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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSLila Clement of Phoenix is trying hard to be a calm, cool "New Lila," because her best friends, Lexi and Ava, keep telling her she is dramatic and immature, and she is scared they will forget about her over the summer. Then her parents share sad news. Dad's father, Grandpa Clem, has died. Lila never met him, but the family has to drive two days to his creepy old inn in Castle Hill, Ohio, to arrange the funeral. On a rainy road in Missouri, the car spins out right after Lila unbuckles her seat belt to grab her phone. It stops without crashing, but soon Lila starts seeing people who vanish moments later, people no one else in her family can see. At the inn she meets Teddy Hamad, the friendly boy next door, who wears horror-movie T-shirts, reads ghost-hunting message boards, and knew her grandfather far better than she did. Then, after midnight, Grandpa Clem's ghost appears in the hallway and tells Lila he was murdered. With Teddy's help, she sets out to learn what happened to him, and the answers seem to lead to the inn's mysterious fourth floor, a place Teddy really doesn't want her to go.
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Last Resort
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about The Last Resort. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a diner customer keep saying "Coffee, please, coffee, please" while the staff ignores him?
✓ Answer
The Last Resort by Erin Entrada Kelly
At a roadside diner after the near-crash, Lila sees almost every booth and counter seat filled with strange people, including this man nobody serves. Moments later they have all vanished, and her family doesn't seem to have noticed them at all.
- First half
In what book do a boy's Batman bedsheets come from a movie he and his sister watched in secret?
✓ Answer
The Last Resort by Erin Entrada Kelly
Caleb's comforter at the inn has blue and black polka dots, nothing like his bedsheets back home in Phoenix. He and Lila secretly watched the movie with Ava after their parents said to wait until thirteen, and they still joke about it.
- First half
In what book does a little ghost girl say someone put cinnamon in an old man's stars?
✓ Answer
The Last Resort by Erin Entrada Kelly
When Lila asks the little girl in the blue dress about her grandfather, the girl's face lights up and she says this puzzling line, pronouncing cinnamon as cimmamen. Later, Lila finds a star-covered tin of tea in the kitchen and wonders if that's what the girl meant.
- Second half
In what book does a ghost boy's cushion turn out to be a life vest?
✓ Answer
The Last Resort by Erin Entrada Kelly
Timothy Marlowe, the boy in blue pinstripe pajamas who keeps asking if anyone has seen George, always seems to be sitting on a cushion. At Cuddy Park he tells Lila that George is his brother, and she finally notices that the cushion is actually a life vest.
- Second half
In what book does a father with his shirt buttoned wrong admit he dreams of plane crashes?
✓ Answer
The Last Resort by Erin Entrada Kelly
Lila's dad rushes back from his meeting for some forgotten papers, with messy hair, his buttons lined up wrong and a belt loop missed. He blames insomnia and bad dreams, and when Lila asks, he says his nightmares are about plane crashes, which fits a dad so afraid of flying that the family drove all the way to Ohio.
- Near the end
In what book does a girl imagine her friends back home asking "Like, read?" about an afternoon at the library?
✓ Answer
The Last Resort by Erin Entrada Kelly
After a sleepless night, Lila meets Teddy at the Castle Hill Library, an old building with exposed brick walls that smells like dusty books, hoping some research will give them answers. She can't even remember her most recent trip to the library back home, and she can just picture Lexi and Ava asking what they would possibly do there.
