The Last Thing to Burn is an astounding thriller set in a rural isolated farm in England where Thanh Dao is being enslaved by a farmer after being illegally trafficked from Vietnam. She has suffered unspeakably and is subject to mental torture, slavery and rape but manages to survive on a daily basis by getting strength from the last of her possessions, relying on horse medication and the thoughts of keeping her sister safe who was also trafficked but who she has been told is living safely in Manchester. This is an utterly compelling and fast paced read. The subject matter is obviously very dark but you cannot stop reading in the hope that at some point Thanh finds a way to survive the horrors she is subject too. An unforgettable read that I raced through in one day - highly recommend.

Poignant and compelling in equal measure, I thought The Last Thing to Burn was fantastic. Highlighting the atrocities suffered at the hands of human traffickers we are pulled into Thanh Dao's narrative that is sometimes hard to read. The astonishing finale will take your breath away, I look forward to reading more from Will Dean, an incredible talent.

Captured my interest from the start and held it throughout. A brilliant read. Jane, who is not Jane has a terrible life with her husband, who is not her husband. Sounds twisted doesn't it, well it certainly is. A compelling and gripping read.. A definite 5 star read

This gripping and thoroughly claustrophobic thriller is an excellent read. The plot centres around a woman being held captive, and to say any more than that would spoil the journey for others! The main character’s tenacity in the face of such a horrible living situation is what keeps you reading what could otherwise feel like.a hopeless novel. The author paces the novel well, peppering the story with revelations; it was this structure that made me read the whole book in a day, it was just so incredibly compelling. It’s only January 2021 and I’ve already found a candidate for my book of the year!

Eyes watching and checks to see she is within range.
With the severe pain and injury she is suffering, pills are given to help, not your average kind, ones in easy possession of this kind of farmer with cattle, horse pills.
She has a name, her birth name, but this person that have purchased her chose to call her Jane, but she was once and desperately trying in a fragmented way to not forget Thanh Dao native of Bien How, Vietnam the woman she once was and still is.
The seventh year she is there.
That time when she arrived eight years ago with her sister Kin-Ly they had some parcel of hope and with that followed terrible days, bit by bit, word by word, action by action hammered at her life that hope away.
A lie sold to them, betterment, monies sent back home, and debts be paid, but what a debt awaiting if they had just known, she must break from this crucible of pain and that is the hook in the narrative.
You don’t want to be there and you don’t want such a terrible prism of captivity but you don’t want to leave the tale and close the book neither.

This may have you revisit that story mentioned in her penned by John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men.
One may think of this tale whilst reading it in future times, on how this captive soul held it close to her heart.
There was a barn too in that tale and a farm.
The circumstances of the characters were very different, a very serious problem you are immersed within with this narrative, one in this place called earth, people trafficked and sold, human beings, souls in fear, monies changing hands for promise of monies in name of ones freedom but to captivity and imprisonment.
One may be thinking about prison or behind walls with the stay home orders due to the pandemic and feeling in a kind of prison, but we always have the handle to turn and run, the door to walkout of when we so wish, we have a choice or an option for a phone call to help to speak to someone without fear of being taken from one prison to another, victims of this crime have not.
In the afterword there is pointing to the real life tragedies upon this earth find more after this review.

First person captivating tale and with the terrible minutes and days for this captive empathy grows within the reader for hopes of saving and safety.
The telling clear with no great prose styling in usage, but scenes, human fears and hopes vividly assembled with words embedding the reader in the tale to its finality.

I’ve been reading so many great reviews of The Last Thing to Burn that I couldn’t wait to start it. It more than lived up to the glowing reviews and completely blew me away. It is the sort of book that demands you don’t stop reading by keeping you totally gripped by the intensity on the page. The story follows a young woman who has been named ‘Jane’ by her captor. She has been a prisoner in a remote farm cottage surrounded by countless fields for a long time however when something crucial changes, she decides escape, however impossible seeming, is imperative.

