I’ve read and enjoyed all Will Dean’s previous books but when I started to read this one, I was initially a bit taken back, as it wasn’t what I was used to or expecting but wow! I’m glad I stuck with it. What a book! I felt so many emotions reading this book, as I got further into it I couldn’t read fast enough to get to the end and my pulse was physically racing.. This book is very dark, intense and atmospheric. It is so well written and seriously it is so good and definitely a recommended read.

Jane lives with her husband in a small farm cottage, except Jane can’t remember getting married and that is not her name. She is trapped. No one knows she is there and when visitors do come she is never seen. Her every move is caught on camera and if she displeases her husband He takes something of hers to punish her. But one day something changes and she has something to live for her and so she starts watching him...

The Last Thing to Burn, was not a novel I was expecting. The rugged, raw brutality and cruelty of the characters and landscapes in the novel provide a compelling backdrop to the real torment. The story between Lenn and Jane is really upsetting, and I would read this without any distractions. This is an abusive relationship that builds into a story of desperation, hope and perseverance. I felt like I was with Jane every step of the way. When she ran, I ran with her.

The last time I read a novel where I had so hope, so many times that the female would escape the clutches of an evil man was Stephen King's Rose Madder. This is similar in many ways and the writing is excellent.

The Last Thing to Burn, will stay with me for a very long time.

Outstanding and deserves all 5 stars!

This is a horrific story. Thanh is Vietnamese and has left home with the promise of a job and the ability to send money home to her family. Instead, she is trapped as a slave on a remote farm. Her ankle is broken and she is afraid that, if she disobeys, her sister will be punished. Most of the book details her pain and misery and is extremely hard to read. It is particularly hard because you know that there are people in similar situations. I can’t say I enjoyed this at all. I really don’t know how many stars to give it because it tells the story brilliantly. It’s just a horrific story. Thanks to Netgalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

A harrowing, heartbreaking and unputdownable novel that will have you glued to the page. I sat down to read a few chapters and, after what felt like minutes, I found that I was near the end — I just really needed to know what happened to Thanh.

Thanh — or ‘Jane’, as she’s first introduced to the reader — is being held captive by Lenn. She lives in a small cottage on a farm, which is surrounded by wide open fields. Nobody knows how she got the UK, or even that she’s there — there aren’t really any visitors to the fair and, if there are, they aren’t really seen.

Lenn records Jane’s every movement and, if he doesn’t like what he sees, she is punished. For a long time, escape seemed impossible. But now, something has changed: she has a reason to live and a reason to fight. Now, she is watching him, and waiting.

The book can be difficult to read at times; it’s an unflinchingly brutal story about people trafficking and the want to survive in the face of extreme cruelty. But I found that I couldn’t put it down. 

While it’s a big change from the Tulva series, The Last Thing To Burn is superbly written — and it’s definitely going to be a book everyone will be talking about in 2021.

This was not the kind of book I was expecting. I expected a mystery, some story like any other, but it was real, and sad, and really hard to read in the right way. This is the kind of story that stays with you when you finish it.

Whizzed through this during a train journey - claustrophobic, difficult, upsetting, courageous. A really great read. Will Dean’s work is always such a treat!

This is an intense novel, horrifying, chilling, suspenseful. It was engaging (in a ghastly way) though some parts were a bit repetitive. I kept wondering why Thanh wasn't making more of an attempt to escape or to try to bean Lenn on the head with the poker or something -- not because of any complaints of the psychology of abuse that Will Dean demonstrates, but because it didn't seem to take the story anywhere. Also, I always have my bullshit meter up when men (assuming Will Dean is a man from the name) write from the PoV of women, but this book turned out to be just fantastic from that end. The very private nature of Thanh's resistance was something else, the way she talked back to Lenn in her head, and the way she kept imagining a future for herself and her daughter. I will be looking out for more of this author's work.

(Review copy from NetGalley)

This was brilliant.

I didn't think it was possible for a book set in one location to hold my attention but it did that and more - I couldn't put it down!

Will Dean’s “The Last Thing to Burn”, quite frankly, is phenomenal. Painfully brutal, distressingly tense and viscerally affecting. This will take 2021 by storm.

Lenn is a farmer who lives in a small, rugged farmhouse with his wife Jane. But Lenn and Jane aren’t really married. In fact, Jane isn’t even her real name... Kept against her will, her every move monitored and terrorised when she puts a foot wrong, Jane fears she will never escape Lenn. All and knows is that she must do all she can to get away...

