Review: The Last Morning by Camden Baird

   

Print Length: 288 pages

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (October 1, 2025)

From Goodreads.com: Sadie Wilson’s heart stops the moment the phone rings. Deep in her soul, she knows what’s coming, and the voice on the other end only confirms her Emma never made it to school. Her sweet, scared five-year-old climbed onto the bus for her very first day of kindergarten…and then vanished.

Struggling to push aside her grief to focus on getting her daughter back, Sadie finds herself slipping deeper into despair. The growing list of suspects weighs heavily on her the secretive teacher, the registered sex offender, the delusional neighbor, the disgruntled ex-wife, the evasive principal—everyone seems to have a connection to Emma. And a surprising grudge to bear.

Thankfully Sadie’s got her loving husband, Allen, by her side. But she can’t help feeling he’s hiding something too.

Edgy and full of twists, The Last Morning is an emotional thrill ride, unfolding little by little from each suspect’s point of view.

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My Rating: 1.5 stars out of 5

While this story had an interesting premise, not only was there one ridiculously huge plot hole in how everything happened, but there were entirely too many characters, and with the exception of maybe three characters (two of them being police officers), absolutely none of them are likable, nor do they come across as anything but a cardboard cut out of what they should have been. Let me try to break it down for you. Excluding the cops, our main cast of characters (aka POVs) come from

1. Sadie (the mom) who while I'm sure she means well, just comes across as this over-protective woman. She doesn't want her child to go to kindergarten because she was smaller than other kids? She seems to have this magical sixth sense that everyone around her is evil and/or hiding something except the people who actually are. 

2. Allen (the dad) who was a pompous piece of crap who only gets worse the deeper into the story you get. Honestly, I don't know what everyone saw in from when all I could see was a creep. 

3. Theresa (the ex-wife). You know at first I kind of wanted to feel sorry for her because it was obvious she was still in love with Allen and he was manipulating her, but then she just became ridiculous. I mean seriously? The things she did were just so out of the realm of normal thinking that it boggled my mind. 

4. Cass (the neighbor). I still don't understand what her point in the story was other than to be a potential suspect. This girl was just WEIRD. She claimed to have a child of her own and invited Emma over for a playdate. Only when Emma and Sadie arrived, the house was barely furnished, and there was no child to be found. Sure, Cass had a ready excuse that didn't seem plausible at all, but the truth was even worse. Also she had a crush on Allen in high school 
(although it would seem half the school did because he played soccer and baseball)? 

5. Kate (the teacher). Hated Allen for something that happened when she was a child. Irrationally hated Emma just because of who her father was. I'm also still trying to figure out if the author was trying to poorly display someone suffering from an identity disorder or what, but hearing Kate constantly talk in the third person about her alter-ego "Katherine" was more confusing than enlightening. 

6. Dottie (the teacher's aide). This was just a weird one whose anger was completely misplaced. She also hated Allen and therefore Emma by default. But she hated him because he was the foreman on the jury that once upon a time convicted her son of wrong-doing when he was apparently innocent. I get it, he was the one who delivered the guilty verdict, but that had been due to the vote of the entire jury not just him. 

7. Meemaw. This was a very late character introduction and one of the few that I actually liked. You couldn't help but feel sorry for this poor woman. She was the only one out of any of them it seemed (other than the cops) who had Emma's best interests at heart. 

8. Chelsea. The last new character we are introduced to, and somehow she seems to be worse than all of the rest. That's all I'm going to say about her. 

See? That is way too many characters, even with the last two coming in at the end, we have the POV of O'Riley (one of the cops) to consider.  I'm sorry, this whole thing was just a muddled mess. 

Speaking on the premise, while it was interesting to start, it quickly became what I like to call "formula based." Meaning the story followed the same set up as every other one in the genre. In my opinion, not every chapter needs to end on a cliffhanger, and not every character needs to be a suspect. Also the more I got into this one, the more some of the wording just felt horribly juvenile to me for adults to be saying. "I pulled a saddy face" and "we had a big thunder-boomer" are two examples that immediately come to mind. I cannot think of a single adult my age I've ever known who has spoken like that. 

And that ending? Anti-climatic at best. Although it made more sense than how we got there (come on not one person noticed what was actually happening? I get it, first day shit is chaotic, but this was just out of the realm of unbelievable). 

I know this is a "debut thriller" novel from an author who also claims to be a "A New York Times and USA Today bestselling author"  while also claiming that "she’s published more than forty works of fiction under different pen names" It honestly makes me curious how well her other books were received, and if I have read any of those. 

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.