The Last Book Club Summary: A Deadly Saratoga Mystery
A Fake Name, A Real Murder
One year after her foster sister is killed in an unsolved hit-and-run, Jordyn Lawson packs up her life in Texas and moves to Saratoga Springs, New York.
She is not there for the mineral springs or the racing season.
She arrives under an assumed name with a single goal: get inside Sophie Durand’s invitation-only book club, the last place Tara Hughes was seen alive.
The Last Book Club by Joanne Rock is a psychological suspense novel about wealthy neighbors, polished facades, and the price of asking the wrong questions.
The story moves between Jordyn’s present-day infiltration and the final weeks of Tara’s life, building toward a Halloween night where the truth stops being a secret.
Who Will Enjoy This Book?
- Readers of domestic suspense and whodunit mysteries built around small, closed social circles.
- Fans of dual-timeline structures that alternate between an investigation and the victim’s final days.
- Anyone drawn to affluent-town settings where money and reputation shape who gets justice.
- Readers who prefer a fast pace, multiple suspects, and a late twist over slow-burn literary tension.
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TL;DR: The Short Version
Jordyn Lawson goes undercover in an exclusive Saratoga Springs book club to find out who killed her foster sister, Tara Hughes.
Every member has a grudge against Tara’s podcast partner, Sophie Durand, and nearly everyone is hiding something bigger than a bad book review.
- The setup: a cold hit-and-run, a fake identity, and a wealthy cul-de-sac full of motives.
- The cast: a plastic-surgery revenge plot, a forged insurance policy, a hidden damaged SUV, and a stalker ex-boyfriend.
- The themes: chosen family versus social climbing, secrets and disguises, trauma recovery, and retribution.
- The payoff: a blackout murder mystery party on Halloween night and an epilogue that reframes the death at the center of the book.
Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Jordyn Lawson | Graphic designer from Austin and Tara’s former foster sister, who moves to Saratoga Springs under a false identity to investigate the death. |
| Tara Hughes | Jordyn’s deceased foster sister and co-creator of the podcast The Clean Break, killed in a hit-and-run on Daybreak Hill. |
| Sophie Durand | Host of the Daybreak Hill book club and co-creator of The Clean Break, who arbitrated breakups and divorces on air. |
| Luke Sideris | Sophie’s second husband, a tech consultant who owns the Daybreak Hill rental property. |
| Gina Vallot | New book club member and stylist who is later identified as Evangeline Jameson Ribeki. |
| Evangeline Jameson Ribeki | Ex-wife of NFL quarterback Mark Ribeki whose divorce was arbitrated on the podcast. |
| Kaitlin Teal | Family therapist and book club member who helped originate the podcast idea before being pushed out. |
| Destiny Griffin | Owner of The Ascent gym and book club member who lent Sophie money. |
| Brad Reynolds | Divorced writer and book club member who lost primary custody after a public podcast vote. |
| Fatima Chamoun | University instructor and book club member engaged in a rivalry with Sophie over their daughters. |
| Mei Kita | CPA and book club member married to Nikolai Moskal. |
| Nikolai Moskal | Mei’s husband, an investment banker who had an affair with Sophie. |
| Amelia Durand | Sophie’s younger teenage daughter. |
| Charlotte Durand | Sophie’s older daughter, a pre-law student at Skidmore College. |
| Natalie Ramos | Private investigator based in Glens Falls hired to research the book club members. |
| Lauren Hughes | Tara’s adoptive mother, a former international model. |
| Randall Hughes | Tara’s adoptive father, a retired pharmaceutical CEO. |
| Evander Hughes | Randall’s son from his first marriage. |
| Ezra | Jordyn’s ex-boyfriend in Austin. |
| Mark Ribeki | NFL quarterback whose divorce arbitration aired on the podcast. |
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The Last Book Club Summary: The Full Story
Spoilers ahead. This section covers the plot from beginning to end, including the ending and the epilogue.
Tara Hughes and socialite Sophie Durand built The Clean Break, a podcast that arbitrated romantic breakups and divorces for a listening audience. Tara handled design and marketing. Sophie used her legal background to run the episodes, and she often shaped outcomes to boost ratings.
The format made enemies. Sophie cut family therapist Kaitlin Teal out of the creative credits. She stripped writer Brad Reynolds of primary custody in a public vote. She borrowed money from gym owner Destiny Griffin and never repaid it.
She also aired the divorce of quarterback Mark Ribeki and his wife Evangeline.
Sophie’s personal life was equally tangled. She dressed in a green dress and styled her hair like Tara to go out with Nikolai Moskal, which led his wife Mei to believe Tara was the one having the affair. Sophie’s husband, Luke Sideris, made unwanted advances toward Tara and forged Sophie’s signature on a $2 million life insurance policy.
