Review: Last to Leave the Room

 This was so thoroughly not what I was expecting it to be. We’re introduced right off the bat to Tamsin, who’s just the most irritating girlboss, treats all her coworkers like crap, and also is working to conceal from the public the fact that the city is sinking and no one knows why but it might be related to her research. As I said. Girlboss. But then an apparent clone of her shows up from the door that has mysteriously appeared in her basement and things get REALLY WEIRD. A lot of the book (maybe more than necessary) is spent watching Tamsin’s classic descent into madness. Which she also works to conceal from everyone around her, including her handler, Lachlan. I have to say, Tamsin’s relationship with Lachlan (and Lachlan as a character) was actually the highlight of the book for me, and I really wish there had been more of it. It became shockingly sweet and gentle, and also I really want a tall hot lady with a prosthetic arm to come busting into a basement to rescue me. 

Anyway, the one problem with this book is the one I always seem to have with horror novels: the ending fell apart a bit. The climactic scene in particular was really hard to follow, and I had to reread it to try to figure out what on earth (or not earth) had happened. Also, because the revelation was sort of crammed into the end, it didn’t really feel like all the various phenomena that occurred over the course of the book were really clearly linked together. In fact, the more that I think about it now, the more it seems like there were quite a lot of loose ends that didn’t get tied up. But I’m going to be a bit of a pain in the butt here and say that honestly, I still really enjoyed reading it and would absolutely recommend it with the caveat that I wouldn’t do so to people who want their horror/sci-fi to have strong, well-woven world-building.

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