Thank you Love Book Tours for the chance to read and review The Last Great American Tragedy by Mary Spencer for this book tour! It’s also an ARC that comes out this February (on the 8th to be exact)!
While I was super excited to start this book out, and it did make me feel things, I can recognise that this may not be everyone’s cup of tea!
As dictated in Plato’s Symposium, Zeus separated humans out of fear, damning them to a life of searching, leaving them with a glimmer of hope, a memory, a longing for their original other half.
Cordelia, an esteemed author, meets her other half under the most unusual circumstances. Grieving her mother’s death, she moves to the sleepy little city of Asheville to end her life. After a near successful drowning attempt, Doctor Locke saves her, thus starting a love affair that rivals the gods.
Both broken and troubled, the two hearts dance around each other in a shifting battle of willpower. But as Cordelia starts exhibiting the telltale signs of a body fading away, will the good doctor be able to keep her soul attached to this mortal coil, or will she force him to walk his life alone, never to be complete?
I was so excited about this when Love Book Tours announced this book tour! I think I freaked out in their host’s group chat! Between the cover and the fact that the title sounds like the last great American dynasty, how could I not?
The author certainly has a style; I hate Cordelia as a person. I just think she’s an awful pretentious douce and I feel sorry for her ex-fiancé and her siblings. I would have felt better if this had turned into Stephen Kings novel, ‘Misery,’ and Doctor Locke had murdered her. It’s been a while since I read a book with a main that I despised this much.
It was rare for me to buy one published in my generation. I usually read classics—and the older the copy, the better.
Mary Spencer ~ The Last Great American Tragedy
And also, 30 isn’t old!!!!! And just throwing this out there, suicide is not being selfish! And as annoying and toxic and as selfish as the main is as a person, I find the whole suicide is selfish narrative being pushed a bit too awful to read. Its also a bit insane that you can let someone hurt your hands because their schizophrenic; like that isn’t healthy for either party involved!
Luckily, pretentious through and through, I had read Dante’s Purgatorio in its original language before.
Mary Spencer ~ The Last Great American Tragedy
However, I did like the author’s literature references. Mary Spencer is clearly very well-read. She has a style of writing that most people will either love or hate and that’s fine. I do think that I would have liked it if the main and other characters sounded a bit different from one another; like one nice normal person in the book would have made me want to punch Cordelia less (or more, you never know really). The ending was unexpected; I really didn’t think that would happen!
The book was well edited otherwise no mistakes that take away from the reading experience. I’m also adding it to my Greek mythology-inspired reads because of the references to Greek mythology, which are scattered liberally throughout the book!
Of course, this was just my opinion! I know a bunch of people may agree or disagree with me! You should absolutely hit the link to my insta and check out the Love Book Tours tag for other reviews!
The Girl Who Reads 
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