The Last

by Hanna Jameson

[kimbacaffeinate]

Caffeinated Aspects:

• The mystery. I was curious to know what happened to the little girl. for Jon it gave him a sense of purpose and a chance to avoid the feelings about his wife and stepchildren.
• The characters back stories, particularly that of Nathan who has ties to the hotel. Jon is a historian and it felt natural for him to keep a journal and investigate.
• The interactions and reactions of the twenty hotel guests as they spend time in isolation, make runs for supplies and establish rules. It is always fascinating to watch people who normally wouldn't interact on a daily basis form alliances, friendships and engage. Lines formed based on lifestyle, political views and more. It was interesting viewing all of this from Jon's perspective. For me this was one of the strongest points of this novel.
• The hotel L’Hotel Sixieme, surrounded by woods and set far from the outskirts of the nearest town has a rich, bizarre history.

Decaffeinated Aspects:.

• This was marketed as a dystopian psychological thriller. I expected a much faster pace, danger and plenty of action. While we had moments this fell short of my expectations.
• The pacing was off and some parts dragged. This I think resulted in the combination of genres. Dystopian and Murder-Mystery. I think both suffered for it. I understand the unique setting the catastrophic event caused, but it didn't have enough of the action, suspense and near death moments typically found within the dystopian genre
• I didn't really care for Jon. I am not sure if it was the narration or his personality. He felt whiney and I struggled in sharing his emotions and thoughts. Perhaps socially awkward is a good word to describe him.
• The murder didn't create enough of a sense of danger. Sure a murderer could be living among them, but the tension wasn't there.
• I wanted more of some threads. Like the people in the woods and the small town. All of these were dystopian aspects of the story and created that rush one feels when reading the genre.

Anthony Starke provided the narration for The Last. I thought he did an excellent job with Jon's Mississippi accent. He gave both male and female characters their own unique voice and beautifully handled accents. This was not a favorite narration for me, and after a few chapters I increased the listening speed to 1.5x. I did this because Jon's voice was slow..so very slow and drab without much inflection. I highly suspect this was a personality trait of Jon's but it affected my listening pleasure. This review was originally posted at Caffeinated Reviewer