Her Last Breath by Taylor Adams
Publication Date: February 17, 2026
Summary from NetGalley
After years of excuses, Tess has finally agreed to go caving with her best friend Allie. Their lives have diverged sharply since high school—Allie is a self-made travel influencer, while Tess is a shy (and claustrophobic) legal assistant struggling to pay for law school. Maybe she’s a little jealous of Allie’s globe-trotting life. Who wouldn’t be?
As Tess and Allie descend into the depths, they realize they’re not alone. A stranger who claims to be a fellow caver harasses them. Confident, take-no-shit Allie insults the guy—and he retaliates. Soon, Tess is trapped inside a narrow crawl space hundreds of feet underground, fighting to stay alive.
Twenty-four hours later, as a hospitalized Tess recounts her harrowing story of survival, the detective interviewing her shares new and shocking secrets about Allie’s true past. Together, they begin to suspect the brutal attack wasn’t so random after all.
Who was Allie, really? Why did this man target them? And did Tess really leave the danger behind when she escaped the cave?
ARC provided by William Morrow via Netgalley for an honest review.
Confession:
Wow, Taylor Adams really delivers with this new thriller. It was fast paced, exciting, and full of unreliable characters. You really don’t know who to believe right from the start. The descriptions of the cave were excellent and you really feel like you are trapped right with the characters.
There are only a handful of characters and you get a part of the story from all of them. The two women, Allie and Tess, were very believable characters. Both of them are survivors and very strong woman, but in different ways. I had a hard time liking Tess, but admired her tenacity. I really liked Layla Washington, the detective that is trying to piece together what really happened in the cave. The author does an excellent job of writing strong women in his stories and these three are some of his best creations.
If you are at all claustrophobic you might want to skip this one. The descriptions of what it is like in the cave are excellent and really make you feel like you are there. I have never gone spelunking, but I have visited a few of the caves in the National Parks, and as fascinating as they were I would never want to be trapped in one. The two women travel through some very confining tunnels, and the descriptions of what that is like is scary.
I don’t want to talk about the plot too much as I don’t want to give anything away and you really should go into this story blind. But I will say that nothing is as it seems and the twists will surprise you. There appeared to me to be some slight inconsistencies in the way the cave is set up, especially in the distances they travel, but nothing that ruins the story. You will also have to suspend disbelief quite a bit for this story to really work. But the author does a great job of making it believable and suspenseful even so.
If you are a fan of the author, than this is must read. If you are a fan of thrillers that will keep you turning those pages, then give this one a try. You will not be disappointed.
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