Another great stand alone novel from the Will Dean.

With a nod to Orwells 1984 and reality TV of current era's it also contains a subtle comment/question about how far will people go for money and entertainment.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for a ARC in return for a honest review.

The Last Passenger by Will Dean is a fantastic, edge of your seat read that had me gripped from beginning to end. Very different to his Tuva Moodyson series of books, this is a standalone thriller that slowly increases the tension as the story progresses. With twists, turns, shocks and surprises that I did not see coming, this is a psychological thriller that had my heart racing, desperate to find out what was going to happen next.

Cafe owner Caz Ripley boards the RMS Atlantica with her boyfriend Pete, hoping for a relaxing journey across the ocean to New York. But, after a lovely first evening aboard the ship, she wakes the next morning to find that everyone, including Pete, has disappeared. The doors to the cabins have been wedged open and the ship is empty, with passengers and crew nowhere to be seen. Searching the ship for signs of life, Caz comes across three more passengers, all as distressed as she is and unsure of what to do next. As the ship continues to steam across the ocean, the four passengers soon find themselves in a desperate fight for survival. With Will Dean’s trademark twists and turns, the story steadily gathers pace as it races towards a denouement that is as shocking as it is thrilling.

Will Dean’s writing is as mesmerising as always, the tension ratcheting up to almost breaking point as Caz finds herself embarking on a journey that is anything but plain sailing. What has happened to Pete and a thousand other passengers? And will she ever set foot on dry land again?

I don’t want to say too much more about the plot as to do so would take away from the impact of simply experiencing it for yourself. But I can say with complete honesty that The Last Passenger is a tense and unpredictable story that will keep you guessing throughout. And I loved it!

The Last Passenger is an intense and at times dark and creepy read, but it’s so beautifully written, the story slowly unfolding as the truth begins to emerge. The claustrophobic atmosphere of the deserted ship made me shiver as I put myself in Caz’s shoes, imagining what it would feel like to wake up and find myself all alone…

A tense and gripping psychological thriller, The Last Passenger is a fascinating, atmospheric and thought provoking tale that I thoroughly enjoyed from beginning to end. Will Dean’s writing gets better and better with each book and I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us next!

Highly recommended.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I will definitely read more by this author.

I devoured this book! It was a quick read. Very creepy and full of twists and turns.

Excellent. This book kept me on my tension on high alert all the way through. At times my mind was going in one direction but there was always a surprise twist. I was completely gripped from start to finish. I enjoyed the characters who were described in great depth with different personality traits well explained.
This was a deep and depressing book. however, I still could not put it down.

I Got The Last Passenger by Will Dean from NetGalley for free from NetGalley for a fair and honest review.

The Last Passenger by Will Dean tells the story of Caz and her new boyfriend Pete who are on a luxury cruise across the Atlantic.

However all is fine until on the first full day Caz wakes up and finds Pete and all of the other passengers have suddenly disappeared.


The Last Passenger is a modern day mystery thriller that takes a twist on the lone mansion in the middle of nowhere, and turns it into a modern passenger liner, with no crew or individual in charge of the ship.

With just a superficial read of the story you see a competent well researched mystery thriller with the usual twist and turns along the way, to keep the reader not only engaged but makes it into the classic page turner, as each new event takes the story in a new direction.

However for readers what takes The Last Passenger above the usual thriller is the character development of the main character Caz who as readers we gradually learn more and more about her personality and how this has an affect on her actions throughout the novel.

While I did feel that the plot line of the story worked very well, the writer was unable to meet the heights with the ending, which for me felt weaker than the story idea deserved,

Having said all that, The Last Passenger by Will Dean is still a competent enjoyable mystery thriller for people who enjoy this genre.

This is my first read from Will Dean after seeing his release The Last Thing to Burn everywhere – now I can see what all the hype was about!

Caz is going on her first cruise aboard the grand Atlantica ocean liner with her relatively new boyfriend Pete. The ship glimmers with glamour and opulence as they enjoy their first evening dining, drinking and dancing. But Caz is a reserved character with a difficult family history and she feels a little out of her comfort zone aboard the crowded vessel.

The next morning, things take a major turn for the worse. Caz wakes up alone. Completely alone. Pete isn’t in their room and he isn’t on the ship – no one seems to be on the ship. How do thousands of passengers just disappear?

The Atlantica is an amazing setting for this gripping thriller which twisted into a different direction at every turn. Tense and atmospheric, the vast nature of the ocean serves its purpose in making the small cast of characters feel insignificant and vulnerable.

