by Megan (link)
Genre drama/angst
Pairings Zac/OFC
Length prologue and 12 chapters
Status Unfinished (sequel to Happiness)
Considering how Megan ended Happiness, I wasn’t sure how a sequel would work at all–either that ending was a fakeout or One Last Cry would have to be narrated by a different character. As it turns out, option two was what she went with, and I have to say that makes the story an improvement over the first.
Zac takes over narration for this story, and his voice works for me much better than Abby’s did; although it’s still rather mature, it lacks the flowery prose that distracted from the story in Happiness. It suits Zac much better and fits him very well. Likewise, the family drama here is kept to a fairly minimal level, not nearly as cynical as some stories I’ve read. Given how depressing the first story was, it’s nice to see some restraint here, even if Zac’s own depression does go pretty deep.
There’s a sense of something like dramatic irony to One Last Cry. Although Zac has Abby’s suicide letter all along, he takes his time reading it, going about his days in a depression that he doesn’t even know the cause of. Once he does, the story twists again–is she actually dead? Her friend Amber doesn’t seem to think so. Unfortunately, that question never gets answered, since Megan didn’t finish writing the story. The one good thing is that it allows for an open ending, and I choose to believe that Abby isn’t dead.
Review by Bethany (website)