I cannot overstate how brilliant The Last Thing to Burn is. I could not take my eyes off the page and from the halfway-mark until the end I was holding my breath in fear for Jane and her struggle to free herself from a monster. The story is genuinely harrowing, perhaps more so than any other book I’ve read recently. It does not make for a relaxing or pleasant read but it needs to be harrowing, to truly convey the horror of what this young woman is experiencing. This is a work of fiction but is not at all out of the realms of possibility and it is incredibly important to tell the stories of people like ‘Jane’ who don’t seem to exist in administration and therefore are disturbingly easy to ‘disappear’. My heart broke over and over again reading The Last Thing to Burn and it is written with such careful intelligence. It grabs hold of you and will not let go until the conclusion. I was so invested from start to finish and I cannot imagine anyone not experiencing the same whilst reading this stunning, propulsive and unflinchingly emotive book.

REVIEW

The Last Thing To Burn | Will Dean

This was my first read of 2021 and wow was it a good start. if you love thrillers then this is one to put to the top of your 2021 readinglist. It’s an absolutely intense page-turner.

In short, ‘ A young woman lives in a remote farmhouse in England. She lives with her husband. She never leaves the house and every move she makes, he is watching. He calls her Jane. But that’s not her name.

The book deals with some disturbing topics including human trafficking and abuse, so definitely not for those who are easily upset. These are heavy topics but the book is brilliantly and beautifully written and the moments of horror are perfectly balanced against Jane’s interminable will.

At its heart this is a story of survival and identity. Will Dean magnificently builds the intense claustrophobia in the book and in the final chapters you will be absolutely holding your breath and screaming at the book.

Start 2021 in style. Intense, thrilling page-turner ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of five

This book is one of a kind. A haunting nightmare. A tale of despair.

From the first page until the last, I held my breath. With each passing chapter, we were fed more of her wasted life as each evident piece of it was added to the fire. But then, the tides turn and strength is found is the darkest of places. Through love and solidarity between strangers, we see light which allows the reader and them to breathe again.

It is a tale of slavery under the guise of family. It will open your eyes and hurt your heart. Told with such vivid words, written so so well. A novel of note with a highly important message for everyone.

I have never recommended a book more!

The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean is a truly gripping, horrifying story. The two main characters, Lenn and ‘Jane’ are well developed and totally believable. The hopelessness of Jane’s situation gripped me right at the start and I felt her discomfort, her hopelessness, her fear and her pain. I also felt the stirrings of determination and her inner strength. Her experience of growing up in a happy loving family with parents who clearly loved and supported each other was in sharp contrast to the old, basic, mouldy run down house she was forced to live in with the emotionally devoid and deluded Lenn. Jane’s story is harrowing enough in itself but once others suffer the same treatment the situation just starkly illustrates how traffickers and abusers control their victims. The story is so well told that I never, at any point, felt the usual frustration of screaming why didn’t she do anything ... because she tried. Again and again. The methods of surveillance and the total lack of privacy should have stripped all self worth and dignity but here we see the human spirit protect itself. The beautiful picture of two very broken (physically and mentally) women pooling their strength and determination to save a sick and freezing baby and encourage each other to keep going was just beautiful in the context of such cruelty. This is by no means an easy read but it’s riveting and sobering. I’ll be looking out with a keener eye for anyone isolated or any home made deliberately inaccessible after reading this. Four stars from me

I was a fan of Will Dean's previous books, with the deaf bisexual female protagonist, so I know this book would have to work hard to top how much I enjoyed those. It's certainly very different, but equally good. I read a lot so can almost always guess a plot twist, but this one took me by surprise. Recommended.

The Last Thing to Burn is the first of Will Dean’s books that I’ve read, and it most definitely won’t be my last. I had to keep reminding myself to breathe throughout this book - ‘suspense’ is not a strong enough word! If I could have read through my hands covering my eyes, I would have, because you could see what was coming next , and you just couldn’t stop it from coming! And then it would be even more horrific than I thought it was going to be. I mean, Will Dean seems to be such a nice person on Twitter, his St Bernard, Bernie, is gorgeous - how can things like this even come out of his head and on to paper?!

My dad lives in Lincolnshire, and to get to where he lives (Boston), we have to drive through what seems to be miles and miles of flat farmland (filled mainly with cruciferous vegetables, if my nose remembers correctly!), so it was easy to see how hard it would be for Jane to escape. You can see for a long way - uninterrupted by hills, or indeed anything else at all! This was such a good choice of location. It was that feeling of being trapped by your environment, even though Jane wasn’t exactly locked away. Jane’s every move is monitored on CCTV when her ‘husband’ isn’t there. And if she breaks any of his rules, she is punished. Not physically - instead he takes one of her very few belongings, and burns it whilst she watches.

