Last Seen
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Feb 17, 2026
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“A morally complex and life-affirming exploration of what it means to be alive, and of the enduring power of love to transform, reanimate, and redeem.” —Celeste Ng, New York Times-bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts
Caleb was driving home for Christmas. Steven was pounding beers at a local bar. Matthew was out looking for his ex-girlfriend. Leo was walking in the woods on a winter night. Then they disappeared.
Days, weeks, years later, their bodies turn up in icy rivers hundreds of miles apart. How did they get there? What, if anything, connects them? Some of their loved ones believe the official answers. Some are convinced the boys are victims of an insidious network called the Smiley Face Killers. Some are trying to forget them altogether. Meanwhile, Caleb, Steven, Matthew, and Leo find one other—and other boys like them—in the murky depths of the afterlife. Each tells his story in his own way, speaking his version of truth, confessing his desires and grievances and even his hopes for a future he still somehow believes belongs to him. Each revelation brings the reader deeper into their intertwined fates, along a journey through the landscapes of identity, intimacy, and the haunting echoes of unresolved grief.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Castellani blends true crime tropes with magical realism in his convoluted latest (after Leading Men). Across the U.S., dozens of young men's deaths by drowning have been attributed by crime buffs to the Smiley Face Killers. Among the supposed victims are Vermont college student Caleb Aldrich, who goes missing in 2007 after a date with a man he'd met online; Michigan wrestler Matthew Cardullo, who disappears in 2020 while dating a girl whose friends warned her against his controlling behavior; Bostonian Steven Donovan, who disappears in 2018 while having an affair with his married employer; and Leo Ridgeway, who disappears in 2016 Minneapolis while dealing with drug addiction and thinking he might have schizophrenia. In chapters from the four men's perspectives, Castellani traces their fates, showing how and why they each drowned in a different river, as well as their ability to communicate with one another in the afterlife and watch over those who were important to them at the time of their deaths. Just as the characters are trapped between the living and dead, the novel is suspended between the expectations of a thriller plot and its literary ambitions, and doesn't deliver on either. It's a mess.
