Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane

This is the fifth novel that I have read by Mhairi McFarlane and it is her best one yet. I said this in my review for her previous novel, If I Never Met You, but McFarlane is always improving as a writer. While Last Night presents readers with her trademark blend of humor of realism, the tone of the narrative sets it apart from the author’s previous novels. Rather than focusing on a character coming to terms with a breakup—as with It’s Not Me, It’s You, Don’t You Forget About Me, and If I Never Met You—Last Night centers around grief. The beginning of the novel informs us that our narrator and protagonist have lost someone close to her but we do not who or how until further down the storyline which looks back to the time before this loss. Eve, Justin, Susie, and Ed have been best friends since they were in school and are now navigating their thirties together, still as closer as ever. Eve’s feelings towards Ed however may be more than friendly which is not easy given that he has a girlfriend. After ‘that night’, this group of friends is no longer the same, and Eve discovers that perhaps they did not know each other, as well as they’d thought.
Last Night captures in painful clarity Eve’s grief and sorrow. Throughout the course of the novel, Eve is forced to confront how her life has irrevocably changed. Not only did she lose one of the people she loved most in the world but to discover that that person was hiding something big from you only complicates matters. I found Eve’s narrative to be compellingly introspective, and McFarlane depicts her feelings and emotions with great empathy. I really appreciated that the story focused on forgiveness and on nuanced characters capable of change. The humor was a bit less PG than her previous novels and it honestly made the story and the characters all the authentic. The romance here takes the backseat to Eve’s character growth, and in some ways, it made those more romantic scenes all the sweeter. Also, at last, this novel avoids the unnecessary ‘miscommunication’ that always seems to happen in this genre. Then, to be fair, unlike McFarlane other books, I would not call Last Night a romcom (even if it has both romance and comedy).
I loved the cultural references, even if many of those references were lost on me, and the story’s strong sense of place. Also, I am a sucker for stories with road trips and this had one so…

I thought that this was a very moving and funny story that definitely resonated with me. I loved the themes the author explored in this story and I was sad to reach the last page. McFarlane has truly outdone herself.

my rating: ★★★★★

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