What if the past isn’t what you thought it was? 

That’s the big question of Kendra Elliot’s The Last Sister, which is the first book in the Columbia River book series.

Two decades prior in the small town of Bartonville, our female lead’s father, Lincoln Mills, was hung from a tree in his backyard while his house, with his family inside, was set ablaze. Emily, her younger sister Madison, and their mother escape the blaze, but in just one night, they lose their father, their house, and most of their belongings.

Emily’s eldest sister, Tara, says she was at a friend’s house that night and therefore does not know what happened in the lead-up to her father’s murder and her home’s fire. But Emily swears that she saw Tara in the backyard of their home… Was she right? Or was she only imagining this?

Emily’s life was never the same. Tara left town soon after their father’s death. Their mother committed suicide. Emily and Madison were sent to live with their three great aunts in the impressive Barton Mansion in town, where her family has deep ties to the community spanning multiple generations.

Although Lincoln Mills’ murder has been supposedly solved, Emily and FBI agent, Zander Wells, soon find out that the past is a lie. And not everything is how it seems.

*Spoilers Ahead*

In present-day Bartonville, Oregon, a double murder has just taken place. Sean and Lindsey Fitch, an interracial couple living together in their modest home. Sean is a history teacher for the local school, while Lindsey is a co-worker of Emily and Madison Mills, who works as a waitress in the Barton’s diner.

The FBI gets involved quickly due to suspicions that this is a hate crime, since Sean is a Black man. Further, there is a hate symbol carved into Sean’s forehead, thus fostering more suspicions that there are sinister racist undertones to this murder.

FBI agents Zander Wells and Ava McLane are assigned to the case, but immediately, they start to suspect something is up within this town. Something is amiss, especially when they find out that a nearly identical murder—a hanging—took place twenty years ago. And his daughter, Emily Mills, was the one who found and reported the bodies of Sean and Lindsey Fitch in the first place.

But the Mills are a Caucasian family… How is the death of Lincoln Mills related to that of Sean and Lindsey Fitch? We’ll get to that.

Zander interrogates Emily Mills, since she is an important witness to the crime. Interestingly, Zander learns from one of Emily’s aunts that someone has tried to intimidate the Mills family in recent times, leaving a dead raccoon corpse on their property for Zander and the aunt to find. This raises some red flags. After all, who would want to target the key witness to the Fitch murders? The culprit, of course.

Zander gathers her phone records and asks her if there was any marital strife between Sean and Lindsey in the days leading up to the crime. Apparently, there wasn’t any such thing happening. Not to her knowledge. At the same time, there is a spark of attraction forming between Zander and Emily, which is something Zander tries to ignore at first,

It’s soon revealed that Sean was seen at a local pub on the night of the murder, fighting with two white men: the Osbourne brothers, who have criminal histories and apparent white supremacist tattoos on their bodies. Not a good look.

As Zander and the sheriff investigate this lead, a bombshell revelation hits them. The responding officer who first responded to the Fitch murder scene is found dead. Apparent suicide. How convenient?

And one half of the Osbourne brother duo, Billy, disappears once he realizes the police are after him.

While Zander undergoes his investigation into the Osbourne brothers, the Fitch murders, and now the officer suicide… Emily is making some connections of her own. She finds out that her dad was a Ku Klux Klan member, as was his father before him. What’s more is that he actually used to take her to such meetings in Portland when she was younger, but since she was a child, she didn’t know what they were. She just remembers white men with short hair—skinheads, if you would—who would talk at length with her father during these meetings.

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If you’ve been searching for a book with a wide range of twists, turns, and an exciting conclusion to wrap things up nicely, then I think you’ve found your book. Personally, I couldn’t put this book down once I started reading. The book starts off strong and continually gets interesting as the plot unravels.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition, if you think about it. Here you have Lincoln Mills, a KKK member, and Sean Fitch, a Black man, having their corpses mistreated after their deaths. And if you haven’t already realized it, the culprit is the same in both cases. The town mayor.

Now, this is where the narrative gets a little interesting. For starters, it’s never made apparent that the mayor, a man named Harlan Trapp, is ever a serious suspect until the very end. It’s revealed that Harlan went to the same meetings as Lincoln Mills, so they were pretty close, linked together by their shared ideology of being white supremacists. Yuck.

But the reason why he killed Sean Fitch could be described as a bit weak. Sean is a history teacher, writing his own book about the crime of Shanghaiing which was commonplace on the Oregon coast in the 19th century. Sean was doing research into this, when he discovered the link between Lincoln Mills (who was not a man to hide his ideology, mind you) and Harlan Trapp, via photographs and a certain pocket watch that Lincoln always used to carry around. Sean managed to get a hold of this pocket watch and confronted Harlan about it, accusing the mayor of being involved in Lincoln’s death, as well as the death of a young Black girl twenty years ago.