“The Last Thing to Burn” is exceptionally gripping. Told from the viewpoint of Jane (real name Thanh Dao, a Vietnamese refuges), this is a stark tale of abuse and abject horror, but also a story of perseverance and determined hope. It’s a very timely novel too, as it epitomises the darkest, depraved depths of white male privilege too. Dean has expertly captured the sheer agony of Jane’s torture, whilst also weaving a string sense of hope throughout the narrative. The plot is peppered with many moments of breathtaking suspense, as Jane plots how she can escape. Throughout the novel, I was willing her to escape the shackles of her imprisonment on each page and I felt every failed attempt, every mis-engineered break out like a dagger to the heart - that is how passionately I felt for Jane, which is testament to Dean’s power as an affecting and gifted writer. The narrative is a perfect blend of human emotion and drama, nail-biting suspense and action, plus plausibly graphic violence. This makes it a thriller that is second to none.

With only a handful of characters, characterisation is really important in “The Last Thing to Burn”. Jane is a brilliantly crafted lead character. She is equal parts victim and heroine, making her a deep and engaging character. I was immediately drawn to her through the first person narrative from her perspective. Dean writes of her pain (both emotional and physical) with great power - Jane’s words are emotional and draw you completely into her life and situation. Despite enduring unspeakable abuse, the defiance and unspoken detest for Lenn that permeates through her voice is infectious. I loved the strength of her character, despite all she had suffered and she is an inspirational character on so many levels. Whilst it would have been hard to create a lead character that readers didn’t sympathise with in these circumstances, Dean has excelled at creating a character that is not just a victim and someone the reader is one hundred percent behind. Lenn is undeniably a monster of the most horrifying kind. However, true to life, there are moments where he shows a fragment of humanity or a slither of compassion. These moments made me want to know more about him - what had happened in his life to make him the way he is? He’s a complex character - barbaric, ignorant, repulsive - and in those moments of compassion he showed, I really wanted to believe that they would offer him retribution and that the evil inside of him would repent and die. However, his moments of kindness simply served to strengthen his grip on Jane, furthering his abuse, manipulation and power. There is no remorse in Lenn and I came away feeling like I had experienced the epitome of putrid black evil. He is the worst kind of villain - one without any redeemable qualities. This makes him a genuinely terrifying character and one that I will not forget. Dean perfectly exhibits how the very worst evil can so easily be found in the most ordinary of people.

Symbolism plays a huge role in this novel too. I loved how the bleak and rugged landscape seemed to so inherently match the prospect of Jane’s future, but how eventually it may just be her means of escape. The frequent references to Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” were well incorporated too. For example, where the dream farm in that novel is a symbol of the unattainable American Dream, the farm Jane is trapped in is not only opposite (as it’s a horrific nightmare) but also similarly depicts the unattainable dream of a better future that she had when travelling to England. The symbolism of Jane’s possessions (that Lenn burns one by one when she does not behave as he dictates) is also incredibly powerful. Each of the 17 items Jane arrived with were precious to her and in her mind, defined who she really was. However, as her possessions dwindle and she feels her identity ebb away in a cloud of smoke, what she finds is that none of these items define her. Her spirit, her determination and her deep-rooted strength are who she is and Lenn can never take these things from her.

“The Last Thing to Burn” is harrowing, exhilarating and genuinely unputdownable. I highly recommend this incredible read!

Will Dean's writing is remarkable in this book. It's very grim, heartbreaking, but he told the story he wanted to tell excellently.

The characters, the atmosphere and plot jump off the page. It was truly amazing.
Thanks a lot to NG nad the publisher for this copy.

I've heard nothing but good things about Will Dean books, namely the Tuva Moodyson series, so when I saw that his new book was a standalone thriller I decided that the time was right to see what all the fuss was about. The Last Thing to Burn is a hard-hitting book dealing with human trafficking so it's not easy to read at times but oh my word, it's absolutely brilliant.

Will Dean really manages to portray Thanh Dao's every emotion as we read about her being held captive by farmer Lenn. I refuse to call her Jane as that isn't her name, which Thanh Dao keeps reminding us. Thanh Dao holds on tightly to her identity through her meagre possessions that Lenn burns one by one in the Rayburn stove every time he perceives that she has stepped out of line. Lenn watches Thanh Dao's every move through video cameras set up in the house so she really can't do anything without Lenn seeing.

Thanh Dao and her sister Kim-Ly were brought to the UK from Vietnam in a shipping container but their dreams of a better life were shattered when Thanh Dao was sold to Lenn. Kim-Ly is working in a nail bar in Manchester to pay back the cost of their passage and Thanh Dao is warned that if she tries to escape, Kim-Ly will be sent back to Vietnam with the full debt to repay. What a predicament to be in; Thanh Dao is desperate to be free of Lenn but her love for her sister is the only thing that keeps her going.