Tara, meanwhile, was undergoing EMDR therapy for dissociative amnesia. The sessions unlocked a memory from age fourteen, when her adoptive stepbrother Evander Hughes tried to assault her and she stabbed his hand with a letter opener. Recovering that memory changed how she carried herself.
She stopped accommodating people. On Halloween night one year before the novel’s present, Tara confronted Sophie at the Daybreak Hill estate. She demanded a signed podcast partnership agreement and threatened to report Luke’s harassment to police.
Later that night, Sophie drove Luke’s dark luxury SUV after Tara as she jogged along Daybreak Hill and struck her head-on. Tara died alone in the dark, and the case went cold.
Jordyn Lawson, Tara’s foster sister, moves from Texas to Saratoga Springs to reopen it. She rents a carriage house near the neighborhood, befriends Kaitlin Teal at a block party, and works her way into Sophie’s book club.
From inside the group, she maps the resentments. Gina Vallot turns out to be Evangeline Jameson Ribeki, who had cosmetic surgery, dropped her accent, and moved to Daybreak Hill to ruin Sophie. Evangeline begins an affair with Luke to gather leverage and finds both the forged policy and his stashes of Ketamine.
Kaitlin keeps a metallic black Range Rover with front-end damage under a car cover in her garage, and the paint matches a chip from Tara’s crime scene. Brad and Destiny carry their own grievances over custody and money.
In Manhattan, Tara’s adoptive mother Lauren Hughes meets Jordyn at The Plaza Hotel. Lauren confirms that Tara’s therapy breakthrough had made her confrontational in the weeks before her death.
Jordyn hires Glens Falls private investigator Natalie Ramos to cross-check vehicle records, paint colors, and financial trails. A threatening note appears on Jordyn’s windshield, which is later traced to her ex-boyfriend Ezra, who wanted to scare her home to Texas.
On Halloween night, the club gathers at Sophie’s mansion for a murder mystery party titled Murder at Rookstone Manor. A nor’easter hits, Sophie collects everyone’s phones in a basket, and the power fails.
Jordyn drops her cover, announces that she is Tara’s foster sister, and accuses the room of protecting a killer. Down in the cellar, Brad has been drugged with Ketamine and bound.
Jordyn finds Sophie on a second-floor balcony above the pool deck and asks her directly about that night. Sophie, sluggish and impaired, admits she drove out to confront Tara and hit her with the SUV.
Jordyn shoves her. With a paralytic dose of Ketamine in her system, Sophie cannot catch the railing, falls backward, and lands on the concrete pool deck below. She dies.
When the lights return, the members find Sophie’s body in the pool and Brad stumbling out of the basement. Luke is accused of forging the insurance policy and drugging both Brad and Sophie, and Jordyn admits to the shove.
Ten months later, Jordyn is cleared of murder and manslaughter. Lauren Hughes provides top-tier legal defense, and medical evidence shows the Ketamine, not the fall alone, caused Sophie’s inability to save herself. Luke faces trial for the drugs and the drugging.
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Jordyn returns to Texas and agrees to join Kaitlin on a new podcast about foster families, made in Tara’s memory.
In the epilogue, Sophie’s younger daughter Amelia reveals what no one else knew. She had argued with her mother earlier that Halloween night and injected her with Ketamine using one of Luke’s leftover syringes.
Amelia knew Sophie had killed Tara and hated the way her mother ran the household. When Jordyn pushed Sophie, the drug is what kept Sophie from catching herself.
Amelia now lives in her mother’s house with her sister Charlotte and a Great Pyrenees named Hazel. She writes her own murder mystery book club invitation, repeating the original line: Can you find the killer before another murder is committed?
Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Psychological thriller, domestic suspense, whodunit murder mystery.
- Core Narrative Tropes: Fake identity and infiltration, cold case investigation, wealthy suburban secrets, Halloween party climax, secretive narrators, revenge plots.
- Tone & Atmosphere: Tense, claustrophobic, and suspicious, set against an autumn Saratoga Springs backdrop during Halloween and the Witch Walk.
- Primary Conflict: Jordyn Lawson against the members of an exclusive book club as she tries to identify her foster sister’s killer without exposing her own identity.
- Pacing Style: Fast-paced, alternating between present-day investigation and the victim’s final weeks, converging on a single-night blackout climax.
- ISBN: 979-8892424806
- Pages: 304
- Book Structure: A prologue, 38 numbered chapters, and an epilogue, with chapters shifting between Jordyn, Tara, and Gina as point-of-view characters.
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