The blurb of this book actually gives very little away, so I’m going to give a small spoiler in saying Caz is not entirely alone on this voyage. She meets a few fellow passengers on the way, and the relationships, mistrust and how the small group of misfits work together to survive is really at the heart of this story. It’s a little slow burn in the first quarter of the novel but when the action kicks in it doesn’t let up. It borders into the ridiculous at times, but it also explores some interesting topics as people are pushed to their limits and the morality of the characters is put into question.

It is clear from the publisher's description that they do not want you to know too much before reading the book. So I’m going to keep my review brief! What happens during The Last Passenger is shocking and terrifying and does require some suspension of disbelief to fully engross yourself in the plot. The way the story developed was completely different to how I imagined and the author keeps throwing in curveballs to throw you off track. It’s a dark book, full of action and suspense, with a shocker of an ending. A very good read and thankfully I have a phobia of the open seas so there’s no chance I will be taking a cruise anytime soon! Especially after reading this book.

Will never fails to disappoint and if this book doesn’t excite you then we just can’t be friends!
The storyline was thrilling and the way it develops and unravels took my breath away. I loved it!

Will Dean is back and making his biggest splash yet!

I am a HUGE fan of Will Dean’s epic standalone psychological thrillers and his latest release is always one of my most eagerly anticipated reads. The Last Passenger is another absolute masterpiece of tension, paranoia and heart-racing action. I absolutely LOVED it! This book hurtles along at about 1000 knots, taking readers on a twisty, gasp-inducing voyage into psychological terror. It’s the very definition of a page-turner, with short, sharp chapters that often end on a heart-racing cliffhanger and leave you compelled to read just one more chapter. Dean weaves fraught emotion, characters with real depth, blockbuster level action and razor sharp tension throughout the narrative. It’s also a total WTF 🤯 kind of novel and I throughly enjoyed trying to figure out exactly what was going on. Needless to say, even when I thought I knew what was occurring, I never really did. Dean again proves that he’s the king of the shocks and this book is resplendent with jaw to the floor moments. It’s EVERYTHING you want in an exciting thriller…and then some more, because that’s just how Will Dean rolls!

However, what I enjoyed the most about this novel is how much of an unflinching and pitch perfect social criticism it is. It’s hard to elaborate too much, without giving away some of the key plot points. What I can say though, is it taps perfectly into the dark side of humanity in the 21st century. It looks at abuse of power and privilege, as well as how we justify this by seeing unsavoury things from a distance. If they are a step removed from us, it’s somehow become acceptable and, in turn, that has been normalised. The novel tackles themes of consent, gaslighting, emotional manipulation, voyeurism and the exploitation of perception. These are all things that we battle in day to day life, so when Dean ramps up the extremity, his narrative packs a real punch. It’s a very thought-provoking read in multiple ways. Not only was I constantly putting myself in the characters’ shoes to question what I would do, I was also thinking a lot about how the narrative reflected back on real life. The magnitude of the events in this book are actually very plausible as an escalation of the present day situation. This leant a genuinely unsettling layer to the book as I read it. I could all too easily imagine a future where something like this became reality. It’s very unnerving!

If you enjoy a thriller that will submerge you in its world and have you gasping for breath like your oxygen tank is empty, you NEED to pick this book up today!

I absolutely love this authors writing. I think this book however was just okay. It wasn't amazing but still not bad.

Not my favorite Will Dean novel as they're usually 5*. This one starts with a bang and then seems to go on forever.
I wasn't a fan of Caz and, even if I read till the end, was a bit disappointed.
Not my cup of tea
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I’m a huge fan of Will Dean’s books, I adore his TUVA series and THE LAST THING TO BURN is one of my all-time favourite standalone thrillers, so I was very excited to be invited on to the blogtour to read and review his latest standalone thriller THE LAST PASSENGER, published by Hodder & Stoughton on 11 May 2023.

This book is NOTHING like anything I’ve read before by Will Dean and it’s quite a difficult book to review without giving away any spoilers.

I’ve been cruising for years, having been fortunate enough to enjoy the Caribbean and most of the Mediterranean on board some absolutely incredible cruise ships, so I was a little hesistant at first about reading a book set on a ship. However, as I haven’t tried a transatlantic cruise yet, I wasn’t overly concerned and luckily this hasn’t put me off future cruises!

The Last Passenger is narrated by Caz (Caroline) Ripley, a 49 year old woman, who is going on her first ever cruise with her boyfriend Pete from Southampton to New York. Hoping this could be a romantic getaway which may lead to an engagement, Caz is excited, yet nervous for her maiden voyage.

