Our Take

Taylor Adams built his reputation with No Exit — a bottle thriller set in a snowbound rest stop that was relentlessly effective precisely because of its confinement. Her Last Breath applies the same instinct to an even more claustrophobic setting, and the caving sequences are genuinely harrowing. Adams has a gift for physical dread: the narrow crawl spaces, the darkness, the sound of a stranger moving somewhere close — it all lands with visceral force. What separates this from a straight survival thriller is the second half's pivot. Once Tess is out of the cave, the book shifts register — the mystery of Allie's hidden past drives the tension forward, and the questions that emerge are sharp enough to sustain the momentum the opening sequences build. The structure is confident: Adams knows when to stop suffocating the reader and when to start unsettling them in a different way entirely. Fans of Adams' previous work will find this his most propulsive novel yet. Readers who loved the trapped-space intensity of Harlan Coben or the female-friendship-with-dark-undertones of Lisa Jewell's The Family Upstairs will find plenty to devour here. A lean, efficient thriller that earns every one of its pages.