This is a story of abuse, imprisonment and survival. No matter how much he seeks to control her, “Jane” is free to think and remember what it was like to be free. Whilst I was reading this, that’s all I wanted for her - freedom.

I don’t know whether the phrase “I loved every minute of this book” reflects all that well on me. I mean, it’s pretty horrific. But love it I did. I’d recommend this book to anyone - and then rub my hands together, whilst cackling evilly... Ok, that is a bit weird. But really. Just read the book.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book to read and review.

Thanh Dao is a Vietnamese woman living in an isolated farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. It's a bleak, flat landscape of fenland and salt marshes. She lives with Len and he’s given her the name Jane. She may not use her actual name, and she’s not allowed to speak Vietnamese. In fact, we soon learn that there’s nothing normal about this relationship at all.

Thanh Dao/Jane is an illegal immigrant, smuggled into the Britain in the back of a trailer. People came to her village and promised her and her sister the world - good jobs and money to send back to their family. In reality, they found themselves in bonded servitude, first on a large farm with other migrants and then separated, Jane sold to Len as a forced wife, her sister, to work in a nail bar.

Very quickly we suspect things are worse still. Len forces Thanh Dao/Jane to live like his mother, using her old things rather than purchase anything new. Len locks the phone away at all times, and the television. When she “misbehaves” Len burns her few remaining possessions until she has literally nothing left of her own. And what happened to Len’s first wife?

This is a harrowing novel that builds with creeping horror. It’s a slow-burning story, there is no action or particularly violent scenes, instead there is woman broken by slavery and brutality and her efforts to keep her identity and her sanity. It’s also all too horrifically likely, and that marks the pages with added dread. At the time of reading, a trial was ongoing for the men who smuggled 39 Vietnamese migrants into the UK, all of whom suffocated in the back of the lorry trailer. It was a horrific incident and one which brought to the fore the people trafficking route from Vietnam into Britain. Modern slavery is a real blight, and countless illegal immigrants disappear all the time. Many will be in the black economy and not slaves (though they are still at risk of abuse), but others will be preyed upon and forced into slavery, and some perhaps will even suffer to the horrific extent Thanh Dao/Jane is.

The Last Thing To Burn is a brilliantly plotted and written novel. I read this novel is two sittings. It’s compelling and horrific. It’s a difficult reading, concerned as it is with a woman’s domestic torture. But it’s an important novel and one that will stay with me for a long time.

Thank you to Hodder&Stoughton for the arc of The last thing to burn by Will Dean.

5 star read for me- this follows the story of a woman whom is named Jane (not her actual name but this is what she is named by her captor AKA her HUSBAND!!) Her husband is called Leonard. He is keeping his so called wife on this isolated Fenland farm, there are cameras planted to keep watch of her all day. If she does something in which he don't like then she is punished for this...

This is a truly heartbreaking and tense read.. not for the faint hearted.. but what a explosion of a book! I loved it wow just wow!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐!!!

Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this amazing book This book grabs your attention from the first page You feel every emotion that Jane does & your heart will pound as you read this book An excellent read.

Thanh came from Vietnam to the UK on the promise of work, but was trafficked and then kidnapped and forced into marriage. Some years later, she is married to Lenn, a much older, English farmer, and isolated in a remote part of the countryside. The tension builds around the increasing unpredictability of Lenn's and the increasing desperation of Thanh's predicament.

I didn't enjoy this book at all. It is a very tense and edgy read but I found it just...distasteful. The character of Lenn is creepy but also just....bizarre....the weird repetitive descriptions of food and TV shows, for example. If it is intended to provide a plausible account of the experience of a trafficking victim, I felt this was undermined by the very unrealistic subplot with Cynthia. I found I read the whole book with a grimace on my face just desperate to get to the end. It is, as I said, a tense read, particularly in the final chapters, but I just disliked it intensely.

Jesus what did I just read!! Holy Frogs! This book is so cold, ice packs cold. Not only was this cold, it was also brutal and there is a complete sense of hopelessness. Until there was hope.

