Just Last Night isn’t my favorite Mhairi McFarlane read; the background characters feel ill-sketched, and the leads a bit unlikable, though very human. And even though the central tragedy is compelling, the mourning process so real, the book as a whole isn’t quite engaging enough to earn a recommendation.

A small group of Nottingham-based friends – the quirky, angry aging punk rocker Eve Harris, the reserved Ed Cooper, irreverent Justin and glamorous, sardonically outspoken Susie Hart – have been musketeers through thick and thin since they were teenagers.  They’re now adults in their thirties and still as close as ever, and they still spend time together and text constantly.  Thursdays are pub quiz nights, where they meet up, get drunk and have fun – and never ever win.

Naturally, they have developed personal complications since their youth.  Eve harbors a near lifelong crush on Ed, who is involved with Hester and has been since they were teens – and who has agreed to marry her (Hester) recently. Ed’s friends group hates Hester, who includes them in her social circle with reluctance.  Eve and Ed continue to battle their feelings for one another and are wrapped up in their cheating issues when Susie is hit by a car and killed after their last pub night together.

Plunged into grief and acrimony, Justin, Ed and Eve try to deal with the hole left behind by Susie.  In Eve’s case, that means taking up with Susie’s distant, expat American brother Finlay, and dealing with a shocking betrayal revealed through diaries and letters she’s inherited from Susie.  But who does she really love – Finlay or Ed?  And is her attachment to Ed and Justin and the friends group at large keeping her from accessing her truest self?

Just Last Night does a great job of exploring the grief both Eve and Ed end up being plunged into, Eve in particular. There’s no way around the enormity of it, and McFarlane jumps right in fearlessly and lets us get messy with her characters.  I liked Eve a lot as a central character and narrator – she holds the plot together beautifully.

But if you’re looking for a real romance between Ed and Eve, don’t go in expecting one.  It’s made clear from the beginning of the novel that he’s been a duplicitous snake, which brings me to say that the marketing of the  book is quite odd in this respect, as it’s clear by the midpoint that Eveis destined to be with someone whose name doesn’t even make it into the blurb. That romance is very cute, but it feels abrupt in light of her long-term feelings for Ed, which she doesn’t really work through until past the midpoint. She also goes from hating to loving this guy in too short a time.

My other big complaint is how underdeveloped Justin is; for heaven’s sake, we never even learn his last name!  We know that he’s outrageous, that his personal life (he works with the elderly) contrasts with his outgoing personality, and that he’s gay and likes to play the field.  But he feels like an accessory to the narrative versus Eve and Ed and Susie – at his worst he feels like the Whacky Gay Friend who mourns Susie and turns into a man with a real relationship under his belt.  Too much goes on in his off-page friendship with Ed to make him fully visible in the narrative.  Susie is wonderfully vivid, though, even after she’s dead, and her dementia-stricken father is a big part of the narrative.

Overall, I can’t quite recommend Just Last Night, but parts of it are too good to ignore and discard.  Consider it a non-pressing priority, like that pub quiz question you’ve never been able to answer.

You can read our other review of this title HERE.

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