The Page 69 Test: "Last Seen"

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

"Last Seen"

J.T. Ellison is the Nashville-based New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 30 psychological thrillers, and

the Emmy® award-winning co-host of A Word on Words on Nashville PBS. She created the Taylor Jackson and Dr. Samantha Owens series, co-wrote the Brit in the FBI series with Catherine Coulter, and has penned multiple standalone hits like A Very Bad Thing, It’s One of Us, and Lie to Me. With millions of books sold across 30 countries, her work has earned the ITW Thriller Award, Indie Next picks, Amazon Editor’s Pick, Book of the Month, among other honors.

Ellison applied the Page 69 Test to Last Seen, her most recent thriller, and shared the following:

I love applying the Page 69 Test to my work. I never know what I might find on this particular page—will it be a quiet moment, or an explosive action scene? Something intrinsic to the story, or a cliffhanger, or something not really relevant because it’s being taken out of context, but obviously exists in the book for a compelling reason. I’ve experienced all of these situations in previous tests. This one, though, might just be my favorite.

As it happens, page 69 of Last Seen is a critical moment in the book. It is a confession. And also an insight into why my character is named Halley. A very important page.

My main character, Halley James, returns home to help her father after an accident and discovers that the story she’s been told her whole life about the car accident that took her mother’s and sister’s lives, and left her with a head injury, is a lie. In truth, her mother was murdered, and her father hid that from her for various reasons, including the fact that the murderer is known and went to jail. And that person is closer to Halley than she’d like.

In this scene, Quentin James is confessing one of the reasons he hid the truth and revealing part of the world that he’s kept hidden from her for the past 28 years. Her sister, who was also supposedly killed in the accident, had a very troubled past.
“She was very jealous and, turns out, at a really difficult age for a bad divorce and remarriage. Her behavior was getting more and more aggressive, so we took her to doctors. They said she was having issues adjusting because of an impulse disorder and put her on a stimulant medication. And it helped. Tremendously. Until it didn’t. They call it borderline personality disorder now, and they’re more careful with the medications. She was diagnosed in 1986, right before the comet.”

Halley’s Comet was the through line of Halley’s young life. It is her first memory, the four of them at the planetarium, her dad shivering in excitement. She was three, and she can remember almost all of that night—the darkened sky, the tail of the comet, her sister holding her hand and saying in awe, “You were named after that. Cool.” Her mother, laughing and kissing her dad as if he was the one to discover it through his telescope in the living room. As if he named it himself.

Three years later, her mother and sister were dead, and her memories become flaky.

“A year before she . . . it happened, things went bad again. It was like a light switch. She wouldn’t take the medicine willingly, said it made her feel weird. She was depressed, then she was manic, then mean, then crying. They tried all kinds of different treatments. She finally admitted she was hearing voices. It was getting worse and worse, and we were afraid for you, and for ourselves. At that point, she was beyond our abilities as parents. We thought you were in danger.”

He blows out a breath, and Halley feels for him. He is struggling for control. She should tell him they can talk later, but she has to know. This is too big to wait any longer.
Too big to wait, indeed. I hope you’ve enjoyed this look into the novel!