Having enjoyed her first night aboard the RMS Atlantica, she wakes up the next morning, Pete is missing, his luggage and watch are still there, but upon further investigation it appears that EVERYONE is missing, all cabins are abandoned, all passengers and crew have vanished into thin air, leaving her lost, alone and very, very frightened.

Ahhhh…. I really wish I could say more, but that would absolutely ruin the story for you, but suffice to say, this is a fast paced thriller which kept me glued to my kindle screen.

If you can suspend your belief for the duration of the book and literally just go with the flow, you should enjoy THE LAST PASSENGER which is full of twists, turns and action.

This was so creepy! I couldn't put it down. Every chapter manages to ramp up the tension and this was such an exciting read. Disbelief has to be suspended a little bit, but it's so fast-paced and twisty that you just want to know what happens next.

If you are after a thrilling novel that will keep you guessing, The Last Passenger is the book you seek. Here, we travel aboard the RMS Atlantica with Caroline (Caz) Ripley who is on the cruise of her life with boyfriend Pete only to wake and find she is alone on the ship. Where has everyone gone? What is happening here? It seems as if there might not be much of a story in that but this book morphs into something different just when the reader gets a grip on the current state. I was swept away by it and caught completely unaware each time it delivered a gut punch. The perfect beach read, you might rethink that cruise you were considering.

I was so excited to read Will Dean's latest book, The Last Passenger, after absolutely loving The Last Thing To Burn. I have to say this exciting, original thriller did not let me down. I did not really know what to expect having gone in to reading this fairly blind. I had seen some reviews and comments mentioning the ending but that was all. This book blew my mind! I thought it was a really original, exciting and dark concept. I was thoroughly immersed in wanting to find out the fates of the passengers. The Last Passenger did not lead me down old, well trodden thriller pathways and I didn't know what to expect next. This made the reading experience really exciting. I felt my heart racing during the trials, which was great!
I did find some of the dialogue at the very beginning of the book a little clunky or disjointed but this did not persist. It may just be that I read an early draft and this has been ironed out in the editing process. Otherwise this would have been a five star read for me.
The ballroom scene is etched on to my brain and I will be having nightmares about that for a few nights to come, I'm sure!! And then that ending... wowsers!! I read a comment from Will Dean on Twitter saying that the ending was unplanned and just sort of wrote itself that way. How clever! And mindblowing. And absolutely heart sinking!! Loved it.

While I have a special thing for thrillers set on boats, I thought THE LAST PASSENGER was exceptionally well done. Will Dean is the absolute master of tension, and the balance between what was happening on the boat and the question of what happened to everyone else on the boat was brilliantly handled. Couldn't put it down!

This was an interesting book that had me gripped for most of the story. I didn't trust any of the information that was given as it all seemed very suspicious and it kept getting darker with each challenge or problem the 4 main characters faced. It is very fast paced and I wanted to keep on reading it to get to the bottom of the mystery.

4.5 stars. It took me a little to properly get into this book, a bit of a slow start. But once it got going I really enjoyed it. I thought it was really quite different and a good read. Without giving spoilers away, it read as a combination of the Hunger Games and Big Brother but with unwilling participants. Some twists towards the conclusion and I thought the ending was excellent. Overall, a good read and one which I’d recommend. It’s put me off ever going on a cruise though!
Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for providing an advance copy in return for my honest opinion. I have also published this review on Goodreads.

My thanks to NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton publishers for a copy of “ The Last Passenger “ for an honest review.

This is the first book by Will Dean that I’ve read and now I can’t wait to read more.
I was drawn in from the premise of the book , imagine waking up on cruise to find you’re the only one on board.! The book was gripping and at times horrific, and I could have easily continued reading it in one session , because I couldn’t wait to see how it would end.
I’ve already recommended this to several people and I’ll be surprised if this isn’t one of my favourite books of this year .

I absolutely adore Will Dean so have been instantly excited about this one. Will has once again delivered and provided a gripping and addictive read.

This is a book filled with twists and turns and has been completely unpredictable.

This is claustrophobic in all the best ways. I loved the drama unfolding and the social situations were written brilliantly.

I love how this author is able to pull us into the story. I have been captivated. Caz is a great character and I found myself really feeling for her.

I’ve read all of this author’s books and this is definitely a favourite. There is nothing negative I can say about this one.

This is a must read and I have adored it from beginning to end. A definite for the TBR.