I spent the majority of the story cringing, the abuse occurred and the outcome of this abuse. The horror and stories “Jane”‘s body could tell us scared me. The stories the house could tell us scared me. Everything about the book terrifies me. Have I made that impression yet? Even though the tale, the plight, the unforgiving terrain, it was a book that was difficult to put down. I had to get to the end, to see how it would play out, to make sure justice would be served.

It is such a powerful story. A story where we have to not forget ourselves, little tidbits we internally say to make sure we get through the day, to remember our name. To lose our identity is the final blow.

The isolation and the threat that weighs heavily throughout the book. They have their own persona, the threat to keep them in place. But when the veil starts to fall, things come to light but boy does it make for an all unsettling read.

Jane has a strength that is so profound. She carries not only the burden of her life, her sister’s life but she carries us too. She is determined, she is true and she is strong.

The title of the book The Last Thing to Burn is so poignant. Because what is there left when it all burns. If there is anything I learned when reading there is always hope. Hope is what I had throughout the book. Hope is what drove me to race to the end. Hope is what caused me to choke up. There will be hope.

This is an unnerving, chilling, powerhouse of a book. It draws you in, short chapters to entice the need to keep reading. The need to set things right. It is a short sweet review from me because too many words could ruin this book for you, plus I have not got the words for this book, it rendered me speechless. Enjoy that while it lasts!

I am now off for a pallet cleanser!!!

“Jane”, not her real name, lives in a cottage with her “husband” Lenn. She and her sister came to the UK from Vietnam; to the promise of a new life; but she’s ended up captive on a farm on the Fens. Now she’s discovered she’s pregnant and she is determined to do everything she can to keep herself and her unborn baby safe and to escape and find her sister. Gripping, tense and disturbing - an absolutely fantastic read.

Thanks to Netgalley, Hodder & Stoughton and Will Dean for the ARC of this book in return for an honest review.

'Jane' (real name Thanh-Dao) was people trafficked into the UK from Vietnam and lives on a Fenland farm with her husband Lenn. Lenn has cameras all around the house to watch her. Jane' is illegal and cannot leave.

"There is no handcuff keeping me here, there is no manacle locked around my ankle. And yet I am imprisoned."

'Jane' is trapped. '

This is a thought provoking, disturbing, powerful and utterly compelling story of human trafficking which I predict will become a most spoken about book in 2021.

Highly recommended!!

Do not read the 'blurb' on this tale - come to it blind and with no other commitments!
'Jane' lives on an isolated farm with her 'husband' Lenn who feeds her, looks after her, uses her! Her movements are filmed all day while he is out on the farm and he watches it each evening in anticipation of finding fault and punishing her by taking her few possessions, one by one, away from her and burning them.
This is a harrowing read because it is so well written. 'Jane' has nothing, not even her own name any more. Everything belongs to Lenn, or his mother before him.
This is a tale of survival, of cruelty beyond measure and harrowing as it is, a compulsive read.
Four and a half stars rounded up to five!
Many thanks to Netgalley/Will Dean/Hodder & Stoughton for a digital copy of this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

He calls her Jane..but it's not her name
He comes and goes as he pleases...she doesnt
He is happily married...she is not
He burns her memories..she WILL NOT forget!

Wow what a book! It was far too late last night and I kept trying to put this book down (honestly I tried) but I just couldn't. We meet Jane as she is running from something but from what and who we don't know. Right away you are on her side and willing her to escape but then the headlights appear that's that! As with most captive storylines we are stuck in the one place alongside them while the tension builds and builds. This is no different in that respect however where this deviates from the norm is that the captive is an illegal immigrant brought to the UK under false pretences. Instead of a steady job and regular income Jane is at the beck and call of a farmer where she has never seen past the washing line. If she steps out of line her husband burns one of her personal possessions. She didn't have many to begin with and now she has even less. My heart broke for Jane and her situation which steadily got worse and worse. During the narrative she kept repeating things which you realize is necessary for her in order to remember who she actually is. I could clearly vizualise every nook and cranny of the farmhouse time forgot. The narration was all consuming and I felt every emotion and even every wince of pain alongside the captive. The Last Thing to Burn is an utterly immersive read which opened my eyes to the real horror that could be happening anywhere right now!