The Last House Guest

“I was the one expected to navigate the two worlds here, like I belonged to both, when really I was a member of neither.”

The Plus-One Party is supposed to be a neutral gathering where a guest’s status does not matter, but Avery is acutely aware of having a foot in both worlds. While this shared status does allow her to move easily between both groups, it only enhances her feelings of being an outsider. To the locals, her employment and bond to the Lomans makes her one of them, but to the Lomans, she is still a local who is never truly part of the family.

“I’ve known enough of loss to accept that grief may lose its sharpness with time, but memory only tightens. Moments replay.”

Avery’s grief is intermixed with feelings of guilt. She feels that if she had paid closer attention, she might have seen warning signs leading up to Sadie’s death. Even a year later, she still replays their interactions in her mind.

“This is my favorite place in the world. Nothing bad is allowed to happen here. I forbid it.”

Sadie’s comment when she first meets Avery offers a sad foreshadowing of her death, as something very bad happens in this favorite place, and it happens to her. As the novel progresses, this quote also illuminates the reason for her murder. Detective Collins killed Sadie because of her determination to reveal the truth about the accident that killed Avery’s parents; Collins and Parker did something bad in her favorite place in the world, and she could not let them get away with it.