Thanh Dao has to clean, cook and lie back and think of Vietnam so it felt like I had stepped back into a different century; back to a time when a woman's place was in the kitchen. Lenn is an absolutely odious man, treating Thanh Dao like a slave which of course is what she is. Some of the things he does and says had my mouth gaping in shock and horror, he really is very selfish and doesn't have a caring bone in his body. No wonder he had to buy a 'wife'. There's certainly no fear of Thanh Dao suffering from Stockholm Syndrome!

As Thanh Dao's hatred for Lenn intensifies, and circumstances change, she becomes braver and starts planning her escape. The tension is ramped up to fever pitch and I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest; it felt like there was a string on a fret board being tightened and tightened until it reached breaking point. Even my reading pace increased as if any extra seconds I could give Thanh Dao would help. As I raced towards the conclusion, I was totally floored by another twist in the tale - to say I gasped out loud is an understatement.

The Last Thing to Burn is a heart-pounding thriller that is as taut as a bowstring. Filled with tension and suspense, this is a dark and disturbing novel that is difficult to put down because Thanh Dao's story completely draws you in. It's horrific and shocking but incredibly powerful, evoking so many emotions in me (especially negative emotions towards Lenn, admittedly). Human trafficking is a difficult subject to read about but full marks to Will Dean for drawing attention to the plight of so many women who leave their home country in search of a better life, only to find themselves enslaved.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

This is a very grim novel. It's a heartbreaking story about a woman forced to be a slave, and her will to escape.

I found the plot really interesting and didn't want to stop reading until I'd finished the book.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a copy of this E-book to review via Netgalley.

Tough story to read,very emotional subect. The characters were very well portrayed and the plot had plenty of twists. A thread of hope all through.

I could not put this book down. The subject matter is topical and cruel but the book written in such a way that you engage with the main characters and at times even start trying to understand the reasons behind the behaviour. I read until the early hours of the night to find out what happened. I will recommend!

A stunning, timely, heart wrenching read and sadly only too believable. A very important book as well as an excellent thriller

Thanks netgalley and Will Dean for giving me the opportunity to read an early edition of this very disturbing story about Jane, which is not her real name. Jane was brought over from Vietnam with the understanding that she would work to pay for travel expenses,then get paid for doing a job so she could send money back to her family, this was a long way from the truth.
Jane was taken to a farm in the middle of no where, and forced to work all day in an old cottage.
She was starved and beaten by a man, and all she wanted to do was run away.
Jane tried many times to run and each time she was brought back and beaten again.
Jane then became pregnant and life got harder once she had the baby as she knew if she misbehaved the baby would be taken from. Her and killed.
This was a very sad story, but it also shows you what you can overcome when you become a mother and you want to live.

Human trafficking is a pretty nasty business. You think you know how bad it is and have maybe come across some news reports and true stories about it, but living through it is probably a lot worse than you imagine. There are certainly a few well-documented accounts of young women abducted as children who have been kept in sex slavery for years, but it's still hard to imagine how traumatising and damaging an experience that can be.

You would hope that Will Dean's fictional story of just such an occurrence with a young Asian woman in The Last Thing to Burn might make it a little more palatable but the experience and circumstances of Thanh Dao is still horrific enough, so horrific that what keeps you reading is the hope - and since it is fiction not unreasonably have some expectation - that there's a way out of it. And if you can feel like that, then you have some idea of what keeps Thanh Dao going, kept captive in a farmhouse in the north of England.

To Lenn, the farmer, her name is Jane, just like his mother and just like his first wife. Jane came over to England with her sister Kim-Ly, shipped illegally into Manchester, leaving their home in Vietnam with hopes of a better life. As they are illegal immigrants, they are forced into working off the huge debt to be paid for cost of their journey. Kim-Ly is working as a hairdresser and as long as she is there, sending Jane regular letters, Jane knows she can't afford to escape, but despite a busted ankle causing constant pain that is alleviated by horse pills, it hasn't stopped her trying.

Thanh Dao has been stripped of almost everything, even her name. She only has a few precious belongings including her sister's letters and a well-read - almost word-for-word memorised - copy of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, but each time there's an infraction of Lenn's strict rules, he takes one her possessions and burns it in the old wood-fired oven. Soon there will be nothing left to burn, and what will keep going then? As bad as things are, as brutally as Jane is treated as a slave things are about to get worse when a visitor arrives, and Jane discovers that she is pregnant.