Pause. Let’s rewind a bit. The young Black girl was named Cynthia Green, who disappeared and her remains were found during the course of the novel. It’s revealed by Harlan that, as an initiation into their KKK group, Harlan, Lincoln, and others kidnapped the girl and wanted to kill her, which is something that Lincoln did not want to partake in. Thus, thinking Lincoln was going to tell the police, Harlan took matters into his own hands to get rid of Lincoln, perhaps thinking he was some sort of traitor for not wanting to kill an innocent girl. 

However, what’s a bit iffy for me is: why would Sean jump to the conclusion that Harlan was involved? Keep in mind, Cynthia’s remains had not been found yet; her skeletal remains were found by Zander and Ava while doing some work on the Fitch household. Maybe it’s possible that Sean knew of her disappearance and went straight into throwing accusations around, but that’s a bit strange to do since he had no proof that Harlan had anything to do with her disappearance and death at that point.

This was just a little tidbit that caught my attention. Honestly, it doesn’t hamper my enjoyment of the book.

There were some more little things that made me wonder about the book. For example, the man who was accused of murdering Lincoln Mills was forced into a confession after he was found with Lincoln’s jacket in his hotel room. So the cops basically strong-armed him into confessing he did it, when he was actually black-out drunk and couldn’t remember the night’s events. He only remembers fighting with Lincoln in a pub, but nothing beyond that. He figured he might have killed Lincoln, so he went along with the charge against him.

But as a reader, I mean c’mon, dude! You’re being accused of murder and you just… go along with it? Most people would fight back, maintain their innocence, bring this to trial, do something! Again, it’s another little tidbit that caught my attention. I realize, as an author myself, that you have to do these little things to ensure that the plot can work out, even though it’s not commonplace in the real world. I get it, though, I really do.

Near the end of the book, before Harlan is captured, Emily and Zander identify her long-lost sister who fled Bartonville after Lincoln’s death: Tara, who goes by a new name and has a daughter. Tara fled because she had to. She saw Harlan committing the crime and, to everyone’s surprise, she was sleeping with him at the time. Harlan basically gave her a choice: get out of town, or you and your whole family will die. She took the former, and when her mother committed suicide, she basically thought that Harlan would stop at nothing to hunt her down and make her pay for what she saw that night.

Thus, this confirms that Emily was right in seeing Tara on the night their father was killed. Was Harlan and Tara’s affair ever alluded to? No, but I suppose it made sense to explain why Tara fled town without a word and why Harlan didn’t just kill her on the spot. 

Tara’s reappearance in Bartonville, as well as Billy Osbourne, are the main factors that get Harlan nailed for the murders of Lincoln Mills, Sean Fitch, and Lindsey Fitch. Billy, to be frank, is a damned idiot.

He was contracted by Harlan to help with the murders of Sean and Lindsey, even though he was having an affair with Lindsey. Billy insinuated he didn’t want Lindsey dead, but Harlan stabbed her anyway because she was a “race traitor.” Billy also was the one intimidating the Mills family and he was the one who staged the young officer’s shooting death as an apparent suicide.

So why didn’t he just leave town? That was his one task. Leave town after the murders. So simple. Get out. Leave.

But he didn’t, because this character is probably as dumb as a pile of rocks. Instead, he stays with a girlfriend in town, gets identified, then chased down by the police where he spills everything he knows. Again, the chances of something ridiculous like this happening in real life is slim to none, but that’s okay.

Idiot characters like these are such a nuisance so when they are put away in a satisfying manner, I don’t mind. I suppose we can praise their idiocy for that reason alone.

Harlan is revealed as the true killer of Cynthia Green, Lincoln Mills, Sean Fitch, and Lindsey Fitch. By the novel’s end, he is put in jail for his crimes while Emily and Zander are free to pursue a romance together after experiencing a hell of a traumatic time together, piecing together this murder.

As I mentioned before, if you’re looking for a good suspenseful novel with a hint of romance, then this might be a good one for you. Aside from the few things I caught on that didn’t make much sense to me, I thoroughly enjoyed it and couldn’t put this one down. I’m a sucker for happy endings, and I’m a sucker for cute romances amidst a murder investigation. This book did well in both regards.

Another thing I really appreciated about this book is the pacing and how quick the characters were to act. Sometimes, when a character discovers something important, they’ll keep it to themselves for a while before spilling it all. But these characters were quick and snappy to air out all the stuff they were finding out. If Zander figured out something, next chapter he’s calling up his partner, Ava, or the sheriff to tell them. This really helped the narrative flow quickly. I can’t remember a slow paced moment in this novel, which is good for a thriller book!

In the end, I would rate The Last Sister as a 4.5/5. Very enjoyable, very thrilling, and a great narrative to follow along with, especially if you want a happy ending despite everything sinister going on within the novel. 

Happy reading!