Julie • bujo.books's Reviews > Last to Leave the Room

Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars
Dr. Tamsyn Rivers is a scientist who lives for her work, especially since she was assigned to work on the top-secret problem of her city sinking with no apparent scientific reason. But she's keeping a secret even from her team - her basement has been growing at the same rate the city is sinking. It keeps stretching and stretching before an impenetrable door appears, and from it comes an exact copy of Tamsyn.

This was an interesting take on doppelgangers that I'm glad I kept with, because I nearly DNFed. The first section of this book dragged with repetitve scenes and fictional science that even this engineer found hard to follow. For the doppelganger being the main point of the synopsis, it seemed to take a long time before she appeared. Anything before then strained my interest thin and could have been slimmed down. It was especially infuriating at that point that she refused to tell anyone else about what was happening. However, everything after was much more fascinating. The most engaging part of this story was by far the interactions between the two Tamsyns and how their scientific minds interact with this impossibility. While the nature of their relationship is predictable, it is no less horrifying. I liked that this addressed the cliches of the traditional doppelganger plot and decided to go against many of them. The last volume in particular I found to be stellar and evened out how I felt about the beginning.

Overall, I'm glad to have another scifi horror to recommend to others. The beginning was a drag, but the ending made it worth the read.