You think there's probably only so much horror you could take in a situation like that, but Will Dean has a way of making this thoroughly gripping and compelling. A lot of this of course depends on how real you can make the characters and how - even in spite of the decline of circumstances - you can simultaneously still retain hope that there is a way out. That of course is easier to achieve in fiction than in real-life, where you can't rely on the approaching end of a book wrapping up the narrative. Perhaps that's why Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is so important to Jane, since it gives her the assurance that one way or another, there will be an end to this story.

The real strength in the book, and what makes the circumstances so harrowing that the reader is also willing to endure the horror in the hope of resolution, is in how well the characters are drawn. That is just as essential for Lenn as well as Jane. Lenn has the most insensitive, unthinking, blunt and brutal way of putting things. Incredibly Will Dean makes every single word, every ordinary commonplace phrase Lenn speaks seem utterly hateful. And yet, as utterly despicable as he is clearly is, you wonder if in his own warped mind, Lenn really believes that what they have is a fair and cozy arrangement.

If The Last Thing to Burn is as gripping, as tense and as dramatic as it is, even with the fictional reassurance that one way or another there will be a way out, that's the principal reason for the book's success. You want to understand how far Lenn can go before even he realises the injustice and horror of the situation. And on the part of Jane, you wonder how much she can withstand, how many of her scant possessions she can see destroyed before there is nothing left to hold onto and she breaks. And believe me, there are some shocking revelations to come before the last thing is burnt.

As the discussion continues about who gets to tell which stories, into the deep steps Will Dean with this novel about a trafficked Vietnamese woman called Thanh. It is certainly a bold move. An unflinching, first-person account from Thanh who is existing as a slave, its pages take you to a place that you really don’t want to go to — and yet you go there anyway, unable to abandon Thanh in the hellhole that the monstrous Lenn has trapped her in.

Dean’s visceral, lyrical writing compels immediately, forcing us to imagine the horror inside this stinking, tumble-down fenland cottage. While The Last Thing to Burn has all the desperation and claustrophobia of Room by Emma Donohue, the opening chapters put me in mind of the equally excellent All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld.

Thanh is not allowed to shut any door in the cramped hovel of a house. Even when she goes to the loo, Lenn can stand there in the doorway watching her. She is made to sit on the hard floor in the evening while Lenn watches Match of the Day, entangling his massive fingers into her hair and saying things like ‘it’s a good life, this’ all while flicking occasional sweets down to her.

He calls her Jane, after her his mother and his first wife — a name that takes on an ominous portent. But as Thanh often reminds us, ‘My name is not Jane.’ Every time I turned a page, I hoped that this would be the moment when Thanh would batter Lenn to death with the red hot poker for the Rayburn, or that Lenn would choke on his Spar-bought pre-sliced cheese.

This story raises that question again — just how many trafficked women are forced to exist in these inhumane conditions? There really is modern slavery in our midst and is often all but invisible to us.

Dean gives this story his heart and soul. He never once descends into melodrama or saccharine sentimentality. There is empathy and tenderness here and the novel eventually reminds us of what MP Jo Cox once so famously said, that we ‘are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”

This is a powerful, deeply unsettling and riveting read. You will be rooting for Thanh all the way.

I found this book not anywhere near as good as his first, very childish plot and predictable ending. Bit disappointed.

This is the story of ‘Jane’, the name given to her by her ‘husband’ Leonard who keeps her captive on his isolated Fenland farm. He has cameras watching her all day long and if she does something he doesn’t like she is punished. Thanh Dao aka Jane tells her story.

I’m not going to pretend this is an easy read because it’s not. It’s a brutal personal tale of the outcome of people trafficking and the overwhelming desire to survive in the face of superior strength and terrifying cruelty. It’s a tense and smothering tale of control but overwhelmingly of resilience. It’s incredibly well written, some of the descriptions break your heart and you feel Jane’s pain at every step. The Fenland setting in its unrelenting flat, brown landscape is a perfectly matched atmospheric setting for this bleak story and you are able to visualise the decrepit farmhouse in which she’s trapped. One of Jane’s prized and diminishing possessions is a copy of Mice and Men and I love how the author cleverly weaves this into the narrative.

Overall, this is hard to read but I’m very glad I have. It drew me in right from the start and you become invested in Jane’s survival. It’s a story of incredible bravery, of cruelty but also of deep love and I confess to a lump in my throat at the end.

With thanks to NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for the ARC for an honest review.