalone is a good romantic suspense. Took me a while to get interested in the story, but I became engrossed as I tried to figure out who was behind the attacks. Readers know from the beginning of the book that there is a male and female in a sexual relationship and they're behind the attacks. The question is who these 2 are. I guessed wrong twice on the female but had my suspicions about the male. I like a book that keeps me guessing.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is pure adrenaline and suspense from the first page. From murder, sex, and a pregnant runaway bride...with so many moving pieces that it seems it would be too much to follow, but ends up being just enough to keep the suspense going for the entirety of the novel.

This novel was one of those rarities where I just had no idea how it could possibly end. With two crimes that seemed obviously connected, and so many suspects...it was difficult to even develop a theory on who had committed the crimes...or why. The reveal at the conclusion was absolutely wild! Not at all what I ever would have guessed, which is always a beautiful surprise. And the reasons why? Well...definitely wouldn't have guessed that!

The funny thing is...there are hints throughout the novel...snippets throughout showing you who the "bad guy" is, starting from the very beginning pages. And yet...it would be nearly impossible to figure it out from those pages.

Very beautifully written novel. There were some typographical errors that kind of surprised me. More than what I typically see in a published novel, but not so much that it threw off the flow of reading. All in all...a stunning novel, and a wild adrenaline-fueled ride from start to finish.

[Linda Munro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five years ago Rory Abernathy and Liam Bastian were about to be married. Actually, the couple was already married; but Liam’s mother insisted on a traditional family wedding.

While Rory was in her room preparing for the wedding, she is attacked by a knife wielding masked man. This man knew that she was pregnant; something not even Liam has known. Fearing for the child she is carrying, Rory disappears, never knowing about the real fiasco which is occurring outside.

For five years Rory and her daughter have been living in a remote area of the United States under assumed names. One day, Liam turns up where she works; he has tracked her down. Fearing that Liam is somehow connected to the attack on her, she grabs her child and flees. But, her child is sick and ends up in a hospital far to close to Liam’s home.

Gradually Liam and Rory forge a relationship, pushing their distrust of one another aside. They are determined to learn what happened the day of their wedding. Instead of solving the mystery; they become embroiled in a life and death cat and mouse game with the killer.

[Diane Saul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rory Bastian is getting ready to walk down the aisle to marry Liam Bastian when a masked intruder enters the bridal suite. Rory manages to get away, but the intruder threatens Rory and her unborn child. Meanwhile downstairs a gunman opens fire on the wedding party and the guests. Five years later Rory is still looking over her shoulder fearing someone will come after her and her daughter. Liam has tried but has never quite gotten over Rory.

This book caught my interest from the very first page and held on til the last page. There are so many twists and turns, you don’t know who you can trust. I didn’t like how Rory kept the secret of their child from Liam but I understand why she did it. Thank you to net galley for an advanced readers copy of this book.

[Bess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liam and Rory have fall deeply in love and they are going to get and baam everything falls apart.
Rory is the poor female who has all the problema in the word and too stubborn to accept help. There is some irrealist facts that left kind worried of how everything was leading to her. I bate it that she did not trust Liam, she was a real bitch. She did not de serve him.
Liam was the character that had lost his
wife, was shoot at his own wedding, has a kid, has a weird family and has suffer the major betrayal at all plots.
Bastian family is crazy yet I did not see the real devil or two coming up.
There is unnecessary information and side kicks that add nothing to lead to the murderers.
Just to add that had another unnecessary death, yes the character was useless yet why killed it??.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that will send you through a gambit of emotions. It will get you interested from the beginning and then there's a lull but once you get about half way through it doesn't stop until the final page and even then you want it to continue.

This book kept me guessing until I found out who the bad guys really are. You'll think it's one person or people and then you'll think it's someone else and so on until the reveal. It's a crazy ride!

I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has ben a long time since I have read a book from either author or a collaborated book. This is because the books were starting to all blend together for me and come off as very similar just with different book covers and character names. Yet, I decided now was the time to start again.

The opening scene was the best. It had tons of action and intensity. It was from here that I got hooked to this book. However, it slowed way down after the opening scene ended. Rory lost some of her strength after surviving the accident on her wedding day but she did gain some of it back as the story progressed. Liam is the type of guy that women would want. He is good looking, determined, rich, and will go to great lengths to protect Rory and their daughter, Charlotte. There is another that kept the story going. This is Detective Mickelson. He is smart and not that far behind from getting his man or woman.

The first half of the story was a bit dry. It never really picked up speed. When it tried to get to a "medium" level it was a lot of stop and go. This was frustrating. The latter half of the story was better but still never truly got to the "high" intensity. Yet, when I did get to the second half, I was kind of over the whole storyline. Overall, this was an ok read.

[Laura Felty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slow start

I almost dnf'd this one. It is slow. I'm not totally into the romance stuff. It did get going about 80%in. I'm glad I stuck it out. The ending totally rocks. It was a twist that I liked. Never even saw it coming.

[Carolina Godinho · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://thebookisonmytable.blogspot.co...

[M Enox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice twist at the end. I had figured part out, but it was still good. They both did a great job writing together.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went back and forth on this book. One minute the main character was so weak and then - BAM!!! And what an ending. I did not see that one coming!!! Well worth reading.

[Cassidi Harvel · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 ⭐️: don’t hate it don’t like it

There was random points of views out of the blue and they never seemed to connect and they introduced so many people it was hard to keep track sometimes

[Marge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love her books. Ending was a surprise