The Last Ones Left by Christine Dempsey

No Escape, No Mercy, No One Gets Out Clean

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

The Last Ones Left by Christine Dempsey is what happens when grief books a family vacation and dread decides to tag along. From the first paragraph, I knew this story wasn’t just going to whisper horror—it was going to choke me with it.

The setup is deceptively simple: one last trip for a fractured family to reconnect before everything falls apart. Except, plot twist—it already has, and the island they're stuck on? It knows. The island watches. The island waits. And then there’s Roland. Let’s just say if you meet a lone stranger on an abandoned island who acts like he's been expecting you? Yeah… run.

Dempsey doesn't go for cheap jump scares. She drips tension into every sentence like water torture—slow, rhythmic, impossible to ignore. You can feel the isolation, the suffocating weight of unsaid things, and the creeping realization that this family brought more than just baggage—they brought ghosts. And secrets. And maybe something even darker.

This isn’t just psychological horror. It’s an emotional autopsy of a family in freefall, disguised as a survival story. By the time I reached the end, I wasn’t sure who I felt worse for: the characters or myself for relating to them.

A taut, psychological gut-punch that leaves you unsettled in the best way. Dempsey has officially earned a spot on my "whatever she writes next, I’m reading it" list!